Albania participated in the Junior Eurovision Song Contest 2018 in Minsk, Belarus with the song "Barbie" performed by Efi Gjika. The Albanian broadcaster RTSH was responsible for the organization of their representative at the contest. Their entry was selected through Junior Fest 2018, a national selection process consisting of sixteen artists competed in order to become the Albanian representative on 23 September 2018.
Prior to the 2018 contest, Albania had participated in the Junior Eurovision Song Contest four times since its first entry in 2012, only opting not to participate at the 2013 and 2014 contests. Albania has never won the contest, with their best result being in 2015, with the song "Dambaje" performed by Mishela Rapo, achieving fifth place with a score of 93 points. In 2016, Klesta Qehaja represented Albania in Valletta, Malta with the song "Besoj".[1] The country ended in 13th place out of 17 countries, achieving 38 points. In 2017, Ana Kodra represented Albania in Tbilisi, Georgia with the song "Don't Touch My Tree" and participated in the 2018 national final but did not win.
Before Junior Eurovision
National final
The national final Junior Fest 2018 took place on 23 September 2018. It consisted of sixteen competing acts participating in a televised production at Amphitheater of the Lake Park in Tirana.
During the opening ceremony and the running order draw which both took place on 19 November 2018, Albania was drawn to perform fourth on 25 November 2018, following Kazakhstan and preceding Russia.[5]
Voting
The same voting system that was introduced in the 2017 edition was used, where the results were determined by 50% online voting and 50% jury voting. Every country had a national jury that consisted of three music industry professionals and two children aged between 10 and 15 who were citizens of the country they represented. The rankings of those jurors were combined to make an overall top ten.[6]
The online voting consisted of two phases. The first phase of the online voting began on 23 November 2018 when a recap of all the rehearsal performances was shown on the contest's website Junioreurovision.tv before the viewers could vote. After this, voters also had the option to watch longer one-minute clips from each participant's rehearsal. This first round of voting ended on 25 November at 15:59 CET. The second phase of the online voting took place during the live show and began right after the last performance and was open for 15 minutes. International viewers were able vote for a minimum of three and a maximum of five songs.[7] They were also able to vote for their own country's song. These votes were then turned into points which were determined by the percentage of votes received. For example, if a song received 10% of the votes, it received 10% of the available points.
