# Portugal in the Junior Eurovision Song Contest 2022

Portugal competed in the Junior Eurovision Song Contest 2022 in Armenia, which was held on 11 December 2022 in Yerevan. Portuguese broadcaster RTP is responsible for the participation, and selected Nicolas Alves to represent the country, after being the runner-up on the third season of The Voice Kids, due to the actual winner Maria Gil having been born in November 2007.

## Background

Prior to the 2022 contest, Portugal participated in the contest five times, first entering in 2006. Portugal finished second-last in both 2006 and 2007, and Portuguese broadcaster Rádio e Televisão de Portugal (RTP) withdrew after the 2007 contest, despite high viewing figures. Portugal returned in 2017 and participated until 2019. Portugal provisionally confirmed their participation in the 2020 contest, but ultimately withdrew due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In the 2021 contest in Paris, France, Simão Oliveira represented the Portugal with the song "O Rapaz". He finished in 11th place with 101 points, and gained the best result in the history of the country at the Junior Eurovision Song Contest.

## Before Junior Eurovision
### Artist selection

Portuguese broadcaster RTP once again used the format The Voice Kids to select its representative for the Junior Eurovision Song Contest. Due to the fact that the age range to participate in the show differs from the Junior Eurovision participation age range, the winner wasn't automatically confirmed to be the Portuguese representative in the contest. In the final, held on 31 July 2022, Maria Gil emerged as the winner of the season, marking Fernando Daniel's second consecutive win as a coach. However, Gil could not represent Portugal due to being over the age limit at the time of the contest in Yerevan. On 10 August, RTP confirmed that one of the runners-up, Nicolas Alves, was selected to represent Portugal, as he received the second biggest number of votes to win the competition.

## At Junior Eurovision

After the opening ceremony, which took place on 5 December 2022, it was announced that Portugal would perform thirteenth on 11 December 2022, following United Kingdom and preceding Serbia.

### Voting

The same voting system that was introduced in the 2017 edition was used, where the results were determined by 50% online voting and 50% jury voting. Every country had a national jury that consisted of three music industry professionals and two children aged between 10 and 15 who were citizens of the country they represented. The rankings of those jurors were combined to make an overall top ten.
The online voting consisted of two phases. The first phase of the online voting began on 9 December 2022 when a recap of all the rehearsal performances was shown on the contest's website Junioreurovision.tv before the viewers could vote. After this, voters also had the option to watch longer one-minute clips from each participant's rehearsal. This first round of voting ended on Sunday 11 December at 15:59 CET. The second phase of the online voting took place during the live show and began right after the last performance and was open for 15 minutes. International viewers were able vote for three songs. They were also able to vote for their own country's song. These votes were then turned into points which were determined by the percentage of votes received. For example, if a song received 10% of the votes, it received 10% of the available points.