OTI Festival
Also known as	OTI Song Contest La OTI
Spanish	Festival OTI de la Canción / Gran Premio de la Canción Iberoamericana
Portuguese	Festival OTI da Canção / Grande Prêmio da Canção Ibero-Americana
Genre	Music competition
Created by	Organización de Televisión Iberoamericana
Based on	Eurovision Song Contest
Country of origin	List of countries
Original languages	Spanish and Portuguese
No. of episodes	28 contests
Production
Production location	Various host cities
Production companies	Organización de Televisión Iberoamericana Various national broadcasters
Original release
Release	25 November 1972 (1972-11-25) – 20 May 2000 (2000-05-20)

OTI Festival (Spanish: Festival OTI de la Canción / Gran Premio de la Canción Iberoamericana, Portuguese: Festival OTI da Canção / Grande Prêmio da Canção Ibero-Americana), often known simply as La OTI, was an international song competition organised annually by the Organización de Televisión Iberoamericana (OTI) among its members for 28 editions between 1972 and 2000. Each participating broadcaster submitted an original song representing its country, in Spanish or Portuguese, to be performed and broadcast live to all of them via satellite, and then there was a vote to determine a winner.

The festival was a spin-off of the Eurovision Song Contest for Ibero-American broadcasters, and it was preceded by the Festival Mundial de la Canción Latina, held in 1969 and 1970 in Mexico City. The first OTI Festival was held on 25 November 1972 in Madrid and the last one was held on 20 May 2000 in Acapulco. Since then, it has been cancelled due to the questioning of the voting system of the latter festivals, the lack of sponsors, the low quality of the entries, and the withdrawal of some prominent countries. Broadcasters from twenty-seven countries participated at least once in the festival, with Chile, Panama, Peru, Puerto Rico, and Venezuela participating in all twenty-eight editions.

The main goals of the festival was to generate a process of cultural and artistic fellowship between the Spanish and Portuguese-speaking countries, and to encourage the creation of original songs among their authors, composers, and performers. It is the largest, longest running, and most successful spin-off of the Eurovision Song Contest, leaving a great mark in Ibero-America by giving many famous artists and hit songs.

After the Festival Mundial de la Canción Latina, which was held in Mexico City in 1969 and 1970, the Organización de Televisión Iberoamericana (OTI) created the Gran Premio de la Canción Iberoamericana/Grande Prêmio da Canção Ibero-Americana, also known as Festival OTI de la Canción/Festival OTI da Canção, as a televised international song competition for its member broadcasters following the format of the Eurovision Song Contest.^[1]

All active members of the OTI were eligible to participate in the OTI Festival. Both state financed and private broadcasters from member countries of the Organization of Ibero-American States (OEI) were able to join OTI as full members. Since only one entry per country was allowed, in some cases, different broadcasters from the same country collaborated to participate and broadcast the festival jointly. The songs in the competition had to be original, no longer than 3 minutes, performed live accompanied by a full orchestra, and have all lyrics in Spanish or Portuguese.

The OTI Festival was held for first time on 25 November 1972 at the Palacio de Exposiciones y Congresos of Madrid. Broadcasters from thirteen countries took part in the first edition of the event. Spain, Colombia, Brazil, Venezuela, Panama, Portugal, Bolivia, Chile, Peru, Uruguay, Argentina, the Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico were the debuting countries.^[2] This first edition marked the first time in history that broadcasters from so many countries linked together via satellite to participate in a song contest.

Following the first edition, broadcasters from the rest of the Ibero-American countries progressively started taking part in the event. The festival expanded even further away from the traditional Ibero-American sphere, to the point that even the United States and Canada (which had large communities of Spanish and Portuguese speakers), the Netherlands Antilles and Aruba (which were Dutch but where Papiamento, a Portuguese-based creole language influenced by Spanish, was the most widely spoken), and Equatorial Guinea (which is a Spanish-speaking African country) took part in the event. In 1992, the festival reached a record of 25 participating countries, which made the 1992 festival the biggest song contest in the world, even beating the 23 participants of the Eurovision Song Contest 1992.

Year Country making its debut entry 1972 Argentina Brazil Bolivia Chile Colombia Dominican Republic Panama Peru Portugal Puerto Rico Spain Uruguay Venezuela 1973 Mexico

Year Country making its debut entry 1974 Ecuador El Salvador Guatemala Honduras Netherlands Antilles Nicaragua United States 1976 Costa Rica 1978 Paraguay 1986 Canada 1989 Aruba 1991 Cuba 1992 Equatorial Guinea

Broadcasters from twenty-seven countries participated at least once in the festival, with Chile, Panama, Peru, Puerto Rico, and Venezuela participating in all twenty-eight editions. Some of the participating broadcasters, such as those from Aruba, Chile, Cuba, Mexico, the Netherlands Antilles, and the United States, selected their entries through regular multi-stage televised national selections. Other broadcasters selected their entries internally.

The location of the festival was decided following two criteria throughout its history. Initially, the winning broadcaster would organize and stage the contest the following year. Because many participating broadcasters were suffering from political and economic instability in their countries, the OTI decided, just before the 1977 edition, to drop that rule and open a selection process to choose the host broadcaster starting with the 1978 edition, to which all its members were eligible to apply. The 1977 festival was won by Nicaragua, which was not able to host the 1978 festival due to the Nicaraguan Revolution, becoming the first to not be able to do so. The 1999 edition, which was going to be held in Veracruz, had to be suspended due to the severe flooding that occurred in early October in the country, which devastated the city.

Spain and Mexico were the countries that hosted the contest the most, with six editions each one. In total, the festival was hosted in thirteen countries, out of the twenty-seven that ever participated.

Year	Date of Final	City	Venue	Presenter(s)	Host broadcaster	Orchestra
1972	25 November	Madrid	Palacio de Congresos y Exposiciones	Rosa María Mateo Raúl Matas	TVE	RTVE Light Music Orchestra
1973	10 November	Belo Horizonte	Palácio das Artes [pt]	Walter Forster Íris Lettieri [pt]	TV Itacolomi–Rede Tupi	Rede Tupi Symphony Orchestra
1974	26 October	Acapulco	Teatro Juan Ruiz de Alarcón [es]	Lolita Ayala Raúl Velasco	Televisa	Acapulco Philharmonic Orchestra
1975	15 November	San Juan	Telemundo Studio 2	Marisol Malaret Eddie Miró	WKAQ-Telemundo	Telemundo Symphony Orchestra
1976	30 October	Acapulco	Teatro Juan Ruiz de Alarcón	Susana Dosamantes Raúl Velasco	Televisa	Acapulco Philharmonic Orchestra
1977	12 November	Madrid	Centro Cultural de la Villa de Madrid	Mari Cruz Soriano Miguel de los Santos [es]	RTVE	RTVE Light Music Orchestra
1978	2 December	Santiago	Teatro Municipal	Raquel Argandoña Raúl Matas	TVN UTV UCTV UCVTV	Philharmonic Orchestra of Santiago
1979	8 December	Caracas	Theatre of the Military Academy [es]	Eduardo Serrano Carmen Victoria Pérez	RCTV Venevisión TVN VTN	OTI orquesta §
1980	15 November	Buenos Aires	Teatro General San Martín	Liliana López Foresi [es] Antonio Carrizo	ATC	Undisclosed
1981	5 December	Mexico City	Auditorio Nacional	Raúl Velasco	Televisa
1982	27 November	Lima	Coliseo Amauta	Humberto Martínez Morosini [es] Zenaida Solís [es] Pepe Ludmir [es] Silvia Maccera [es]	Panamericana Televisión
1983	29 October	Washington, D.C.	DAR Constitution Hall	Rafael Pineda Ana Carlota	SIN
1984	10 November	Mexico City	Auditorio Nacional	Raúl Velasco Pilín León Claudia Córdoba	Televisa
1985	21 September	Seville	Teatro Lope de Vega	Paloma San Basilio Emilio Aragón	TVE
1986	15 November	Santiago	Teatro Municipal	Pamela Hodar César Antonio Santis [es]	TVN UTV UCTV
1987	24 October	Lisbon	Teatro São Luiz	Ana Zanatti Eládio Clímaco	RTP
1988	19 November	Buenos Aires	Teatro Nacional Cervantes	Pinky Juan Alberto Badía [es]	ATC
1989	18 November	Miami	James L. Knight Center	Lucy Pereda Antonio Vodanovic Verónica Castro Carlos Mata María Conchita Alonso Emmanuel Don Francisco	Univision
1990	1 December	Las Vegas	Caesars Palace Circus Maximus Showroom	Antonio Vodanovic Alejandra Guzmán Fernando Allende María Conchita Alonso Emmanuel
1991	14 December	Acapulco	Centro de Convenciones	Raúl Velasco	Televisa	SUTM Orchestra §
1992	5 December	Valencia	Teatro Principal	Paloma San Basilio Joaquín Prat	TVE	Undisclosed
1993	9 October			Paloma San Basilio Francisco [es]		Mediterranean Symphony Orchestra
1994	15 October			Ana Obregón Francisco		OTI orquesta §
1995	11 November	San Bernardino	Anfiteatro José Asunción Flores [es]	Menchi Barriocanal [es] Rubén Rodríguez	Teledifusora Paraguaya [es]	Undisclosed
1996	14 December	Quito	Teatro Nacional	Christian Jhonson Ximena Aulestia	ACTVE [es]
1997	25 October	Lima	Plaza Mayor	Jorge Belevan Claudia Doig	CPR
1998	14 November	San José	Teatro Nacional	Maribel Guardia Rafael Rojas	Repretel	Costa Rica Philharmonic Orchestra §
1999	20 November	Veracruz	N/A[a]	N/A	Televisa	N/A
2000	20 May	Acapulco	Centro de Convenciones	Emmanuel Andrea Legarreta Gabriela Spanic Otto Sirgo	Televisa	Undisclosed

The voting system to decide the outcome of the festival changed over the years. Initially, voting was public, with a five-member jury assembled by each participating broadcaster in their country casting their votes by telephone, and the counting being displayed on a scoreboard. Each jury member voted only for one song, which could not be the one representing their country, with the song with the most votes winning, and the second- and third-placed songs usually also being awarded. In 1977 the number of jurors per country was changed to three due to an increase of participating entries. In 1978, the voting was changed so that each country cast 1–5 points to its five favorite songs in order of preference. And in 1982, remote juries were abolished and each participating broadcaster appointed a single juror who was present in the hall instead.

Starting in 1983, voting became secret, with only the top three entries revealed at the end. That year, each participating broadcaster appointed a juror who was present in the hall and who scored all entries, except its own, between 1 and 5 points in a secret voting. From 1984 on, the outcome was decided by a professional jury assembled by the organizers composed by well-known music personalities, which was present in the hall and voted secretly.^[3]

Mexico and Spain were the most successful countries in the history of the competition with six victories each while Argentina won the contest four times. Brazil was the fourth most successful country with three victories.

Spanish singer Francisco [es] is the only artist to have won the competition twice (1981 and 1992). Spanish songwriters Alejandro Abad (1993 and 1995) and Chema Purón [es] (1992 and 1996) won the competition twice, as did Mexican songwriters Francisco Curiel and Pedro Cárdenas (1990 and 1997).

Winners of the OTI Festival

Year	Country	Song	Singer(s)	Songwriter(s)
1972	Brazil	"Diálogo"	Claudia Regina & Tobías	Paulo César Pinheiro Baden Powell
1973	Mexico	"Qué alegre va María"	Imelda Miller [es]	Celia Bonfil
1974	Puerto Rico	"Hoy canto por cantar"	Nydia Caro	Nydia Caro Ricardo Ceratto [es]
1975	Mexico	"La felicidad"	Gualberto Castro	Felipe Gil
1976	Spain	"Canta cigarra [es]"	María Ostiz [es]	María Ostiz
1977	Nicaragua	"Quincho Barrilete"	Guayo González	Carlos Mejía Godoy
1978	Brazil	"El amor... cosa tan rara"	Denisse de Kalafe [es]	Denisse de Kalafe
1979	Argentina	"Cuenta conmigo"	Daniel Riolobos [es]	Chico Novarro Raúl Parentella [es]
1980	Puerto Rico	"Contigo mujer"	Rafael José	Ednita Nazario Laureano Brizuela
1981	Spain	"Latino"	Francisco [es]	Pablo Herrero José Luis Armenteros
1982	Venezuela	"Puedes contar conmigo"	Grupo Unicornio [es]	Luis Gerardo Tovar [es] Carlos Moreán [es]
1983	Brazil	"Estrela de papel"	Jessé	Jessé Florentino Santos Elifas Andreato
1984	Chile	"Agualuna"	Fernando Ubiergo	Fernando Ubiergo
1985	Mexico	"El fandango aquí"	Eugenia León	Marcial Alejandro [es]
1986	United States	"Todos"	Dámaris Carbaugh, Miguel Ángel Guerra [es] & Eduardo Fabián	Vilma Planas
1987	Venezuela	"La felicidad está en un rincón de tu corazón"	Alfredo Alejandro	Luis Gerardo Tovar [es] Arnoldo Nali
1988	Argentina	"Todavía eres mi mujer"	Guillermo Guido [es]	Carlos Castellón
1989	Mexico	"Una canción no es suficiente"	Analí	Jesús Monárrez
1990	Mexico	"Un bolero"	Carlos Cuevas	Francisco Curiel Pedro Alberto Cárdenas
1991	Argentina	"¿Adónde estás ahora?"	Claudia Brant	Claudia Brant Sebastián Schon [es]
1992	Spain	"A dónde voy sin ti"	Francisco	Chema Purón [es]
1993	Spain	"Enamorarse"	Ana Reverte [es]	Alejandro Abad Josep Llobell
1994	Argentina	"Canción despareja"	Claudia Carenzio	Bibi Albert
1995	Spain	"Eres mi debilidad"	Marcos Llunas	Alejandro Abad
1996	Spain	"Manos"	Anabel Russ	Chema Purón Eduardo Leiva [sv]
1997	Mexico	"Se diga lo que se diga"	Iridián	Francisco Curiel José Manuel Fernández
1998	Chile	"Fin de siglo, éste es el tiempo de inflamarse, deprimirse o transformarse"	Florcita Motuda	Florcita Motuda
2000	United States	"Hierba mala"	Hermanas Chirino	Angie Chirino Olga María Chirino Emilio Estefan

OTI Festival wins by country

Wins	Country	Years
6	Spain	1976, 1981, 1992, 1993, 1995, 1996
	Mexico	1973, 1975, 1985, 1989, 1990, 1997
4	Argentina	1979, 1988, 1991, 1994
3	Brazil	1972, 1978, 1983
2	Puerto Rico	1974, 1980
	Venezuela	1982, 1987
	Chile	1984, 1998
	United States	1986, 2000
1	Nicaragua	1977

Although the OTI Festival has not been held since 2000, it is still widely remembered in many countries, especially in Mexico, where the festival was always well received by the audience, even when its popularity was declining.^[4] It was enormously popular there thanks to the "National OTI Festival", which was the multi-stage national competition organized by Televisa to select its entry for the international contest. Many famous singers such as Juan Gabriel, Emmanuel, Lucero, or the girl band Pandora, tried to represent Mexico in the OTI Festival, but they didn't win the national contest.

Both Televisión Española (TVE) in Spain and Radiotelevisão Portuguesa (RTP) in Portugal were members of the OTI and the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), so they were eligible to participate in both the OTI Festival and the Eurovision Song Contest representing their countries. The band Trigo Limpio represented Spain in the OTI Festival 1977 and in the Eurovision Song Contest 1980. Marcos Llunas won for Spain the OTI Festival 1995 and represented the country in the Eurovision Song Contest 1997, making him the only OTI winner to ever participate in Eurovision. Betty Missiego, who represented Peru in the OTI Festival 1972, represented Spain in the Eurovision Song Contest 1979. Numerous artists participated in both competitions representing Portugal, such as Anabela, Paulo de Carvalho, José Cid, Dora, Dulce Pontes, Adelaide Ferreira, Simone de Oliveira, and Tonicha. Other well known OTI contestants from these countries were Spanish Marisol, Dyango, Vicky Larraz, and Camilo Sesto; and Portuguese Lena d'Água.

Only one Eurovision winner has previously participated in the OTI Festival: Dave Benton, who represented the Netherlands Antilles in 1981 as Efrem Benita, won the Eurovision Song Contest 2001 for Estonia, with the song "Everybody" along Tanel Padar and 2XL.

As the mark of the OTI Festival in Latin America is still big, some organisations of diverse nature have tried to revive the festival. Some Mexican artists also made public their support to a return of the OTI Festival.^{[citation needed]}

In March 2011, it was announced by some online newspapers that Televisa was preparing for the relaunch of the event in two stages, the first one, was to revive the "National OTI Contest", the Mexican national final, while the second one would be to revive the international and main OTI Festival. The aim of this attempt to bring to life the festival was to give the opportunity to young performers to show their talent. The festival at the end never took place, but it was neither cancelled.^[5]

In June 2016, it was announced the relaunch of OTI as a media organisation. The broadcasting union was renamed as "Organización de Telecomunicaciones de Iberoamerica" (Iberoamerican Telecommunications Organisation) evolving from a television content exchange platform to include members of a broader nature such as newspapers and telephone-internet companies apart from television and radio channels. This relaunch instantaneously sparked rumors about a possible relaunch of the festival that were later denied.^[6]

In 2017 it was announced the start of an organisation called "Organización de Talento Independiente" (Independent Talent Organisation) which in Spanish casually coincides with the acronym "OTI". The main goal of the organisation was to try to recreate the festival between Mexican singers and artists from the Latin community of the United States. Although the festival was not a competition between broadcasters of participating countries, the competition was held in the Mexican city of Puerto Peñasco.^[7]

In February 2022, Radiotelevisión Española (RTVE) announced Hispavision, a song festival where Spanish-speaking Latin American countries will take part alongside Brazil and Portugal as invited nations. The project was scheduled to start in 2023 and would be held in Cartagena, Colombia.^[8][9] In 12 July 2022, the EBU announced its expansion of the Eurovision Song Contest brand to Latin America. The planned contest would be produced by the same producers of other Eurovision spin-offs, including the American Song Contest.^[10] There was no further information on these projects after their announcement.

• Organización de Televisión Iberoamericana Website