Twenty entries competed in the competition on 27 February 2011 where "Rusinka" performed by Vlatko Ilievski was selected following the combination of votes from a fifteen-member jury panel and a public televote.

[1] The nation's best result in the contest to this point was twelfth, which it achieved in 2006 with the song "Ninanajna" performed by Elena Risteska.

[5][6] On 3 February 2011, MRT announced that "Vo mojot svet imaš dom", written by Grigor Koprov, Vladimir Dojcinovski and Borce Dimitrov and performed by Nade Talevska was withdrawn from the competition due to overseas arrangements of the artist and replaced with the song "Kukuriku" by Rok Agresori.

[7] "Neka e so pomin", written by Ljupčo Mirkovski and Ognen Nedelkovski and performed by Dule i Koki was also withdrawn after the artists stated that Skopje Fest is rigged.

[10] Twenty entries competed and a 50/50 combination of public televoting and a fifteen-member jury panel selected "Rusinka" performed by Vlatko Ilievski as the winner.

[15] On 9 April, Ilievski performed during the Eurovision in Concert event which was held at the Club Air venue in Amsterdam, Netherlands and hosted by Cornald Maas, Esther Hart and Sascha Korf.

[16] On 16 April, Ilievski took part in promotional activities in Belarus by giving interviews to media outlets and appearing during talk show programmes to discuss his Eurovision participation.

On 17 January 2011, a special allocation draw was held which placed each country into one of the two semi-finals, as well as which half of the show they would perform in.

The stage colours were predominately red with the background LED screens displaying the word "muzika" within a turning cube.

[20][21] The five dancers that joined Vlatko Ilievski on stage were Dardan Selmani, Ivan Angelkovski, Jana Andrejević, Ljupcho Atanasov and Marko Pešić.

This jury was asked to judge each contestant based on: vocal capacity; the stage performance; the song's composition and originality; and the overall impression by the act.