Klemen Slakonja

Klemen Slakonja (born 3 June 1985) is a Slovenian actor, singer, comedian, television host, and musician. He was employed at the Ljubljana Slovene National Theatre Drama and acting between 2010 to 2018. He represented Slovenia in the Eurovision Song Contest 2025 with the song "How Much Time Do We Have Left".

Slakonja studied at the Academy of Theatre, Radio, Film and Television. He is known in Slovenia for his comedy sketches, often made in the form of music videos, as well as for anchoring various shows such as the Slovenian national finals for the Eurovision Song Contest. He has made numerous impersonations of Slovenian musicians, Slovene philosopher Slavoj Žižek, Pope Francis, Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump, Angela Merkel and others.

He was born in a Slovenian border town Brežice. His early impersonations started around second year of high school. He started his career at local Radio Energy near his home in the town of Krško, which is the most known for having the only nuclear powerplant in Slovenia. He was the radio anchor and he was hosting many different kind of local events.

In late summer of 2007, he hosted the home reception for Slovenian world class hammer throw champion Primož Kozmus in Brežice, to celebrate his silver medal from 2007 World Championships in Athletics in Osaka. To honour Primož Kozmus he translated the Slovenian Christmas song "Bela snežinka" to "Sivo kladivo" (Grey Hammer) and impersonated it with voices of various Slovenian popular musicians. That's when radio host Edi Štraus noticed him and recommended him to Sašo Hribar, satirical TV and radio host.

On 5 October 2007, Sašo Hribar invited Slakonja to make his first public performance on the national level to his satirical radio show called Radio Ga Ga where they are mocking mostly of out of Slovenian politicians and which is broadcast weekly on first channel of Slovenian National Radio. He imitated Slovenian ballad singer Rok Kosmač which was the breaking point of his career and after this performance suddenly became known to a wide Slovenian audience.

Just a month later in November 2007, he made the first public television appearance at satirical television show Hri-bar hosted by Sašo Hribar which was mocking animated characters, mostly Slovenian politicians. Show was broadcast on RTV Slovenia national television. Show hosted regular and also musical guests where Slakonja performed mocking Slovenian musicians with perfect voice and disguise impersonation.

On 17 February 2008, he became a national television host taking over popular Sunday afternoon family show called "NLP" on RTV Slovenia. He became a co-host with Tjaša Železnik who previously run this show alone for about two years.

On 27 February 2011, he first time hosted EMA music festival competition, a Slovenian entry for Eurovision Song Contest 2011 and the winner was Maja Keuc. To honour this festival he wrote music and presented "16 let skomin", a mix song of all sixteen EMA festival winners; he also was spokesperson for Slovenia in the ESC Grand final. So far he was hosting this festival for three more times, in 2012, 2016 and 2020. In 2016 he presented "Putin, Putout" in the EMA show.