Ireland is on its way on selecting their new entry for the forthcoming Junior Eurovision Song Contest. Junior Eurovision Eire, the now traditional irish national final for the contest, has now presented their new ideas for the show, which includes public participation on the selection for the first time. Until now, it was only a matter of a professional jury who decided the act that represented the country.
Louise Cantillon, who has been the host until last year, will continue doing her work as usual, but this time she will be joined by the young Darragh Ó Caoimh, making it also the first time that the show will be hosted by more than one person.
The jury, who still will have its voice in the competition, has also been reformed. As usual, two of the members will be permanent on all the shows, while a third member will be invited, being it different for each of the shows. The two frontpeople of the jury will be Niamh Ní Chróinín, radio host who was already a member of the jury last year, and Chris Greene, another radio host who took part in some Irish Junior National Finals in the past but was absent last year.
The invited member for each show will be a former representative of Ireland in the Senior Eurovision Song Contest. Brooke Scullion, the Irish representative in Turin, will be one of those invited juries, together with very familiar faces for Eurovision fans, like Niamh Kavanagh (1993 and 2010) , Linda Martin (1984 and 1992) , Paul, Harrington (1994), Brian Kennedy (2006) and Ryan O’ Shaughnessy (2018).
More details about the Irish National final will be unveiled in the next few weeks. Ireland will try to improve their poor performance at the contest so far. Out of the 6 participations since their debut in 2015, their best result has only been a mediocre 10th place in 2016. Last year they narrowly escaped last place coming 18th with 44 points.
It should be noted that, although Ireland could perfectly perform in English, they have decided to do it in Irish language for all their participations, something that has happened only once in the senior contest, in 1972, despite more entries in Irish taking part in the national finals.
JUNIOR EUROVISION SONG CONTEST 2022
The Junior Eurovision Song Contest 2022 will be held in Yerevan, Armenia next Sunday, December 11. The Karen Demirchyan Complex will host the show where various artists aged between 9 and 14 from different countries in Europe will fight to take the prized crystal microphone, a trophy that accredits the victory in the contest.
The organization of the show by the Armenian public television ARMTV comes after the victory of Malena and her song “Qami Qami” on the stage of Paris on December 19, awakening a collective euphoria throughout her homeland and making the whole country face with great enthusiasm and responsibility the challenge of organizing the festival, that promises to be more special than ever given that this 2022 celebrates its 20th anniversary. It will not be the first time that Armenia organizes an edition of the Junior Eurovision, having had the opportunity to do so in 2011, also at the Karen Demirchyan Complex.
There are 16 European televisions that have already confirmed their participation in the festival so far, however, the ambition and efforts of the organization predicts a greater final number of participants, with the aim that this twentieth edition of the children’s contest being remembered as one of the most spectacular in its history.
Also, we already know the identity of 4 of the participants who will take the stage of the contest this December, all of them will reveal their song over the next few months:
- Georgia – Mariam Bigvava
- Kazakhstan – David Charlin
- North Macedonia – Lara and Irina
- Portugal – Nicolas Alves