Just a few weeks ago France won Junior Eurovision for the first time ever. And now the European Broadcasting Union and France Télévisions have confirmed that the nation will follow up its first JESC win by hosting Junior Eurovision 2021.
France’s Head of Delegation Alexandra Redde-Amiel is still full of beans — and ready to make even more magic.
“29 November 2020 will always be engraved in our memories thanks to Valentina’s magnificent victory at the Junior Eurovision Song Contest,” she said in the official press release. “This incredible adventure isn’t over! It truly is an achievement and an honour for the entire France Télévisions entertainment team to organize one of the biggest shows in the world in France. We can’t wait to welcome the EBU teams, all the participants and the European delegations next year and offer them a special show.”
She’s got support at the highest level of the French broadcaster.
Delphine Ernotte Cunci, president of France Télévisions and EBU President-elect said: “I am very happy that France Télévisions is organizing the Junior Eurovision Song Contest in France in 2021. Valentina represented our country brilliantly by winning the 2020 edition. Consequently, it was obvious to host the next event in France.”
“This is a strong new initiative for us, which underscores the importance France Télévisions attaches to Eurovision, the EBU and Europe. Let us all hope that Junior Eurovision 2021 can take place under normal conditions in France and it will be a time of great celebrations for many Europeans.”
The host city and venue for next year’s Contest will be decided at a later date.
There’s good reason for France to feel extra motivated. According to the EBU: “The winning country recorded its best audience ever. An average of 1.2 million viewers watched on France 2, up by 23% on 2019’s audience.”
Which city do you hope to see host JESC 2021? If not Paris, then where? Shout it out down below!
That’s great! We just need the following countries to return:
• Albania
• Armenia (shout out to David Tserunyan and Maléna Fox)
• Australia
• Bulgaria
• Ireland
• Italy
• North Macedonia
• Portugal
• Wales
…and Poland will probably withdraw because of the bad result. 🙁
Lol, withdrawing because of one bad result after two consecutive wins. Dont think its likely..
TVP requested that Poland withdraw.
Wales said that they won’t return for 2021 due to corona
I really want a national final for france and spain next year!
Eurovision Junior France: c’est vous qui décidez 2021
EuroJunior 2021
In my opinion for the scale of the contest and the current ‘condition’ they’ll either choose a studio or a smaller venue. Probably a ‘smaller’ indoor arena like Arkea in Bordeaux or Zenith Paris could be their choice.
“host city decides later” could be translated to “France wants to pretend they won’t host it in Paris for a while”
It will be funny to watch France TV searching for hosts that can speak english. There must be a few but French are known to speak english very poorly.
For the host city, let’s hope for a mediterranean one. Paris wouldn’t be a good choice imo.
The thing is, young French people tend to speak English far better than their older compatriots, so if JESC continues having young hosts, it won’t matter.
But…Amir, Alma, Bilal and Tom all speak excellent English. It may be the perfect way to make it up to Tom to let him host JESC 2021.
Isn’t French one of the ‘official’ languages of Eurovision? I mean in the past if France hosted, the show was presented entirely in French with just a little English during the voting. Am I wrong? :p
Does it mean Valentina will have to sing her song live for once?? Hehe jk
Why is the truth being downvoted?
because even if it’s true, it’s petty
Using playback in freakin’ singing competition is “petty”? Wow!
No, constantly bringing it up when she is a CHILD is petty. Imagine the stress and shame Valentina is feeling from people like you attacking her for using playback. It’s disgusting.
What’s even more disgusting is ignoring it or saying it’s petty. Tell that to the 9 kids who followed the rules and were stressed out about their vocal performance.
Once again Valentina recorded her performance LIVE, she was SINGING on set and she was STRESSED AF. There are numerous videos on set that prove it. Then idk what happened and France TV or the EBU decided to put the audio track on the performance without even telling her. But please have some respect for this child, wtf??!
That’s not true. These videos with her singing live are completely different, she’s much less expressive there. If you knew anything about performing arts, you’d know she lip syncs (and knows she does) in that video France sent as final.
Wtf, she’s as much expressive in the live versions than in her JESC performance. Are you sure everything is ok at home? Renting about a 10yo kid 2 weeks after the event is quite concerning… she’s as good live as in the studio version, the song would have won in any case and pretty much everybody agrees on that. So move on maybe?
No, she wouldn’t have won without France’s strateging voting and if she sang live.
She was literally 50pts ahead of the others… even if France had given 12 points to Kazakhstan or Spain the scoreboard would have looked the same… Come on
This advantage only shows the unfair voting. There was no clear standout this year. French audience did the same thing as French jury – they didn’t vote for the best entries. The audience voted for France and some two other random entries. I’m Polish and I know Poland did the same in 2019.
Liar!
I don’t think Paris is the obvious choice. If it was it probably would have been announced already. I think France is looking beyond, and why not? Many great cities to pick from. Marseille, Strasbourg,Chamonix or why not Corsica. Hell, French Guyana would be fun..
If French Guinea gets to host, they’ll have to let Australia host if they win!
Australia’s not allowed to host any Eurovision event.
I hope that in some way, they can also invite the 12 participants from this year in France so they can finally meet each other in real, maybe accompanying their 2021 delegation or as spokeperson. They could easily organize something apart the 2021 contest for those kids, like a cohesing meeting journey or something like that 🙂
And the following countries return:
• Albania
• Armenia
• Australia
• Bulgaria
• Ireland
• Italy
• North Macedonia
• Portugal
A Jesc in Disneyland Paris would be awsome if all children from all the participating countries could travel to France.
I can’t wait! France are gonna kill it! They’ve waited a long time for this and I’m sure it’ll be a great show. Maybe it’ll make some Francophone countries come back? Belgium and Switzerland are missed! Also, for a brief update: Diodato just confirmed he won’t be competing in Sanremo, sadly. So to also update the “returning 2020 artists” table: Definitely coming back: Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Belgium, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Georgia, Greece, Iceland, Israel, Latvia, Malta, Moldova, The Netherlands, Romania, San Marino, Serbia, Slovenia, Spain, Switzerland, Ukraine In the running to come back: Estonia, Lithuania, Russia, Sweden Definitely not coming… Read more »
I wouldn’t be so sure that Belgium will return. RTBF doesn’t care of JESC, only VRT could be interested and there are absolutely no link between them and France.
Tbh the chances for Belgium to come back are in the hands of The Netherlands and Germany.
RTBF has yet to show interest in Junior Eurovision again after that last participated in 2005.
I feel like Belarus would come back because they have been there for every competition, and for some reason I have a gut feeling Albania might come back
I don’t think all these imaginative scenarios of every country that has participated in the past will return just because JESC is going to be celebrated in France. The only one’s I think they will be returning are the ones that withdraw beacuse of the pandemic
All of them withdrew due to the pandemic except Armenia (a nation with strong ties with France) due to the effects of the war in autumn
France and Armenia are made tight. They’re like the only country that reliably gives France televote points (except maybe Belgium, depending on the year). And, in turn, Armenia scores pretty well with France’s televote nine times out of ten (alongside Israel, Portugal, Romania, and – when they competed – Turkey).
I think s/he was talking about all the missing countries, not just this year – that’s 27 in total.
Armenia’s coming back thanks to David Tserunyan.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CHNO38ws-9O/
I also feel if Belgium came back, a lot of the entries would be in dutch/flemish because they don’t want to have ties with France and essentially look like France JR. Just a thought tho
Well it looks like Paris next year, with Marseille, Montpellier, Lyon and Bordeaux should also be considered.
My prediction:
The Junior Eurovision 2021 will be held in Paris
Countries: Albania, Armenia, Australia, Ireland, Cyprus (likely), Italy, Wales, Bulgaria, North Macedonia, Portugal, and Wales will return in Junior Eurovision 2021
Debut: Iceland or Scotland
Since when was Cyprus likely to come back – never. Honestly the only country changes will likely be the 8 withdrawals from 2020 returning
Wales said they are skipping b/c covid again
Three golden rings he got on his hand
He likes to go to the south of France
I’m sure they will produce a very good show. Hopefully this will make eurovision in general more popular and make people have a more positive view of the contest.
Great news !! I hope for Paris, with more country’s !! I can ‘t wait for JESC 2021 !! I love it !!!
Of course it’ll be Paris. This is not a question. At all.
As expected. It’s been decades since France hosted any Eurovision themed event. They are not going to miss out on it. Now, where will it be? Paris is an obvious choice, but I kinda wish it’s not Paris. It’s nothing against Paris, it’s just that, Paris always takes spotlight in everything. I would love to see some other of their beautiful cities be in the center of attention. I would love to see Marseille, Nice, Lyon or even Strasbourg. I obviously don’t have a saying in this, so who cares. It’s probably going to be Paris anyway.
France has 17 arenas in the Zenith family, so I’m sure plenty of more obscure towns will be possible, like Gliwice was in Poland.
Maybe a Sweden return, who knows. Our stereotype is that french never want to talk english, so next year they can show us that we were wrong. Ps i dont need to be downvoted 25 times for this haha.
I think a Big 5 country hosting has probably made a couple countries’ ears prick up. We already know that Italy’s probably going to come back and it’s positive more of the other countries that withdrew this year will too.
It’s not a stereotype… but sure there some that can speak english very well and we will see those ones.
So glad. I always wanted to see France as a host! I am sure they will do a great job!
Are we now gonna see the Eiffel Tower everywhere?….logo, postcards, stage design….(just joking).
And let’s hope we will have a normal contest not another remote episode)
Maybe a return for Belgium??? Probably not but its been a long time since a Junior Eurovision in West Europe, anything could happen
Plus it has been my dream to travel to France and maybe I can attend my first Eurovision contest??
I don’t think so. It kinda depends on Flemish children network Ketnet and they haven’t really shown any interest after the good results of the Netherlands in the last few years.
Do they have some rivalry over Netherlands? I’m so sorry but I didn’t know that. Belgium always served in Jesc in my opinion
They said they don’t want to look like they have ties with France, so I feel that would be unlikely, however if they did i feel it would be a dutch/flemish entry because now would not be a good time to do a French entry if you didn’t want to look essentially like France Jr
nice gift for Christmas, hope it will get better in the new year, I’m also glad that France and the EBU got along quickly, those who quit should come back in 2021 and maybe some debut
Today is filled with France-related Eurovision news and I’m here for it!
December 9th: It´s all about France
I bet that, all being well, it would ensure the return of Armenia and Portugal (and possibly Israel) to this level, as they are nations France votes for heavily in the regular contest. I hope for the return of Ireland and Wales to it, and also wonder what would happen if someone like Iceland, Austria or Czech wins the real contest in the near future – would they join the kid’s one? And what would happen if a nation wins at both levels in the same year or season, eg the same nation wins both ESC 2021 and JESC 2021,… Read more »
I think the countries that didn’t participate this year may come back for JESC 2021 if things are better by next year.
Armenia had to withdraw due to what was happening with Azerbaijan and Portugal probably withdrew due to Covid, even if JESC wasn’t going to be in France next year they would probably return anyway.
I don’t see Wales returning (did poorly both times and the devolved nations of the UK competing at JESC could lead to constitutional upheaval in the UK so it may be discontinued) but otherwise I think most of the 2019 countries will come back.
As someone from the UK, it really wouldn’t lead to constitutional upheaval. In football, all 4 nations compete separately and it hasn’t led to anything like that. No one in UK even knows JESC anyway
True, but ESC and the Olympics are the only events where the UK competes as a whole country, and given the political elements of ESC, it has the potential to send messages.
The independence movement in Wales is negligible in terms of its political capital, but the SNP currently run Scotland and I can see Sturgeon using JESC as a form of cultural diplomacy…
Yeah the SNP would do that. They are already saying they want Scotland in to show it as an independent nation. They are becoming the next Catalonia
Usually, winners of an ESC will join the year’s edition of the JESC, either as a one off (Israel 2018) or to establish a longer connection in the contest (Portugal 2015). 2015 was the last time the ESC winner didn’t send a singer to JESC.
I’d imagine France is a nation that could host JESC in Autumn 2021 and ESC in Spring 2022 relatively easily, but if they are keen to win 2021 and host in Paris, they might opt to host JESC in another city like Lyon or Marseille.
Not to burst your bubble, but Wales said they are skipping jesc 2021 due to covid
yes, and let’s hope the situation gets better and better next year, because I want it to be in a big arena, especially Bercy Arena, my favourite French venue so far.