Welcome to the JESC Report: a non-exhaustive, non-comprehensive report on yesterday’s show, the 2025 edition of the Junior Eurovision Song Contest. If you just want the results of the show, you can look them up here (spoiler, France won). But if you want to discover the real slogan of JESC 2025, the miracles of this edition or how the staging beds of these children show the ugly face of income inequality, you’re in the right place!
United by wishes?
Tbilisi 2025 was the first Junior Contest to fall under the blanket slogan “United By Music”. But it’s not too hard to imagine what an edition-specific slogan would have looked like. Tbilisi 2017’s “Shine Bright” could have worked, considering how many songs about stars, light and shining competed. However Generation Alpha these kids may be, they’re not serving, slaying or aura-farming: they’re just shining.
But truly, the slogan for this year should be “Make a Wish“. Quite a few songs mention wishes, or at least its cousins “dreams” and “hopes”, the winner “Ce Monde” being one of them. And then GPB (Georgian Public Broadcaster) just put a wishing tree on stage during the intro act and let the artists stick wishes to it during the Flag Parade. It’s very much on-brand and works thematically.
It’s funny (well, not really) because I think many fans came into the Junior Contest with one thing in mind: escapism. Escapism from the situation affecting (one could even say afflicting) the “senior” Contest, from all the politics, and from the prospect of a very unenjoyable 2026 season, with the ghosts of Malmö 2024 resurfacing. The idea of watching a Contest with children, organised at the edge of Europe, without Israel but with three of the five “boycotters” (whom I’d rather call “The Loud Five”) must have sounded appealing to many. It’s like a certain ideal of Eurovision: what many wish it could be, with even less drama, and much more respect for the artists.
So, full of hopes and wishes, we embarked on the JESC journey, ready for some miracles.
It’s a miracle!
There were quite a few of these miracles during the show.
The first was probably the production quality. Make no mistake: I have no particular preconceived ideas about how good or bad GPB can be as a host broadcaster (unlike, say, SVT or RAI, although I have diverging expectations of these two). But they had to switch arenas in November. And to work with children (on stage, not on the production crew… at least I hope so). Despite this, the production value and camerawork was very good and this looked as professional as any Eurovision show.
Of course it’s not 100% due to the Georgian crew: most Eurovision fans know that the team on these productions is always international, and indeed some French experts were credited for the viewing room direction and the scripting of the cameras (including Maxime Arretche and Julian Guttierez, also present in Basel, who created the software automatising a lot of the camerawork). But still, a small miracle.
A much bigger miracle, however, happened during the voting, when for some unexplained reason, the jury from Azerbaijan gave 3 points to Armenia.
Gonna take a miracle to heal this love
I may joke about it, but I have checked my history: this has never happened before, in ESC or JESC. Even during Azerbaijan’s Junior participations in 2012 and 2013, when only twelve countries participated, meaning that you had to select a “top ten” out of eleven entries (twelve minus yourself), Armenia surprisingly got eleventh in Azerbaijan’s votes both times. This year, they came eighth out of eighteen. That is the top half of Azerbaijan’s jury ranking.
Could it be that there was no politics involved whatsoever, that a jury of three adults and two kids managed to vote without bias? In this day and age? There may be some hope left for the world. We may live long enough to see Cyprus give no points to Greece the year they send something utterly bad.
Of course, as good journalists, we checked the detailed rankings of the jurors. It seems that in a jury of three adults and two kids, three jurors ranked Armenia very low (14th, 16th and last), and two quite enjoyed the song and put it in fourth place… Let’s hope this bode well for the future generations.
As for a third miracle you may have missed, San Marino was third in the online vote, with 87 points, two more than Albania (which was another pleasant surprise in itself). Not that Martina did not deserve it: she absolutely did, and the juries did not help her whatsoever. But I could feel that fans feared San Marino would not get many votes: a top 3 in the online vote is probably even better than what we hoped for!
And one last miracle before moving on: Nela Mančeska from North Macedonia. It’s already a miracle to see North Macedonia, since it is the only country to be currently part of JESC without taking part in ESC (you could say that of the Loud Five but we’re still in 2025 so Ireland, Spain and The Netherlands were part of both contests on the same year). Good of them to persevere as they reached their best position of the decade, seventh overall and fifth with the juries.
The real miracle here is Nela herself. Not that she did something miraculous: she self-defines as one in her song, after all. “I am a miracle!“. Now, one must not joke with how people define themselves, but I did find it quite pedantic when I heard it first. I mean, doesn’t the Church have to study the facts for years before recognising anything as a miracle? Did Pope Leo validate your miracle, Nela? No, I thought, she must have meant something else.
The problem was that the closest-sounding alternative I could find during the broadcast was “I am America”, and somehow, it did not feel like something anybody wants to sing on a Eurovision stage these days (sorry to our friends from beyond the Atlantic, we still love you! Just, not what you are becoming). So OK, I accept it, Nela is a miracle.
Fake snow and global warming
Moving on, this was also the last Song Contest before the Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics, the first one in Europe since Sochi 2014 (not too far from Tbilisi). You know, a time when Georgia had won only twice, sharing the record with Belarus, and France had not won anything… Can you imagine?
Now, I’m not only referencing the Olympics because I’m an absolute fan (and I’m going to Milan for the opening ceremony): there were things in the show that made me think about it. Mainly, all the fake snow and rain we’ve had. With different levels of fakeness:
- Croatia went all Beijing 2022 on us with real fake snow on stage (I single out Beijing but true fans will know that artificial snow was first used in the Lake Placid Olympics of 1980, in the USA) ; I also see it as a tribute to “Love Love Peace Peace”.
- Ukraine chose fake fake snow, for it was neither very cold water, nor really there on stage, being just a 3D animation. Now, some have said it’s probably more rain than snow, but my comparisons don’t work if it’s rain, so it’s snow.
- Ireland did not even bother with a 3D animation and was brutally honest: with no budget for real fake or fake fake snow, they just put snow on the LED screens.
In any case, these different level of fake snow were probably less toxic to the environment than the artificial snow they may end up using in Cortina or in other venues in February. After all, this is Junior Eurovision, and these young artists usually take environmental issues seriously. And once again, we had a few performances that could be interpreted as eco-friendly messages.
Staging-wise, Azerbaijan brought bins and dumpsters on stage (although I now learn that the British call these “skips” apparently? Or just “big bins”). Granted, it was to illustrate the habitat of the cat Yağmur was singing about, but still. Portugal also had a “waste”-themed staging, with a large prop looking like drapes of plastic films had been put together to wave in the air like unattached curtains. Once again, nothing about pollution in the lyrics of “Para Onda Vai o Amor”, and these were probably just very thin textiles, but the first thing that came to my mind was “plastic!” when I saw these.
There were some songs with actual, lyrical messages about the state of the world and its environment of course. France had a message about needing to change the world, which does not have to be limited to world peace and must be heard as an appeal for a greener world too. And right after Lou from France, Kroni from Albania got us shaking our hips on an anthem to fruits and vegetables, complete with visuals that switched between the kaleidoscopic and the psychedelic!
Just like her adult counterpart Shkodra Elektronike, Kroni closed the show, then finished with an amazingly high televote (fourth) that lifted it to a very good overall place (sixth). The statistician in me had to check: was this the first time a country closed both Eurovision and Junior Eurovision in the same year, performing last in the running order?
The short answer is yes, it’s never happened before.
Sleeping inequalities
One last musing before concluding, because it just felt like an interesting contrast in the stagings: the sleeping kids.
The delegation from Malta took the risk of starting the performance of Eliza in a bed: if your song makes people feel sleepy, it’s not helping. And with “I Believe” opening the show, you could turn off the audience from the rest of the songs! Thankfully, we stayed awake and enjoyed the song, and just like Eliza, we got off our beds.
The thing is, Eliza had a bed, something Asja from Montenegro could sadly not afford, opening her performance sleeping on some cardboard. Compare this to Gonzalo from Spain, who sleeps on the beach with his friends and their siren companion, and who has his own piano and some very impractical circular bookshelves that look suspiciously like a Stargate, the whole package screaming “villa in Majorca”… It’s sad to see such income inequalities put on stage like this, truly.
More seriously, the whole point of Asja’s song was to tell the story of orphans or abandonned children, those without parents, and it’s quite something to put on stage at such a young age, in front of so many people. Much more than it does to write these funny lines. Good job Asja, and good job RTCG (the Montenegrin broadcaster) for bringing these darker themes to light on an international stage!
There are many more things I could have talked about: Italy’s Leonardo being so much into his “Rockstar” role that he disregarded every health and safety mesure by getting on top of a box twice his size, Armenia‘s wonderful Albert, my favourite before the show, with his “The Little Prince” look, his rigid yellow scarf, and the friendship between him and Lou, sitting on the same bean bag in the Green Room. i could also talk about Poland and Georgia delivering their epic vocals and staging, the common song, the postcards that had no AI and that showed a diversity of scenes like children visiting museums, reading books, playing football, rugby, or even using the Death Star’s Superlaser from GPB’s news production studios, in the postcard for the host broadcaster.
But let’s close this report with the best: the winner.
Curse-breaking and victory for France
France, once again, won. Fourth time ever in this junior Contest, fourth time in the decade too. With nine victories across both song contests (and a moral victory in 1991, sorry to say this), my country truly is the best Eurovision country in history, and the joint record-holder in Junior, along with Georgia.
Now, do not believe that I am an exceedingly patriotic Frenchman. When it comes to Eurovision, I usually don’t have any bias towards our entries. Coming in the show yesterday, I liked our song but I was rooting for Armenia. Just before we performed, I was sure Georgia could pull a double victory after such a strong performance. And then Lou arrived on stage.
She started in music box mode, and then turned into Barbara Pravi mode. And just like I did in 2021, I knew what it was going to look like, I came in with a very pedantic feeling of “It’s too cliché to work, we are more than this”, and the actual delivery of the performance blew me away, made me extremely proud, and made me root for our victory. I was scared of the Barbara Pravi curse though: however good it was, it only came second back in Rotterdam.
But yesterday was a day for breaking curses and performing miracles. San Marino sang with a moon and broke the shared curses of Nathan Trent and Blas Cantó by gaining a strong online vote support. Azerbaijan voted for Armenia. And so, a “French chanson” performance got France the trophy.
I opened this report with some musings about how this Junior contest was, for some fans, the contest they wish Eurovision could be. How fitting is it that the winning song is all about making the world a better place, and before that, about understanding how bad a place it is in right now. “Why d’you look at me like that, with these big eyes? Like I don’t get that the world is cold, that today it’s unhappy.“
La parenthèse enchantée
There is an expression in French, “la parenthèse enchantée“, literally the “enchanted parenthesis” but better understood as the “magic interlude”. It was originally used to describe the period between 1967 and 1981, after the legalisation of the birth pill and before the AIDS epidemic hit France: you can imagine why some saw this as a very magic, careless era for a specific sort of physical activity. But the expression has been used in other contexts, more recently with the Paris Olympics, when the Games brougth joy, enchantment and unity to a country that was in the middle of a political crisis that started a few weeks before, and that is still going on to this day. Just an interlude, a few weeks of carelessness, of magic. The merry days.
Tbilisi 2025 was a sort of parenthèse enchantée for Eurovision fans, at least it was for me. A world of carelessness, of innocence, without politics, without drama, with some nice music. But the winner herself is telling us that there are darker days ahead.
Fikmas is soon approaching, with Montesong just after. 2026 proper will follow, with its selections, with its drama, with its Big Four and without its Loud Five. Many won’t follow, for very good reasons. But there will be things to report on: sometimes with humour, sometimes with much-needed seriousness. In the hope that this world, our Eurovision world, finds better days ahead, sooner rather than later.
This was the JESC Report. If you liked it, don’t hesitate to tell us in the comments or on our socials, and be prepared for a Fikmas report before Christmas (or so we hope). And don’t forget to register for Eurovision Prediction and to vote before Saturday for who you predict will win the Festivali i Këngës and Montesong!
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