Cyprus Cyprus ; tr, Kıbrıs (), officially the Republic of Cyprus,, , lit: Republic of Cyprus is an island country located south of the Anatolian Peninsula in the eastern Mediterranean Sea. Its continental position is disputed; while it is ge ...

has participated in the

Junior Eurovision Song Contest The Junior Eurovision Song Contest (often shortened to JESC, Junior Eurovision or Junior EuroSong) is an international song competition which has been organised by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) annually since 2003. It is held in a diff ...

10 times since debuting at the first contest in 2003. The country's best result was eighth place, which was achieved both at the 2004 and 2006 contests with

Marios Tofi Marios Tofi (Greek language, Greek: Μάριος Τοφή, ; born 24 February 1990 in Athens, Greece) is a Greek Cypriot singer and songwriter. He is best known for representing Cyprus at the Junior Eurovision Song Contest 2004 with the song "O ...

and the song "Oneira" and Luis Panagiotou and Christina Christofi and the song "Agoria koritsia" respectively. The national broadcaster

Cyprus Broadcasting Corporation Cyprus Broadcasting Corporation ( gr, Ραδιοφωνικό Ίδρυμα Κύπρου , tr, Kıbrıs Radyo Yayın Kurumu), or CyBC (ΡΙΚ, KRYK), is Cyprus' public broadcasting service. It transmits island-wide on four radio and two domestic ...

(CyBC) has hosted the event for Cyprus once, in

2008 File:2008 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: Lehman Brothers went bankrupt following the Subprime mortgage crisis; Cyclone Nargis killed more than 138,000 in Myanmar; A scene from the opening ceremony of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing; ...

Limassol Limassol (; el, Λεμεσός, Lemesós ; tr, Limasol or ) is a city on the southern coast of Cyprus and capital of the district with the same name. Limassol is the second largest urban area in Cyprus after Nicosia, with an urban population ...

. The nation's last appearance in the contest was in 2017.

History

Cyprus debuted at the

Junior Eurovision Song Contest 2003 The Junior Eurovision Song Contest 2003 was the inaugural edition of the annual Junior Eurovision Song Contest for young singers aged eight to fifteen. It was held on 15 November 2003, in Copenhagen, Denmark. With Camilla Ottesen and Remee as th ...

. For its first entry, CyBC opened the submission period for artists and composers to submit their entries until 12 September 2003. From all 29 songs submitted to CyBC, Theodora Rafti was selected as the Cypriot entrant. Her entry "Mia efhi" was presented during the television program ''Ora Kyprou (Cypriot time)'' on 15 September. At the contest, the song was performed third in the running order and placed 14th out of the 16 entries, with 16 points. For the 2004 contest, a ten-participant national final hosted by Nikos Bogiatzis was held on 7 September 2004. The winner was chosen by a 50/50 combination of votes from a professional jury and public televoting. Only the televoting results were revealed, which

and the song "Oneira" won, with Louis Panagiotis placing second and Rafail Georgiou & Anna Loizou placing in third. At the contest, Cyprus improved from the year prior, performing in position 89 in the running order and placing 8th out of the 18 participants. Despite hosting a ten-participant national final and selecting Rena Kiriakidi with the song "Tsirko", the nation was absent from the 2005 contest due to an "internal issue" with the selected song; the country's late withdrawal; however, allowed the Cypriot public to still vote that year. Cyprus returned for the 2006 contest with the song "Agoria koritsia" performed by Luis Panagiotou and Christina Christofi. Similar to 2004, the entry had been selected by a national final. The eight-participant event took place on 30 September 2006 and the winner was chosen by a combination of votes from a professional jury (40%) and public televoting (60%). As there was a tie at the end of the voting with Sotiris Charalampous and "Prosefchi", the results of the televoting took precedence sending "Agoria koritsia" to Bucharest. At the contest, "Agoria koritsia" was performed second in the running order and placed eighth out of the 15 participants. The next year, a similar eight-participant national final was held, only that instead, the winner was chosen by a 50/50 combination of votes from a professional jury and public televoting. The final was held on 29 September 2007, and Yiorgos Ioannides was selected with the song "I mousiki dinei ftera". At the contest, the song was performed fourth in the running order and placed 14th out of the 17 entries, garnering 29 points. Two more eight-participant national finals selected the Cypriot entries in 2008 and 2009. For the 2008 contest, which was hosted by CyBC in

, Cyprus, the final was held on 28 June 2008 and was hosted by Christiana Stavrou and Kiriakos Pastides. The winner was chosen by a combination of votes from a professional jury (40%) and public televoting (60%). Elena Mannouri and Charis Savva represented the country with the song "Gioupi gia!", which was performed last (15th) at the contest and placed 10th with 46 points. The entry for 2009 was Rafaella Kosta represented the country with the song "Thalassa, ilios, aeras, fotia". The final was held on 3 October 2009 and was hosted by Grigoriadis Christos and Mary Kanther. The winner was chosen by a 50/50 combination of votes from a professional jury (which included

Christina Metaxa Christina Metaxa (Greek: Χριστίνα Μεταξά; born 4 April 1992) is a Greek-Cypriot singer and songwriter. Her elder brother, Nikolas Metaxas, is also a singer and won second place in the Greek version of ''The X Factor''. Her brother ...

who represented

Cyprus in the Eurovision Song Contest 2009 Cyprus participated in the Eurovision Song Contest 2009 with the song "Firefly" written by Nikolas Metaxas. The song was performed by Christina Metaxa. The Cypriot broadcaster Cyprus Broadcasting Corporation (CyBC) organised a national final in o ...

) and public televoting. At the contest, the song was performed eighth on the night and placed 11th out of the 13 participants. Cyprus did not participate in 2010 because of unspecified reasons. Although CyBC was in talks with the EBU to return to the contest in

2013 File:2013 Events Collage V2.png, From left, clockwise: Edward Snowden becomes internationally famous for leaking classified NSA wiretapping information; Typhoon Haiyan kills over 6,000 in the Philippines and Southeast Asia; The Dhaka garment fa ...

, it subsequently did not. On 3 July 2014, CyBC announced its return to the competition after a four-year absence, and its entry,

Sophia Patsalides Sophia Patsalidou ( gr, Σοφία Πατσαλίδου, born 16 December 2000), known professionally as Sophia Patsalides, is a Greek-Cypriot singer. At 22 years old she holds a BA and master in music and performance. Her latest singles are deve ...

with the song "I pio omorfi mera", was selected internally by the broadcaster and announced on 21 July. At the contest, Cyprus finished in ninth place out of 16 participating entries. Although Cyprus did not participate in the 2015 contest for financial reasons, the nation returned for the 2016 contest, only to place in the bottom two at both events: second-to-last in 2016 with George Michaelides and the song "Dance Floor" in Valletta, Malta and last in the 2017 contest with Nicole Nicolaou and the song "I Wanna Be a Star" in Tbilisi, Georgia. The latter marked the country's worst result in the contest. Both of these entries had been selected internally by the broadcaster. The following year, on 11 June 2018, CyBC announced that they would not participate in the contest in the 2018 contest, with no reasons of their withdrawal being published. The nation has not returned to the contest.

Participation overview

Commentators and spokespersons

The contests are broadcast online worldwide through the official Junior Eurovision Song Contest website junioreurovision.tv and

YouTube YouTube is a global online video sharing and social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by Google, and is the second mo ...

. In 2015, the online broadcasts featured commentary in English by junioreurovision.tv editor Luke Fisher and 2011 Bulgarian Junior Eurovision Song Contest entrant Ivan Ivanov. The Cypriot broadcaster, CyBC, sent their own commentator to each contest in order to provide commentary in the

Greek language Greek ( el, label= Modern Greek, Ελληνικά, Elliniká, ; grc, Ἑλληνική, Hellēnikḗ) is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages, native to Greece, Cyprus, southern Italy ( Calabria and Salento), southe ...

and

English language English is a West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family, with its earliest forms spoken by the inhabitants of early medieval England. It is named after the Angles, one of the ancient Germanic peoples that migrated to the ...

s. Spokespersons were also chosen by the national broadcaster in order to announce the awarding points from Cyprus. The table below list the details of each commentator and spokesperson since 2003.

Hostings

Notes and references

Notes

References

{{Cyprus in the Junior Eurovision Song Contest Countries in the Junior Eurovision Song Contest