It’s time. The final Melodifestivalen is happening this Saturday.

Of course, we’ve got a few fans here on the blog who have written about Melodifestivalen before (including me with Melodifestivalen and the other Swedish Schlager), but for those of you who are new to the glory that is Swedish schlager, here’s a quick rundown.

Schlager is a popular music type which is usually very poppy. Sometimes you’ll get the romantic ballads, but either way, the song tends to be something that gets stuck in your head. The genre is quite popular in many parts of Europe – and especially around Eurovision time.

Melodifestivalen is the annual song contest that determines which performance will represent Sweden at Eurovision and has been held since 1959. This year, Eurovision is being hosted by Sweden because of Loreen’s winning performance with “Euphoria” from the 2012 contest. Since 2002, songs could be performed in any language. Because of that, many of the songs in Melodifestivalen are now performed in English. Including the winner from last year:

Melodifestivalen is comprised of four regional competitions, a second-chance competition, and the final. Millions of people will be watching the final (seriously. Millions. In a country of just nine million, millions of people watch this). In 2012, over four million people saw the final. Some of the songs are ridiculous. Some are catchy. Some are just bad. But this is very much a cultural phenomenon that dominated popular culture discussions at this time of year.

Just in case you haven’t been keeping up-to-date with all of the finalists, SVT has provided you with all of the entries for this year. Make sure to click on over to watch them all. You’ll notice some of the songs are in Swedish and some are in English.

If you want to watch, you can head over to SVT to see the competition on Saturday.