# Cyprus in the Junior Eurovision Song Contest 2024

Cyprus is set to take part in the Junior Eurovision Song Contest 2024 in Madrid, Spain, with "Crystal Waters" performed by Maria Pissarides. The Cypriot broadcaster Cyprus Broadcasting Corporation (CyBC) internally selected the country's entry for the contest.

## Background

Prior to the 2024 contest, Cyprus had participated in the contest nine times since its first entry in the inaugural 2003 contest. Cyprus has never won the contest, with their best results being in 2004, when Marios Tofi represented the country with "Oneira", and in 2006, when Luis Panagiotou and Christina Christofi represented it with "Agoria koritsia", both placing 8th. The nation opted not to take part in the contest in 2005 (due to an "internal issue" with the selected song, presumably stemming from allegations of plagiarism made against it), between 2010 and 2013, in 2015, and then again between 2018 and 2023. In 2017, Nicole Nicolaou competed for Cyprus with the song "I Wanna Be a Star", which ended up in 16th (last) place with 45 points; this marked the first last place result for Cyprus.

## Before Junior Eurovision

On 21 August 2024, CyBC announced it would return to the contest after a six-year absence, having internally selected Maria Pissarides – an eleven-year-old student of a performing arts school in the United Kingdom – to represent the country. Pissarides was selected following an evaluation of a proposal made by the production company Chandal Entertainment Ltd, which also subsequently announced auditions to select dancers who would join the singer on stage, and the spokesperson for the Cypriot jury at the final. The song, titled "Crystal Waters", written by Armin Gilani, Sophia Patsalides and Pissarides herself, was presented to the public on 30 September during the breakfast television show Omorfi mera ("Beautiful day") on RIK 1; a special listening session reserved for the press was previously held at the Event Hall of the CyBC Archive in Nicosia on 27 September.

## At Junior Eurovision

The Junior Eurovision Song Contest 2024 will take place at the Caja Mágica in Madrid, Spain on 16 November 2024. Cyprus will perform 5th, following Armenia and preceding France.
Pissarides' performance at the contest will be staged by Layla Ellison. She will be accompanied on stage by four dancers, namely Adriana Markich, Andriana Polemiti, Ciara Economopoulos and Danae Petrou.

### Voting

The same voting system that was introduced in the 2017 edition will be used, where the results will be determined by 50% online voting and 50% jury voting. Every country has a national jury that consists of three music industry professionals and two children aged between 10 and 15 who are citizens of the country they represent. The rankings of those jurors are combined to make an overall top ten.
The online voting consists of two phases. The first phase of the online voting will begin on 15 November 2024 when a recap of all the rehearsal performances is shown on the contest's website Junioreurovision.tv before the viewers can vote. After this, voters will also have the option to watch longer one-minute clips from each participant's rehearsal. This first round of voting will end on 16 November at 17:59 CET. The second phase of the online voting will take place during the live show and begin right after the last performance and will be open for 15 minutes. International viewers will be able vote for three songs. They will also be able to vote for their own country's song. These votes will then be turned into points which will be determined by the percentage of votes received. For example, if a song receives 10% of the votes, it will receive 10% of the available points.
CyBC appointed Patroklos Patroklou as its spokesperson to announce the Cypriot jury's votes during the show.