Junior Eurovision: Bulgarian national selection kicks off today

The Junior Eurovision season continues today with the host of the last year’s edition Bulgaria starting its searching for Malta 2016.

Tonight, the first semi-final of the Bulgarian national selection will be aired live on BNT 1. The 15 selected candidates will compete to go through to the second semi-final performing in the following running order:

1. Valentina Kuncheva – “Visoko” (Group FSB)
2. Daniela Piryankova – “Kopnezh” (Margarita Hranova)
3. Dimitrina Germanova – “Dve” (Poli Genova)
4. Valentina Nikova – “Iskam te” (Lili Ivanova)
5. Lidiya Ganeva – “Rapsodia” (Roberta)
6. Gergana Todorova – “Povey vetre” (Pasha Hristova)
7. Simona Krasteva – “Ustrem” (Margarita Hranova)
8. Alexander Petrov – “Davam vsichko za teb” (Grafa)
9. Bozhena Varbanova – “Dushata mi e ston” (Georgi Hristov)
10. Preslava Petrova – “Mechta” (Own song)
11. Eleonora Dimitrova – “Kopnezh” (Margarita Hranova)
12. Nia Krusheva – “Ne Taka” (Group FSB)
13. Group Bon-Bon – “Na inat” (Poli Genova)
14. Sesil Sabri – “Pticata” (Lili Ivanova)
15. Eleonora Ivanova – “Neka Sme Razlichni” (Roberta)

The 15 candidates will perform songs fully in Bulgarian and a professional jury will be in charge of deciding the 5 candidates that will have to leave the show. The 100% jury decision procedure has been implemented in accordance with the new voting system of Junior Eurovision where the results will be decided without televoting. “The aim of our selection process is to recreate as much as possible all the aspects of the international competition, so that whoever wins, to be fully up for the challenge.”, states BNT.

The way the jury votes in the semi-finals:

• Each member will assess separately two main criteria – vocal performance and stage presence
• After the performance of each participant, each jury member will award points from 0 to 5 for both vocal and stage performance.
• Both scores are summed up and then converted to the traditional Eurovision system. The performer with the highest amount of points will receive 12 points, the second one – 10, the third 8, the fourth 7, the fifth 6 and all the way down until the tenth who is the last to receive points – in that case 1.
• Juries will comment the performances and will fill out their score-sheets right after each performance.
• In case there are performers with the same amount of points, the one with higher result in the vocal performance will be placed higher. If the results from the vocal performance criteria are the same, then the performers will be considered equal.
• If there are performers who are considered equal and occupy e.g. 9th, 10th and 11th place in the first semi-final, all of them will proceed to the second semifinal.
• If there are performers who are considered equal and occupy e.g. 5th, 6th, 7th place in the second semi-final, all of them will proceed to the final.

Follow today’s show at 20.00 CET by clicking here.

The next show of the Bulgarian national selection will be the second semi-final, to be held on June 8, where the remaining 10 candidates will compete for one of the five spots in the Grand Final set on June 11. The winner and Bulgarian representative for Junior Eurovision 2016 will be then decided by a 50-50 mix of professional jury and televoting.

Keep in mind that the show will only reveal the Bulgarian representative as the song will be composed by the winner along with professional composers selected by BNT. The song presentation will take place on a TV show by the end of September.

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