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Pop star Pete Parkkonen and the internationally acclaimed violin legend Linda Lampenius form an impressive duo for UMK. The career paths of the artists, who recently started their collaboration, have been very different, but both have a deep love for music and performing.

“We both feel at home on the stage. When we step on the stage, we own the place,” says Parkkonen.

Linda Lampenius is best known worldwide as a classical violinist.

At the age of eight, she joined the Helsinki Junior Strings orchestra and, already as a teenager, toured North America, Europe, and Asia. Later, Andrew Lloyd Webber personally invited her to perform as a soloist in his work in England, and a classical solo album released by EMI Classics made her the best-selling Finnish classical artist of her time.

During the same decade, international media also strongly highlighted Lampenius’s pop persona and Baywatch-style image. Her classical music record label demanded the same level of sex appeal as the entertainment industry.

Lampenius has since addressed her experiences, among other places, in her autobiography My Untamed Life and in the Linda documentary series, which won the Golden Venla Award (“Finland’s Golden Globe”).

Since then, Lampenius has performed, made TV appearances and presented the classical crossover tradition for which she is known around the world.

In the 2020s, Lampenius made a spectacular comeback in Finland. The Shanghain valot interval number at the UMK 2025 show received huge attention, particularly with a younger audience discovering her.

Pete Parkkonen, who has also had a diverse career, has grown into an artist through bands and various stages. Parkkonen started as a drummer as a kid and ended up singing as a teenager when a soloist from a band of friends could not make it to rehearsals one day.

Parkkonen became known to larger audiences through the Idols singing competition, when he came third in 2008. Since then, he has released several albums, toured almost all Finnish clubs and festival stages, and established himself as a Finnish pop and soul artist. In 2014, Parkkonen won Dancing with the Stars Finland with Katri Mäkinen.

The album PETE, released in 2018, went platinum, with hits like Mitä mä teen feat. JVG and Kohta sataa, which have positioned Parkkonen as one of the leading Finnish pop and soul artists. The singles Voimaa ja valoa and Portaat, released in 2020, made Parkkonen more popular on the radio, and the release of Oon tässä in 2022 solidified his position as an interpreter of emotional and highly appealing pop.

The Grand Final of UMK will take place on 28 February 2026, when all seven competitors take the stage at Nokia Arena in Tampere. The two-hour live final is expected to draw around two million TV viewers, with about 20,000 fans attending in person, as Finland chooses its Eurovision representative for 2026.

The Grand Final of UMK will take place on 28 February 2026, when all seven competitors take the stage at Nokia Arena in Tampere. The two-hour live final is expected to draw around two million TV viewers, with about 20,000 fans attending in person, as Finland chooses its Eurovision representative for 2026.