PRESS RELEASE published on 21 Nov 2015

Malta wins Junior Eurovision Song Contest 2015

 

13-year-old Destiny Chukunyere, from Malta, has been named the winner of the Junior Eurovision Song Contest 2015. The event for talented young singers aged between 10 and 15 years old took place on Saturday 21 November in Sofia, Bulgaria.

Destiny performed the up-tempo pop song “Not My Soul” which she co-wrote with Elton Zarb and Matthew (Muxu) Mercieca.

Malta also won the Junior Eurovision Song Contest in 2013, and hosted the competition in 2014.

The 13th edition of the competition was broadcast in the 17 participating countries by EBU Members BNT (Bulgaria), RTSH (Albania), PTV (Armenia), SBS (Australia), BTRC (Belarus), MKRTV (Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia), GPB (Georgia), TG4 (Ireland), RAI (Italy), PBS (Malta), RTCG (Montenegro), AVROTROS (The Netherlands), RTR (Russia), SMRTV (San Marino), RTS (Serbia), RTVSLO (Slovenia) and NTU (Ukraine).

The 17 finalists performed live in front of an audience of 7,000 inside the Arena Armeec. The winner was chosen by combining the votes of professional juries and viewers in all 17 participating countries, The jury votes were decided during a dress rehearsal on Friday night and the televotes were cast during Saturday's show. A special Kids' Jury, which included several former contestants, also contributed to the result.

Australia and Ireland took part in the competition for the first time.

The winner, Destiny Chukunyere, from Birkirkara has already won several awards in Malta, including the best interpretation award in the ‘Singer Stage International Festival’, and the overall Grand Prix amongst the participants from seven different countries. She also represented Malta in Sanremo, Italy for the International Grand Finals in the Ariston Theatre in May 2013, where she triumphed, winning the overall Grand Prix of the 5th edition of this competition.

Destiny said she wanted to congratulate every participant in the completion and “was thrilled to be taking home the second Maltese Eurovision Junior Song Contest trophy.”

Prizes were also awarded to Mika from Armenia who came second with the song "Love" and Lina Kuduzović representing Slovenia with the song "Prva ljubezen" who came third.

The Junior Eurovision Song Contest 2015 was a co-production between the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) and Bulgarian National Television (BNT)

The competitors

The full list and profiles of participants for the 2015 Junior Eurovision Song Contest, with high resolution photos, can be found on the official website, JuniorEurovision.tv.