"You Let Me Walk Alone" performed by Michael Schulte was selected as the German entry for Lisbon after gaining the most points following the combination of votes.

In 2017, the German entry "Perfect Life" performed by Levina placed twenty-fifth out of twenty-six competing songs and scoring six points.

[2] Since 2013, NDR had set up national finals with several artists to choose both the song and performer to compete at Eurovision for Germany.

A Eurovision panel, consisting of 100 German television viewers put together according to selected criteria in cooperation with Simon-Kucher & Partners and Digame through surveys on social media in order to reflect the taste of the wider European audience, shortlisted 17 artists to go through a workshop where they received vocal coaching and choreography training.

[12] In January 2018, the six artists worked with 15 German and international composers and lyricists in a three-day songwriting camp to create their candidate songs for the national final.

[16] Michael Schulte made several appearances across Europe to specifically promote "You Let Me Walk Alone" as the German Eurovision entry.

[18] On 14 April, Schulte performed during the Eurovision in Concert event which was held at the AFAS Live venue in Amsterdam, Netherlands and hosted by Edsilia Rombley and Cornald Maas.

[19] On 21 April, Schulte performed during the ESPreParty event which was held at the Sala La Riviera venue in Madrid, Spain and hosted by Soraya Arnelas.

The running order for the semi-finals and final was decided by the shows' producers rather than through another draw, so that similar songs were not placed next to each other.

The staging presentation included Schulte in front of a LED projection screen that displayed hand-drawn illustrations, images of people with their fathers and a series of vector animations in white, black and red colours which included several of the lyrics from the song's chorus and an infinite series of Schulte with white outlines against a black background when he spread his arms as the song progressed.

Each nation's jury consisted of five music industry professionals who are citizens of the country they represent, with their names published before the contest to ensure transparency.

This jury judged each entry based on: vocal capacity; the stage performance; the song's composition and originality; and the overall impression by the act.

The individual rankings of each jury member as well as the nation's televoting results were released shortly after the grand final.