Ukraine was represented at the Junior Eurovision Song Contest 2023 in France, which was held on 26 November 2023 in Nice. National broadcaster Suspilne was responsible for the participation and selected the nation's entrant via national selection, won by Anastasiia Dymyd with the song "Kvitka".
Background
Prior to the 2023 contest, Ukraine had participated in the Junior Eurovision Song Contest fifteen times since its debut in . Ukraine never missed a contest since their debut appearance, and won the contest once in with the song "", performed by Anastasiya Petryk. The Ukrainian capital Kyiv has hosted the contest twice, at the Palace of Sports in , and the Palace "Ukraine" in . In the contest, Zlata Dziunka represented the country in Yerevan, Armenia with the song the "Nezlamna (Unbreakable)", placing 9th out of 16 entries with 111 points.
Before Junior Eurovision
National final The Ukrainian broadcaster announced on 17 June 2023 that they would be participating at the 2023 contest.
Format The final, which took place on 1 October 2023, featured five acts vying to represent Ukraine in Nice. The winner was selected by a 50/50 combination of votes from a public vote and an expert jury, the members of which were chosen by the public. Both the public and the expert jury assigned scores ranging from 1 (lowest) to 5 (highest) and the entry with the highest number of points following the combination of these scores was declared the winner. Viewers participating in the public vote had the opportunity to submit a single vote via the Diia e-governance app in two phases. The first phase of the voting based on presentation videos of the songs started on 29 September and ended on 1 October at 10:00 EET. The second phase of the online voting took place during the live show and started after the last performance, and was open for 15 minutes.
The voting for the expert jury was also conducted in the Diia mobile app: ten candidates were presented to the public and a voting was open from 11 to 17 September 2022, with the three candidates topping the online voting will be invited to become jurors of the show. The candidates in the running to become expert jurors were:
Alyona Alyona – rapper, songwriter – singer, musician, former member of TNMK – television presenter, producer Jerry Heil – singer-songwriter, finalist of Vidbir in 2020 and 2023 Kateryna Pavlenko – Ukrainian representative in the Eurovision Song Contest 2021 as part of Go_A, winner of Vidbir 2020 Mykhailo Klymenko – singer, frontman of Olena Usenko – Ukrainian representative in the Junior Eurovision Song Contest 2021 – actor, dubbing director, television presenter The three selected jury members with the most votes were announced to be Ihor Kondratyuk, Jerry Heil and Alyona Alyona on 20 September 2023.
Competing entries The submissions for the national selection with original songs or covers from Ukrainian citizens or Ukrainians living in other countries were accepted until 9 July 2022, with participants being required to submit a live performance of their entries recorded on a laptop or telephone without any alterations made to the recording.
Singer Svitlana Tarabarova, who had been appointed the music producer of the competition, with the cooperation of expert council consisting of , Khayat and Cloud, reviewed the 143 received submissions and longlisted ten artists, who were announced on 13 July 2023. Five acts, announced on 24 July 2023, were selected to proceed to the final, while the competing songsthree of which were written by Tarabarovawere released on 30 August 2023. + 3'beauties Anastasiia Bielibova Anastasiia Dymyd Anastasiia Piekh Anna Dolna Artem Kotenko Denys Hryshchuk Kateryna Yavorska Nika Yarovenko Polina Babiy
Final The final took place on 1 October 2023, and was hosted by Timur Miroshnychenko and Anna Tulieva in Kyiv. The show was broadcast on Suspilne Kultura as well as online via Suspilne's Facebook and YouTube channels. In addition to the performances of the competing entries, Demchuk performed "Vichnist", Alyona Alyona performed "Ne vtratymo zv'yazok", Jerry Heil performed a medley of her songs and Zlata Dziunka performed "Nezlamna (Unbreakable)" as the interval acts. +Final – 1 October 2023DrawArtistSongJuryPublicvotingTotalPlace1Polina Babiy"Universe"53822Anastasiia Dymyd"Kvitka" 45913Anastasiia Bielibova"Sylna" 14534Denys Hryshchuk"Dance"213553'beauties"Power of Love"3254
At Junior Eurovision
The Junior Eurovision Song Contest 2023 took place at Palais Nikaïa in Nice, France on 26 November 2023.
Voting
At the end of the show, Ukraine received 45 points from juries and 83 points from online voting, placing 5th.
+ Points awarded to Ukraine Score Country 12 points 10 points 8 points 7 points 6 points 5 points 4 points 3 points 2 points 1 point Ukraine received 83 points from the online vote
+ Points awarded by Ukraine Score Country 12 points 10 points 8 points 7 points 6 points 5 points 4 points 3 points 2 points 1 point
Detailed voting results The following members comprised the Ukrainian jury: Artem Kotenko Yuriy Tkach Antonina Matviyenko Anastasiia Bielibova Alyosha – represented Ukraine in the Eurovision Song Contest 2010
+ Draw Country Juror A Juror B Juror C Juror D Juror E Rank Points 01 6 3 7 7 7 6 5 02 2 6 15 11 6 8 3 03 04 10 14 9 15 9 12 05 5 1 3 1 1 1 12 06 3 8 10 10 5 9 2 07 13 9 8 9 4 10 1 08 4 2 5 2 3 2 10 09 7 4 4 3 13 4 7 10 11 10 14 13 12 13 11 15 15 13 8 14 15 12 9 7 2 4 8 5 6 13 1 5 11 12 2 3 8 14 14 11 12 14 10 14 15 8 13 1 5 11 7 4 16 12 12 6 6 15 11
References