KLRN City Showdown 2026
Contest Overview & Rules 

City Showdown is an award-winning digital series produced by KLRN Public Television that features local artists in a friendly battle of the bands. The project seeks to celebrate the talent and diversity of our region’s music scene while encouraging civic awareness. 

Local musicians and bands each represent a city council district or municipality with one original music video. 

Entries are original music videos from contestants that have been previously released in the last five years and are available to view on YouTube. A complete playlist of City Showdown entries can be found HERE. 

Generous support for Season 2 of KLRN City Showdown is provided by Capital Group, The Carver Community Cultural Center, Escamilla & Poneck LLP, and The City of San Antonio’s Department of Arts & Culture, with additional support from H-E-B.

FORMAT 

KLRN City Showdown is a digital series that takes place on a dedicated web page klrn.org/cityshowdown, KLRN’s Instagram and YouTube channels. 

YouTube 

Get to know all the Season 3 contestants with the Artist Interviews playlist. 

Instagram 

Contestant carousels for you to learn more about your part of town and who’s repping your part of town. 

Updates on @klrntv Instagram story

Website

Vote for your favorite entries at KLRN’s City Showdown site.

VOTING

Throughout the duration of the season, all contestants will earn points from two sources: a public vote and a community jury. 

Public (Online) vote

Online audiences can vote for their favorite entries at www.klrn.org/cityshowdown by ranking them top to bottom. Points are awarded by dragging and dropping the names to create a ranking. First place gets 16 points. Last place gets 1 point.

The voting period will last two weeks. Audiences can vote once per week from: 

• Monday, March 16 at 12AM to March 22 at 11:59PM 
• March 23 at 12AM to March 29 at 11:59PM 

Please note that fraudulent or automated voting tactics that attempt to subvert the fairness of the online voting system will not be tolerated and could result in disqualification of votes. 

Community Jury
The jury is comprised of members who are asked to objectively score each contestant. The jury provides a combined score that makes up half of the contestants’ final score.

Jury members reflect a variety of diverse backgrounds and range in age from 16-70. Jurors are musicians, journalists, students, former City Showdown contestants, and more. 

The name and title of each juror can be found on the City Showdown webpage. The total jury score will be posted to the KLRN webpage following the results, however individual juror scores will not be revealed. 

Scoring

Season 3 of City Showdown features a ranked vote system. The thirteen contestants will receive points in relation to their ranked placement. 

Contestants who are ranked first, second, and third will receive 16 points, 14 points, and 12 points, respectively. 

A contestant ranked last will receive 1 point. The contestant ranked second-to-last will receive 2 points, and so on. 

Example: 
Online voter A ranks the contestants in the following way: 

• District 1
• Helotes
• District 8
• District 10
• Floresville
• District 5
• District 7
• District 9 
• Windcrest
• District 3
• District 2
• District 4
• District 6 

The scores to each contestant will be as follows:

• District 1: 16 points
• Helotes: 14 points
• District 8 – 12 points
• District 4 – 10 points
• Floresville – 9 points
• District 5 – 8 points
• District 7 – 7 points
• District 9 – 6 points
• Windcrest – 5 points
• District 3 – 4 points
• District 2 – 3 points
• District 10 – 2 points
• District 6 – 1 point

Ranking each contestant is encouraged. If an incomplete ranking form is submitted, contestants who were not ranked will each receive 1 point. 

After the voting window closes, KLRN will tally the vote totals from both the online public and the community jury. The public vote is treated as one combined ranked result, proportional to the number of valid ballots received.

These two numbers will be added together to determine the final score and ranking. 

The four contestants who receive the highest combined score will advance to the KLRN City Showdown live finale. The winner will be revealed live during this event. 

The winner of City Showdown will be determined by the contestant that receives the highest combined score from the jury AND online public. 

In the event of a tie, the contestant who received the higher online vote will be declared the winner.

PRESENTATION OF WINNER

The winner of City Showdown will be revealed during a live showcase event on Tues. April 7 at The Carver Community Cultural Center. 

Each finalist will perform a short set and, at the end of the evening, the remaining results will be revealed, announcing the winner live. 

The full results will be released soon after and posted on the City Showdown website. 

The winner of City Showdown will receive a $250 H-E-B gift card along with bragging rights for the year. 

CONTESTANTS

Applications for Season 3 were solicited by an open call on social media and flyers in the community. Selected entrants (referred to as “contestants”) were chosen by an internal selection committee. 

Applicants were asked to self-identify which district they were from; bands and groups with multiple members were allowed to apply to represent multiple districts. Selected contestants are each assigned to represent a single district. 

Season 3 includes three contestants representing cities that are within KLRN’s broadcast service area. KLRN reserves the right to assign contestants as needed for purposes of the show. 

Season 3 contestants receive a small honorarium for their participation. 

OFFICIAL RULES

• Contestants must be 21 years of age or older.
• By participating, contestants agree to be bound by these Official Rules and the decisions of KLRN.
• City Showdown is a friendly competition celebrating San Antonio’s dynamic music scene. Negative, offensive, and aggressive online behavior toward other contestants or KLRN will not be tolerated.
  • KLRN reserves the right to disqualify any contestant or group that engages in the above-stated behavior.
• Songs and music videos used for the contest must be original works.
• Contestants must allow KLRN the non-exclusive license to use, reproduce distribute, broadcast, and use their original work for the purposes of the series and marketing efforts.
• Scores are determined by a 50/50 split between a jury and votes received from the public. Final online voting data will be shared on KLRN’s website following the competition.
• Participants/Contestants will not pay anything to be a part of the series.
• Participants/Contestants will not be employees of KLRN or direct relatives of staff.
• Contestants will not encourage, suggest, or engage in fraudulent voting tactics during the contest.
• By participating, contestants agree that KLRN is not responsible for technical malfunctions, lost votes, or internet outages.
• KLRN reserves the right to amend rules for fairness or technical necessity.
• KLRN reserves the sole right to manage Season 3 of City Showdown from beginning to end, making final determinations about the contest, voting results, and live event based on data received.