Junior Eurovision 2017: The map of confirmed participants so far.

As the dust and noise from Eurovision 2017 are settling down and before the new period of national finals starts to develop, we have the “little” twin contest taking place, Junior Eurovision 2017.

The  15th edition of  Junior Eurovision will take place in Georgia’s capital, Tbilisi. The final of the event is scheduled to be held in  Tbilisi Sports Palace on the 26th of November 2017 . It will be the first time for the three times winner , Georgia, to host the event. This year some changes have been decided on the rules concerning the competing songs. Specifically, the whole amount of the song that can be performed in English has been increased to 40% of the lyrics, while the number of voices on the backing vocals has been increased from five to six singers.

So far countries’ confirmation of participating or not keep coming in day by day. Starting from Sweden’s latest statement, ruling out a return to the contest and the Italian speaking Swiss Broadcaster’s (RSI) declaration of no participation in this year’s edition, we reach a number of 4 countries that have already stated clearly they won’t compete in Georgia. The list includes Latvia (2003-2005, 2010-2011) and Slovenia (2014-2015).

The countries that have confirmed their participation in this year’s contest are:

•  Georgia (Host country)
•  Ireland
•  Cyprus
•  Belarus
•  The Netherlands
•  Russia
• Armenia
• Malta
• Bulgaria
• Ukraine

Countries that had participated in Junior Eurovision 2016 but still haven’t confirmed this year’s presence are:

Last year the event took place in Malta’s capital city ,Valetta.  Georgia was the winning country represented by Mariam Mamadashvili  and her song Mzeo. Lets remember Mariam’s winning performance: