The eighth and final season of Chinese television series Singer (; previously titled I Am a Singer) was broadcast on Hunan Television between February and April 2020. Singer 2020 was produced by Hong Tao, and its music director was Hong Kong senior musician Kubert Leung. The season premiere was first taped on January 3, 2020, and it was announced that the season will be subtitled Year of the Hits (), and this was the second season to feature returning contestants, after season five. For the first time in this series, return performances were absent for the entire season. The season premiered on February 7, 2020, and ended on April 24, 2020.
Hua Chenyu, a Chinese singer who previously competed in season six, was named the winner, making him the first previous season returnee to win I Am a Singer, while Tia Ray and Jam Hsiao, both also previously returning singers from season five, finished second and third respectively. This is also the first time none of any new initial singers (outside returning singers) made it to the final round. Additionally, runner-up Ray's became the highest-placing singer who was previously eliminated and advanced via the Breakout round following Aska Yang and Gary Chaw, who also made it to the final round not higher than third place, and Sitar Tan and Lao Lang, both not higher than fourth place.
On 22 September 2020, Hong Tao announced that they would not be renewing the show for a ninth season and cancelled the series, making Singer 2020 the final season of the series.
Competition rules
Like the previous seasons of I Am a Singer and Singer, it features five rounds of two stages, Qualifier and Knockout, with seven singers performing for a 500-member audience each week. The electronic voting, first appeared as a pre-voting twist in season six and introduced permanently on season seven, where voting (up to three votes) was conducted throughout the performance and accounted for 50% of the final score. As such for past seasons, the scores from both weeks are combined to decide the eliminated singer who received the fewest votes. Unlike the last season, separate scores for paper and electronic votes are not revealed.
The competition reverted to the pre-season three format with Challenge rounds (a round which featured a new singer requiring to rank in the top four to avoid elimination) removed, but instead replaced with a variant round known as Surprise, which in-turn functions similarities to the Substituted singers as well. Three new singers were introduced at the start of the Qualifier round and along with the managers; while on backstage, the singers watched their performance while seated with a microphone stand lever. During the performance, a contestant may pull the lever to issue a challenge to the current contestant, but any current contestants are not aware from their existence until the performance ended. After the challenger performed, an electronic vote will immediately conduct with the results being revealed afterwards (previously after the episode prior to the first round). All three Surprise challenges do not need to be performed on a single episode, but challengers must challenge to a singer within the current elimination round. If at least one challenger succeed in the Surprise round, one contestant from the current lineup will be eliminated at the end of the current Knockout round; if multiple challengers succeed, a re-vote will conduct between the successful singers and the singer with a higher vote advance will replace the eliminated singer, but all successful singers, regardless if they lose the revote will be guaranteed a place in the Breakout round. If all three challengers were unsuccessful, all seven contestants are safe from elimination itself. The final round features a small change in which the Challengers were reduced to two, and no re-vote was conducted for multiple successful singers, meaning that the singers are immediately advanced to the competition and eliminations are conducted as usual. A variant of this twist also apply on the Breakout and Grand Finals where singers who lost the duel were eliminated from the competition regardless of the outcome of the round.
As the season is subtitled Year of the Hits, the contest is suggested for a pool of younger singing talents with an age range of 18 and 35. Contestants are no longer restricted to the songs selection, and may freely choose a song they composed on their own or on someone else.