In 2025, the Junior Eurovision Song Contest in Tbilisi, Georgia, reached 16 million viewers. For most TV shows, a headline figure like that would be cause for celebration. But that number pales in the shadow of that year’s Eurovision in Basel, where that number was more than ten times higher.
Like many things in today’s – say it with me, now – fractured and competitive media landscape, success is a question of framing. When linear TV dominated, headline viewing figures ruled the roost. Today, content executives and programme makers might put more focus on average watch time, or social media reach, or even subscriptions generated to an on-demand service. You can decide which you target most – but that should define your approach.
How do we frame Junior Eurovision? That appears to be the problem the Contest, and who competes in it, is having. Just look at the varying approaches to broadcasting it. In Spain, RTVE chose to put Junior Eurovision on flagship channel La 1, leading to the show’s highest viewing figures since 2019 there – it even beat Benidorm Fest this year. But France Télévisions chose to move the show to their less popular France 4 channel, while Italy downgraded JESC to Rai Gulp, their children’s service – resulting in a mere 20,000 TV viewers.
There’s an argument for Junior Eurovision being a big family event, a niche interest show, or entirely for kids – and they’re each being made by its broadcasters. Overall, though, the expectation is that headline figures will decline again around Europe. That would continue a worrying trend: since 2022, the EBU has said the Junior Eurovision Song Contest has lost over half of its audience. Framed like that, and the whole project seems like it’s wasting time and money.
But the headline misses the point. Junior Eurovision should serve a different purpose – a different demographic. It’s a show that should celebrate the next generation of young artists, as well as kids around Europe as a whole, and give them a platform to express themselves. While those young artists got to shine in Ta ‘Qali, Malta this weekend at Junior Eurovision 2026, I’m not sure that the Contest they competed in is shining the right light on itself.
Right Place, Wrong Time?
One of the most powerful things about the Eurovision Song Contest is its consistency. Beyond which Saturday in May they’ve chosen, you can already tell me what channel the final will be on and when. That kind of predictability creates appointment viewing, leading to habit, leading to tradition. “Same again next year?” is the easiest thing to say when you want to host that party, meet those friends or just watch that show at home all over again.
The Junior Eurovision Song Contest has never found that home. This year, it tried something new by taking the main Contest’s usual timeslot: 21:00 CEST. On the surface, that is the ideal slot for any entertainment show – primetime viewing across Europe. It’s also not like this time hasn’t been tried and tested by the EBU before. With that declining trend in viewing figures, it makes a lot of sense to chase a more captive audience on a quiet October evening.
But which audience are you targeting? Junior Eurovision didn’t wrap up until a while after 11pm in most of Europe. That’s no problem for your average TV viewer, but it’s way past bedtime for a lot of their kids.
In some competing countries, that issue was exacerbated further: in Armenia, kids would have had to stay up until past one o’clock in the morning to see Naré win the Contest. Junior Eurovision had a much more child-friendly afternoon slot in the past, and while that airtime definitely has its drawbacks, it does allow you to reach for that important younger demographic more easily.
Some might argue that in this day and age, Junior Eurovision should evolve with the times and become non-linear – broadcast on TikTok or YouTube, because that’s where kids are. But I’m not sure I follow that logic. Younger viewers are tastemakers just like we are, and they can spot authenticity better than we can. The platform isn’t what matters – it’s how it platforms them. You just have to make sure the show you want them to see speaks to them at their level.
Junior Eurovision’s always had the potential to do that. From watching this show, though Junior Eurovision 2026 felt tailor-made for a core Eurovision audience, and not at all made to reach younger viewers or appeal to new ones.
Malta’s Hosting: A Eurovision Dry Run
This year, the Junior Eurovision Song Contest came to Malta – and they pulled out all the stops. After last year’s champions France declined to host the show, the Mediterranean island stepped in with a bid and really took the show seriously. From the glitzy performances to the star-studded hosting team, featuring Malta’s two previous JESC champions Gaia Cauchi and Destiny Chukunyere, this felt less like Junior Eurovision and more like Malta hosting the big show at times.
That sounds great – but, once again, it depends on your framing. Because beyond the smaller stature of the performers on stage, it’s getting hard to tell what the difference between the shows is.
Junior Eurovision is a unique Contest, with its own quirks. Aside from the obvious that kids are performing, the songs they enter must be at least 60% in one of the official languages of their country. The national juries giving points consist of three music professionals, but also two very professional children (aged between 10 and 15). And, of course, there’s the voting system, where you can vote for your own country – but must also vote for two others.
All that gives Junior Eurovision its own distinctive character. But I didn’t hear one mention of any of those things during the show. Instead, the Maltese production team seemed like they’d forgotten what Contest they were hosting at times, and were making decisions that felt more concerned with highlighting the main Eurovision show in May than the one they were staging. That was most apparent in three ways.
The interval act, ‘Obsessed with (Junior) Eurovision’, had Malta’s star-studded hosting sing about their country’s Eurovision history. But the brackets say everything – the Junior component felt like it had been added to tick a box. The postcards were bright videos of Maltese dancers enjoying the ‘Festa’ at beauty spots around the island but, beyond the young performers smiling their hardest to top and tail the postcards, there was no way of telling which Contest they were for.
And, while last year’s JESC winner Lou Deleuze got to perform ‘Ce Monde’ again, the broadcaster structured the performance in such a way that it felt like an opening act for Eurovision winner Dara bringing ‘Bangaranga’ to the stage.
All of these things work brilliantly on Eurovision night. But it felt like Junior Eurovision was an afterthought within its own big night.
United by Brand Synergy
Whatever your views on where it is at the moment, Eurovision as a brand remains strong and identifiable. Everything that sits within it gets to borrow from the credibility the brand has in media and in culture. The Junior Eurovision Song Contest is a perfect example of that, and it says a lot that broadcasters in Asia were perfectly happy to let Eurovision Asia be the name of their new Contest, despite the obvious conflict that title has.
But while there are benefits to consistency, great branding has room for different flavours. This year’s Junior Eurovision didn’t have a flavour of its own. More than ever, its visual look and feel is borrowed from the main Contest, United by Music brand slogan and all. It’s using the same typeface, virtually the same logo, and despite being a show meant to highlight young creatives, doesn’t contain any childlike wonder to set it apart.
Those decisions fall on the show’s organisers, the EBU. It’s on them not just to steer Junior Eurovision’s direction and keep the show on the road, but also to justify why it matters. That starts with how you package it – and the packaging Junior Eurovision has feels like a variant of a set of corporate brand guidelines. It’s telling that Malta’s PBS brought their own slogan, ‘Join the Festa’, as well as Festa-themed postcards and staging backdrops, to try and give the show some unique flair.
You can argue that’s great for the kids on the one hand. For them, we shouldn’t forget this is just as important as if they were performing at the main Contest in May. Being part of a show that looks and feels the same creates that sense of immersion for them. You can’t buy the kind of established presence Eurovision has – you have to build it for 70 years and in front of hundreds of millions.
But great branding communicates personality. This branding imposes Eurovision’s visual ethos on a Contest that should feel different. And instead of using the strength of the brand to make young performers into stars for a day, a video released on their digital channels earlier in the week had the kids brandishing a new range of Eurovision merchandise on the online store. What does that say about their overall goal?
The corporatised look of the show, coupled with the increasing homogeneity of the on-air product, makes Junior Eurovision feel like Eurovision (But Here’s Some Kids!). Junior is a specialised format – so why can’t it be treated in a specialised way?
Give Kids a Chance
There’s a lot that Junior Eurovision offers that its elder sibling can’t. For smaller broadcasters, Junior offers a better chance of success, and for a much lower cost. It helps delegations find new talent for Junior that, one day, might just be able to compete and win big at Eurovision. It benefits the EBU to have this Contest, too. They can experiment with the format, try new ideas and be more agile – all of which the tradition and expectation that comes with their big night constrains them from doing.
But if there’s one thing missing from Junior Eurovision right now, it’s the right framing. The spotlight should be on the first word – not the second one.
Young people aren’t rejecting television. Television is almost rejecting them. Just look at the state of kids TV in the UK – the BBC itself was reported to be considering merging their CBBC and CBeebies channels as part of a £500m savings spree caused by years of licence fee austerity, and old slots for putting their programmes on their main channels are long gone. In commercial TV, the situation is bleaker: ITV’s children’s channel is now only an option on a streaming service. You can understand why kids might choose alternative platforms when TV doesn’t seem to be making anything at their level.
With squeezed budgets across media, it’s hard to expect commercial channels to invest in kids’ programming. But it’s the exact kind of space that public service media is built to fill, and Junior Eurovision comes ready-made. One country already competes at JESC for that reason – North Macedonia’s entry is funded by broadcaster MRT specifically on the basis of “international visibility of children’s performers”. It’s about giving kids a chance for them – it should be for everyone else.
A Junior Eurovision built to serve a younger audience well doesn’t have to serve everyone. It doesn’t have to reach the maximum number of people – just the right ones.
It’s not just focusing on how many young people are watching, either. It includes wider digital media cut-through, and wider cut-through in kids’ lives. Could Junior Eurovision work more closely with schools, community clubs and other projects? That kind of focus creates something that matters. JESC can be a force for good – not a force for achieving growth targets.
It’s why reviewing Junior on how many people engage with it feels like a missed opportunity. If you want an international music competition on a Saturday night, then the EBU has one. This show could be the perfect way to engage kids in one great show, and make them fans of an even bigger one too.
Everyone says TV is losing young viewers. So why don’t we make something for them? While Eurovision is something that’s been passed down through families and picked up through channel-hopping – that’s how I found it – that kind of audience building comes from another era. In this era, it’s not enough to assume a young audience is coming on its own.
You have to give them a reason – with the right framing, Junior Eurovision can.