France Wins For The Fourth Time
France’s victory at Junior Eurovision in Tbilisi brings the country up to a grand total of four Junior Eurovision victories, tying with Georgia at the top of the Junior Eurovision history books. If we have to split the two at the top of the leaderboard in a Junior Eurovision medal table of sorts, then Georgia could still claim to be top of the tree, with two second places in their Junior Eurovision history compared to France’s solitary runner-up spot in 2018.
A Eurovision Run Better Than Ireland’s?
Much in Eurovision folklore is made of Ireland’s magical run of form in the 90’s, which saw the Celtic nation pick up four Eurovision victories and one second place in the space of six years. There are arguments that Lou Deleuze’s victory cements France’s ability at Junior Eurovision has now exceeded this. France has been ever-present at Junior Eurovision since 2018, and has been on a run of 2nd, 5th, 1st, 3rd, 1st, 1st, 4th and now 1st again this year. When we also consider that France’s lowest position in this era, Carla’s ‘Bim Bam Toi’, became a 123 million-viewed megahit in its own right, we have all the evidence to suggest that this run of form is up there with the best any Song Contest has ever witnessed.
And A Landslide To Top It Off
France’s victory at Junior Eurovision this year was one of the most significant Junior Eurovision victories of all time. Their total score of 248 points was a huge 71 points ahead of 2nd place, the biggest winning margin at Junior Eurovision since its 2003 beginnings, by a whopping 20 points. In raw points terms, this was the 2nd biggest Junior Eurovision winner of all time, only to be eclipsed by Polish representative Viki Gabor in 2019, who received 278 points.
Ukraine’s Victory Might Be Next?
Ukraine finished second at the Junior Eurovision Song Contest 2025 in Tbilisi. After Ukraine won the public vote with 98 points, ‘Motanka’ rose from its sixth place with juries to eventually end the show in the silver position. After a third-place finish last year, will Ukraine be the one to watch out for a victory in 2026?
Caucasian Domination
Just one and two points behind Ukraine, respectively, were the hosts, Georgia and their neighbour, Armenia. While the headlines will be about France’s landslide victory and fourth victory, Georgia and Armenia have cemented their place as Junior Eurovision powerhouses alongside them. Georgia’s 3rd-place finish gives the nation its 12th Junior Eurovision placing in the top five out of its 19 total participations. For Armenia, there’s an even more impressive record. While it is also their 12th top-five finish in 18 appearances, they continue their fantastic streak of never finishing lower than 9th.
More Records Broken
The success story on the leaderboard, though, has to come from the success of Martina Crv representing San Marino. The 9th place overall might not seem to rock the boat, but that is San Marino’s best placing in any Eurovision. That it was secured by virtue of a top-three placing in the public vote must give confidence to the principality that they can compete on an equal playing field as every other nation, despite their much smaller budget and population.
It was also a very successful night for North Macedonia, as their song ‘Miracle’ came in seventh place, their best result since 2019. Albania finished in sixth, and can thank the public vote for their high placing, as it ranked Albania in fourth place. This is Albania’s second-highest placing in Junior Eurovision history, a decade since they finished fifth, with ‘Fruta Perime’ now their highest scoring entry at this competition.
Smaller Broadcasters At The Bottom
This Junior Eurovision Song Contest once again saw many of the same powerhouse nations, such as Georgia, Armenia, and France, dominate the vote. The bottom of the pile was made by some of the competition’s smaller broadcasters who have struggled for form at this competition. Cyprus, Montenegro and Ireland came in the bottom three. Cyprus’s best placing in their last four participations was 13th last year, and Montenegro’s second-to-last position here follows their two prior entries, which were fourth-to-last and third-to-last, respectively.
Ireland, represented by Irish-language broadcaster TG4, has now participated ten times in Junior Eurovision and has finished in the bottom half of the table on nine of those ten occasions. History might remember Sophie Lennon’s 2022 entry ‘Solas’ as finishing in fourth place in Yerevan, but for Irish Junior Eurovision history, that should go down as a moment of victory.
A Curious Voting System That’s Not Quite 50/50
Junior Eurovision is presented as a show in which the juries award half the points, and the other half is awarded by the public at home. Mathematically, the number of points matches this, with 1044 points awarded by the juries and voting public.
However, the voting system at Junior Eurovision has voters at home vote for their three favourite entries, which spreads the effect of televoting at the Contest. The online voting at Junior Eurovision had Ukraine in first place, with 98 points or just slightly less than 10% of the total televote points. Malta, last to vote, scored a respectable 38 points.
In contrast, the jury scores ranged from France’s 152-point runaway to Ireland and Cyprus on 3 points each. The broader range between jury and televote scores means that, in practice, the jury score is more important at the Junior Eurovision Song Contest in the battle for victory. This is now the fourth year in a row that the jury winner has won the Junior Eurovision Song Contest, and in those years, only one of those winners has also won the public vote.
History Was Made
It is well known that for most of their appearances at Eurovision and even Junior Eurovision, there has been clear division between neighbouring countries Armenia and Azerbaijan in terms of their voting relationship.
Azerbaijan has participated in Junior Eurovision on four occasions. On all four occasions, the jury from Azerbaijan had placed Armenia last, including their 2021 victory with ‘Qami Qami’.
But not this year. This year, Azerbaijan gave Armenia a grand total of 3 points from their jury. Digging deeper into the jury data, we see that the five jurors from Azerbaijan ranked Armenia 14th, 4th, 4th, 17th and 18th, respectively, which was enough for the final score.
The jurors are randomised in the EBU data, so we don’t know who gave these points, but we do know that each juror comprises three adult and two child jurors. Could it be the Azeri children who voted for the Armenian act? There is no evidence to support that, and we note that there is no significant difference in the rest of those jurors’ rankings compared with their other favourites.
We will likely never know, but we can hopefully appreciate that maybe this is evidence of a softening in relationships between Armenia and Azerbaijan.
Dividing And Uniting
By using the complete data on jury rankings from the EBU for all of the 90 jurors in the competition, we can see which songs divided opinion most between jurors and which they were most united on.
By measuring the standard deviation of each country’s rankings, we can see that the best agreement was for the song from Poland, ‘Brightest Light’. With a median placement of 7th place and a standard deviation of 3.5 from jurors, Poland scored points from 15 of the 17 possible juries. However, the rankings from Poland were mostly average; only four jurors had Poland in their top 2, and only one had it in their bottom three.
The polar opposite of Poland’s spread scoring was Albania, with ‘Fruta Perime’ having the most significant standard deviation of 5.0. While Albania was only 12 points behind Poland in the jury vote, it was ranked in the top 2 positions eight times and in the bottom 3 18 times. Albania scored 60 points from 10 juries, including a 10 from Azerbaijan and a 12 from eventual winners France.
But We Are United By Our Diversity
Of the 90 Junior Eurovision jurors, 13 songs received a 1st-place ranking from at least one juror. Indeed, every song was ranked in the top three entries by at least one juror. The top three in the jury voting ran away with this, with France collecting 18 firsts, Armenia 17, and Georgia 14, with Spain next closest with 8 1st-place rankings.
Looking at the other end of the table, we also see that 13 different songs, including all three of those jury vote success stories, all finished with at least one last-place ranking from the 90 other jurors. Azerbaijan here was the most common last place, ranked last a total of 29 times by different jurors (only two of those from Armenia). Every competing song was ranked in the bottom three by at least one of the 90 jurors.