The Netherlands participated in the Junior Eurovision Song Contest 2018 which took place in Minsk, Belarus on 25 November 2018. The Dutch broadcaster AVROTROS was responsible for the organisation of their representative at the contest. Their entry was selected through the national selection Junior Songfestival 2018, which had four songs. For the first time in the history of Junior Songfestival, the competing songs were written fully by famous Dutch musicians.
Prior to the 2018 Contest, the Netherlands had participated in the Junior Eurovision Song Contest fifteen times since its first entry in 2003. The Netherlands have won the contest on one occasion: in 2009 with the song "Click Clack" performed by Ralf Mackenbach. In 2017, the Netherlands placed 4th out of 16 entries with the song "Love Me" performed by the boy band Fource.
Max & Anne were a pop duo consisting of child singers Maxime Albertazzi and Anne Buhre. The duo was active between 2018 and 2019. They represented the Netherlands in the Junior Eurovision Song Contest 2018 with the song "Samen".[7]
Albertazzi was born on 17 August 2004 in Houten. In July 2020, she came out as transgender.[8] Buhre was born on 31 March 2004 in Voorschoten.
Samen
"Samen" (transl. 'Together') is a song by Dutch singers Maxime Albertazzi and Anne Buhre. It represented the Netherlands in the Junior Eurovision Song Contest 2018. Maxime and Anne performed on the big stage and their dancers Idaila Voorn and Marc Vermeulen performed on the extra stage. They finished thirteenth with 91 points (23 points from national juries and 68 points from the online voting).
At Junior Eurovision
During the opening ceremony and the running order draw which both took place on 19 November 2018, Netherlands was drawn to perform sixth on 25 November 2018, following Russia and preceding Azerbaijan.[9]
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.[10]
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.[11] 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.
