A winner has been crowned! Russia has won the fifteenth annual Junior Eurovision Song Contest with Polina Bogusevich and her entry Wings.

This year saw a total of 16 countries competing at the 2017 Junior Eurovision Song Contest in the host city of Tbilisi, following Georgia’s victory at the 2016 contest with Mariam Mamadashvili and Mzeo.

Whilst 2 countries withdrew from the 2017 event, this year saw the return of the winning Eurovision 2017 country, Portugal, following a 10-year break from the competition.

Return of the public vote

Following last year’s change to the voting system, in which only the jury were able to vote, 2017 saw the return of the public vote alongside the jury vote, but this featured some changes.

Whilst the televote has been dropped, Junior Eurovision organisers decided to introduce an online audience vote for the 2017 event; voters had the option of voting from 3 to 5 entries in the competition, the votes of which were then combined with the jury score.

Online voters were able to vote in 2 phases: Phase 1 allowed the public to vote from the 24 November in which they were able to vote from the recap of the rehearsal performances, whilst phase 2 saw the vote continue in the live show this afternoon during the 15 minute voting period.

Problems arose during the second phase of online voting this evening, so it is unclear whether the second round of votes were counted and, if so, how many votes ended up being collected.

The JESC organisers released a statement following tonight’s show regarding voting problems:

The results

Russia (Jury: 122 / Online vote: 66 / Combined: 188) Georgia (Jury: 143 / Online vote: 42 / Combined: 185) Australia (Jury: 93 / Online vote: 79 / Combined: 172) Netherlands (Jury: 44 / Online vote: 112 / Combined: 156) Belarus (Jury: 80 / Online vote: 69 / Combined: 149) Armenia (Jury: 92 / Online vote: 56 / Combined: 148) Ukraine (Jury: 80 / Online vote: 67 / Combined: 147) Poland (Jury: 77 / Online vote: 61 / Combined: 138) Malta (Jury: 26 / Online vote: 81 / Combined: 107) Serbia (Jury: 48 / Online vote: 44 / Combined: 92) Italy (Jury: 37 / Online vote: 49 / Combined: 86) FYR Macedonia (Jury: 28 / Online vote: 41 / Combined: 69) Albania (Jury: 32 / Online vote: 35 / Combined: 67) Portugal (Jury: 9 / Online vote: 45 / Combined: 54) Ireland (Jury: 12 / Online vote: 42 / Combined: 54) Cyprus (Jury: 5 / Online vote: 40 / Combined: 45)

Winning the 2017 Junior Eurovision Song Contest was Polina Bogusevich from Russia, finishing in 2nd place with the jury and in 6th with the online vote. Meanwhile, Georgia was crowned the winner of the jury vote, whilst the Netherlands received the highest amount of points from the online vote.

This is the second time the country has won the annual competition (previously winning in 2006), having received a total of 188 points in total from the combined vote.

Earlier this year, the contest organisers revealed that the Belarusian capital of Minsk has been chosen as the official host city for the 2018 Junior Eurovision Song Contest, making it the second time that the city has hosted the event.

Congratulations to Russia for their 2017 Junior Eurovision win! See you in 2018 in the host city of Minsk!