On Sunday, November 29, the final of the Junior Eurovision Song Contest 2020 took place.
The host country this year was Poland.
However, due to the coronavirus pandemic, the participants did not gather in Warsaw, but went on the air from local television studios.
In order to ensure equal conditions for all young vocalists, the same decorations were built on the stages.
The winner of the competition was Valentina Tronel from France with the song J'imagine.
She also took first place by the decision of the professional jury - Valentina was awarded 88 points.
After counting the votes of viewers, she scored exactly 200 points.
The second place was taken by the participant from Kazakhstan Karakat Bashanova.
She received 83 points from the professional jury and 69 more from the audience.
The girl dedicated the song Forever in English and Kazakh to her father, whom she lost at the age of seven.
© junioreurovision.tv / KHABAR
Solea Fernandez Moreno from Spain closed the top three.
Her performance with the song Palante earned her a total of 133 points.
The Russian participant Sofia Feskova, according to the results of the jury voting, received 44 points and was in tenth place.
The young singer took the same position after the announcement of the results of the audience vote - a total of 88 points.
As in the previous year, the distribution of seats depended 50% on the decision of the professional jury and 50% on the results of voting by the viewers.
The last one this year could only select three members (previously it was allowed to support from three to five vocalists).
As is usually the case, most of the contestants performed solo.
The only exception was the Unity quartet from the Netherlands.
Young singers are 13-14 years old.
They performed at number three with the friendship song Best Friends.
© junioreurovision.tv / CHANTAL ANTONIDES
The competition was opened by a representative of Germany, 13-year-old Susan Oseloff.
In 2017, she performed at the Russian New Wave Children's competition.
Interestingly, Germany has sent a representative for Junior Eurovision for the first time.
In total, 12 artists competed for the victory in this year's competition (for comparison, last year there were 19 competitors, including a representative from Australia).
The numerical superiority turned out to be on the side of the girls: among the contestants there were only two young men, Petar Anichich from Serbia and the representative of Ukraine, Alexander Balabanov.
Both are 14 years old - this is the maximum age when you can participate in the Junior Eurovision Song Contest.
Traditionally, the winner of the previous year, the Polish woman Vicky Gabor, joined the contestants.
Gabor opened the event with the song Superhero.
In addition, the representative of the Netherlands, Duncan Lawrence, joined the broadcast.
He performed alongside Vicky Gabor and Junior Eurovision 2018 winner Roxanne Vengel.
Lawrence won the Eurovision Song Contest for participants over 16 in 2019.
The new competition, which was supposed to take place in the spring of 2020, was canceled.
Polish singer Alicia Szemplinska, who was scheduled to perform in Rotterdam, presented her song Empires during the vote.
In addition, all 12 members sang DJ Gromee's Move The World.
Russian participant of the Junior Eurovision 2020 Sofia Feskova is 11 years old.
She began to study vocals at the age of five, when she joined the "Fidgets" ensemble.
© junioreurovision.tv / MUSIC ACADEMY OF IGOR KRUTOY
In 2017, she tried her hand at the Voice.
Children ”, however, was able to participate only in the stage of“ blind auditions ”.
In 2020, Sofia became the vice-champion of the Children's New Wave competition.
Feskova also sings in the musicals "The Inverted Kingdom", "A flying tree in Oz" and "Guests from the Future."
Favorite singer of Sofia Feskova - Polina Gagarina, who took second place at Eurovision 2015.
The 2020 competition became the 18th in the history of the Junior Eurovision Song Contest.
For all the time, children and teenagers from 40 countries managed to take part in it.
Representatives of Russia became the winners of the competition twice: the Tolmachev sisters (2006) and Polina Bogusevich (2017).