Performing during the show in position 14, "River" was announced among the top 10 entries of the second semi-final and therefore qualified to compete in the final on 14 May.

[1] Poland's highest placement in the contest, to this point, has been second place, which the nation achieved with its debut entry in 1994 with the song "To nie ja!"

Between 2005 and 2011, Poland failed to qualify from the semi-final round six out of seven years with only their 2008 entry, "For Life" performed by Isis Gee, managing to take the nation to the final during that period.

In 2020, TVP organised a televised national final which took place during the talent show Szansa na sukces that featured a competition among several artists and songs in order to select the Polish entry.

[4] The Polish entry for the Eurovision Song Contest 2022 was originally set to be selected via an internal selection by the TVP Entertainment Agency, articulated in two phases of jury assessment, with the winner planned to be presented no later than 2 January 2022; however, the announcement was later pushed back to 15 January.

[13] TVP opened a submission period for interested artists and songwriters to submit their entries between 20 September 2021 and 20 November 2021.

The members were later revealed to be: Halina Frąckowiak (singer), Krystian Kruczkowski (programme director of TVP), Marcin Kusy (President of the Polish Radio Program I), Szymon Orłowski [pl] (musician and composer) and Marek Sierocki [pl] (music journalist and artistic director, commentator of the Eurovision Song Contest for Poland).

[29] On 9 April, Ochman performed during the Eurovision in Concert event which was held at the AFAS Live venue in Amsterdam, Netherlands and hosted by Cornald Maas and Edsilia Rombley.

[30] On 16 April, Ochman performed during the PrePartyES 2022 event which was held at the Sala La Riviera venue in Madrid, Spain and hosted by Ruth Lorenzo.

[32] According to Eurovision rules, all nations with the exceptions of the host country and the "Big Five" (France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom) are required to qualify from one of two semi-finals in order to compete for the final; the top ten countries from each semi-final progress to the final.

He was joined by four contemporary dancers wearing all-black clothing and masks, described by the official Eurovision website as looking "like ghosts", giving the performance "a powerful, yet haunting visual".

The performance also featured visual effects, consisting of a storm-like overlay projected on-screen and sounds of rain hitting the ground, which was met with criticism from Polish Eurovision fans, who called them "unnecessary" and "kitschy".

[36] The performance also included other elements that were criticised, namely the idea of Ochman's face being projected on the back LED displays, as well as his suit.

[40] Poland also managed to reach its best result in the semi-finals in the history of the country in the contest, having achieved 6th place with 198 points.

Controversy surrounded the point announcement as social media posts alleged that Nowakowska had performed a Nazi salute during her segment.

In a statement released during the broadcast of the grand final, the EBU revealed that six countries, including Poland, were found to have irregular jury voting patterns during the second semi-final.

Consequently, these countries were given substitute aggregated jury scores for both the second semi-final and the grand final (shown above), calculated from the corresponding jury scores of countries with historically similar voting patterns as determined by the pots for the semi-final allocation draw held in January.

The Flemish broadcaster VRT later reported that the juries involved had made agreements to vote for each other's entries to secure qualification to the grand final.

This confirmed that the six countries involved had consistently scored each other's entries disproportionately highly in the second semi-final: the Polish jury, as well as the juries from Azerbaijan, Georgia, Montenegro, Romania and San Marino, had each ranked the other five countries' entries as their top five, proving beyond statistical coincidence that they had colluded to achieve a higher placing.

[48] The Polish broadcaster TVP commented on the situation, strongly rejecting the accusations of vote manipulation and criticising the EBU's method of calculating the aggregate jury scores.