TG4 confirmed participation for Junior Eurovision 2017 yesterday as they revealed national selection plans. Today the Irish-speaker broadcaster have open submissions for the show aimed to select this year’s Irish entrant for the international competition “Junior Eurovision Éire 2017”.
All interested singers and bands can apply to perform in the audition phase, that will take place in different cities around Ireland, before the 15th of February. The auditions are open to children who will be aged 9-14 on 19th November 2017, while applicants may be a solo singer or a group of maximum six children. You can find the submission form by clicking here.
The Irish national selection will be made up of the following stages:
- First Round of Auditions: For this round, the applicants will be asked to sing two songs of their choice. They should sing a 2-minute segment of each song without musical accompaniment or backing track, ie, a cappella. These auditions will be held nationwide at the end of February. From the first round auditions, the top singers / groups will be selected. They will be given a number of weeks to write their own Irish language song. The singers / groups must be involved in the song writing process, but they are allowed to be given help in writing their songs and in putting music to their songs.
- Second Round of Auditions: At the second round audition, the singers / groups will perform their original songs. From this audition the Top 32 will be chosen to perform at the televised selection shows that will be filmed on May 2017, with the broadcasting dates to be announced in due course.
- Televised Shows: Over the course of the first 4 televised episodes, the Top 32 will sing in front of a panel of judges. From the 8 singers featured in each show, 1 will go forward to the deciding show (episode 5). In the deciding show, the 4 singers remaining will compete to represent Ireland at Junior Eurovision 2017. However, as in previous years, a second chance is expected to be given to some of the non-qualifiers from the semi-finals.
This will be the third participation of TG4 at the Junior Eurovision Song Contest after having taken part in 2015 and 2016. Their best result came last year, when they achieved a 10th place with Zena Donnelly and her self-composition “Bríce Ar Bhríce”.