Albania competed in the Junior Eurovision Song Contest 2023 in Nice, France. Albanian broadcaster RTSH is responsible for the country's participation, and selected Viola Gjyzeli to represent the country with her song "Bota ime" through the national selection competition Junior Fest 2023.[1][2]
Prior to the 2023 contest, Albania had participated in the Junior Eurovision Song Contest eight times since its first entry in 2012, only opting not to participate at the 2013, 2014 and 2020 contests. Albania has never won the contest, with their best result being in 2015, with the song "Dambaje" by Mishela Rapo achieving fifth place with a score of 93 points.[3] In 2022, Kejtlin Gjata represented Albania in Yerevan, Armenia with the song "Pakëz diell". The country ended in 12th place out of 16 countries, achieving 94 points.[4]
Before Junior Eurovision
Junior Fest 2023
The Albanian broadcaster Radio Televizioni Shqiptar (RTSH) revealed in July 2023 that the Albanian representative would be chosen via the national selection competition Junior Fest 2023.[5][6] Bojken Lako was named as the creative director for the competition, which was to undergo changes as compared to previous years.[5][7] Interested artists from Albania and Kosovo were able to send in their applications, starting from 20 July 2023 until 25 August 2023.[8] The competing acts were revealed on 30 August.[9] The final, originally scheduled to take place on 20 September,[10] was broadcast live on 22 September at 20:30 CET in front of the Pyramid of Tirana,[11][12] marking the first live broadcast of Junior Fest since 2017. The winner was selected solely by a jury panel. In addition to the competition performances, Arsi Bako, Erma Mici, Niki Zaimi, Luna Çausholli, Melodajn Mancaku and Sardi Strugaj performed all throughout the show as interval acts.[11][12]
The Junior Eurovision Song Contest 2023 took place at Palais Nikaïa in Nice, France on 26 November 2023.
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.[13]
The online voting consisted of two phases. The first phase of the online voting began on 24 November 2023 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 26 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 three songs.[14] 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.
At the end of the show, Albania received 70 points from juries and 45 points from online voting, placing 8th. This marked Albania's second-best result in the contest, following fifth place in 2015.[15]
