Junior Eurovision Song Contest

The Junior Eurovision Song Contest, often known simply as Junior Eurovision, is an international children's song competition organised annually by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) among its members since 2003. Each participating broadcaster submits an original song representing its country, to be performed by children aged 9 to 14, and broadcast live to all of them via the Eurovision and Euroradio networks, and then casts votes for the other countries' songs to determine a winner.

The competition is a spin-off the Eurovision Song Contest with which it has many similarities. Each participating broadcaster sends an original song lasting three minutes at most, to be performed by children of its choice aged 9 to 14 on the day of the contest, repsesenting its country and competing against the other participating entries. Since 2017, viewers from all around the world are invited to vote for their favourite entries through online voting, and a national jury assembled by each participating broadcaster also vote for their favourites. The overall winner of the contest is the entry that receives the most points after the scores from every country have been collected and totalled. The main differences with the Eurovision Song Contest are that in the junior version, the song must be predominantly in the language of the country it represents, and viewers can vote for their own country. The most recent winning song is "To My Mom" performed by Andria Putkaradze representing Georgia, who won the 2024 contest in Madrid, Spain.

In addition to the participating countries, the contest has also been broadcast in Finland in 2003 and Bosnia and Herzegovina in 2004 and from 2006 to 2011, Andorra in 2006, Iceland in 2021 and Luxembourg in 2024, although these countries have not yet taken part in the contest. Since 2006, the contest has been streamed live on the Internet through the official website of the contest. Australia was invited to participate in the 2015 contest, while Kazakhstan was invited in the 2018 contest, making it the only major Eurovision event to feature multiple EBU associate member broadcasters.

The origins of the contest date back to 2000 when Danmarks Radio (DR) held a song contest for Danish children that year and the following year. The idea was extended to a Scandinavian song festival in 2002, MGP Nordic, with Denmark, Norway, and Sweden as participants. In 2001 and 2002, Polish broadcaster Telewizja Polska (TVP) hosted two pilot editions of an international song contest for children in Konin with the name Eurokonkurs (English: Eurocontest) in 2001 and Światowy Konkurs Piosenki (English: World Song Contest) in 2002 but the whole project was called Eurokonkurs. TVP went on to hold further editions in Konin between 2003 and 2006, some time of which after Poland's initial withdrawal from Junior Eurovision Song Contest. In 2006, Eurokonkurs returned as Światowe Talenty (English: World Talents) and was hosted by Dominika Rydz and Weronika Bochat, who represented Poland in 2004 as part of girl group KWADro.

In November 2002, the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) picked up the idea for a song contest featuring children and opened the competition to all member broadcasters making it a pan-European event. The working title of the programme was "Eurovision Song Contest for Children", branded with the name of the EBU's long-running and already popular song competition, the Eurovision Song Contest. DR was asked to host the first edition after its experience with MGP Nordic.

After a successful first contest in Copenhagen, the second faced several location problems. The event originally should have been organised by British broadcaster ITV in Manchester. ITV then announced that due to financial and scheduling reasons, it would not host the event. It is also thought that another factor to their decision was the previous year's audience ratings for ITV which were below the expected amount. The EBU approached Croatian broadcaster Hrvatska radiotelevizija (HRT), who had won the previous contest, to stage the event in Zagreb, though it later emerged that HRT had 'forgotten' to book the venue in which the contest would have taken place. It was at this point, with five months remaining until the event would be held, that Norwegian broadcaster Norsk rikskringkasting (NRK) stepped in to host the contest in Lillehammer.

Broadcasters have had to bid for the rights to host the contest since 2004 to avoid such problems from happening again. The broadcasters from Belgium were therefore the first to successfully bid for the rights to host the contest in 2005.

All contests have been broadcast in 16:9 widescreen and in high definition. All have also had a CD produced with the songs from the show. Between 2003 and 2006, DVDs of the contest were also produced though this ended due to lack of interest.