Artists that were interested in entering the Swiss national final had the opportunity to apply during a submission period organised by SRG SSR.

Their second and, to this point, most recent victory was achieved in 1988 when Canadian singer Céline Dion won the contest with the song "Ne partez pas sans moi".

In 2005, the internal selection of Estonian girl band Vanilla Ninja, performing the song "Cool Vibes", qualified Switzerland to the final where they placed 8th.

ESC 2017 – die Entscheidungsshow was the seventh edition of the Swiss national final format that selected Switzerland's entry for the Eurovision Song Contest 2017.

The show took place on 5 February 2017 at the SRF Studio 1 in Zürich, hosted by Sven Epiney and was televised on SRF zwei, RSI La 2 with Italian commentary by Clarissa Tami and Nicola Locarnini, and RTS Deux with French commentary by Nicolas Tanner and Jean-Marc Richard.

The first stage of the competition involved an online platform where all interested artists could submit their songs without having them listed for public listening.

The jury panel involved in the selection were required to have the following member quotas representing the different language regions in Switzerland: 68% German/Romansh, 23% French and 9% Italian.

SRG SSR opened a submission period between 26 September 2016 and 24 October 2016 for interested artists and composers to submit their entries via an online platform.

[9] A 19-member jury panel evaluated the received submissions between 31 October 2016 and 14 November 2016 and selected 21 candidates that proceeded to the "Live Check".

[14][15] On 8 April, Timebelle performed during the Eurovision in Concert event which was held at the Melkweg venue in Amsterdam, Netherlands and hosted by Cornald Maas and Selma Björnsdóttir.

The performance began with Mănescu on a tall platform before descending the stairs to join the other band members on the stage floor for the final chorus.

[26] At the end of the show, Switzerland was not announced among the top 10 entries in the second semi-final and therefore failed to qualify to compete in the final.

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.