Junior Eurovision 2019 Opening Ceremony and Australia to open the final show

This evening in Europe, and over night in Australia (well in fact early morning 2am EDST) the Opening Ceremony for Junior Eurovision 2019 took place at the Silesian Theatre in Katowice, Poland, less than 30kms from Gliwice where the final will take place at Gliwice Arena.

Delegations from all 19 participating countries walked down the red carpet, where they took photos with Jon Ola Sand, the JESC Executive Supervisor and Jacek Kurski, the TVP president. They were then greeted and interviewed by the host Mateusz Szymkowiak, who is a Polish journalist and television presenter, most recently from The Voice of Poland.

Jordan Anthony walked the red carpet in a black suit jacket with a set of wings in bling on his back. In his interview with the host, Jordan shared that he has Polish ancestry, as his great grandparents are from Zawiercie and is looking forward to visiting the area during his time in Poland.

After the interviews and a performance by Polish boyband 4Dreamers who sung their song “Inapropro”, the draw for the running order of performances in the final was underway, conducted by last year’s JESC winner Roksana Węgiel. In the JESC the first and final positions, and the position of the host country are chosen by a random draw.

The host Poland were drawn first with 11th place. Australia was drawn for the first place in the running order and Serbia was drawn to end the final. The remaining order of the Contest is decided by the Polish broadcaster TVP’s core team and approved by the Executive Supervisor, Jon Ola Sand.

You can view the full running order list below:

The show ended with a gift giving ceremony where Liza Misnikova from Belarus gave a gift to Jordan Anthony, and Jordan had the honour of giving a gift to Melani from Spain. The show closed with a performance of the JESC theme song “Share The Joy” by Roksana Węgiel.

So Australia is opening the show! What does it this mean for Australia’s chances in the Junior Eurovision 2019 Final? Well from the Contest’s inaugural show in 2003 to 2018, 14 out of the 16 show openers have made it to the top 10 and in three of those occasions they finished in the top 5. The last time was last year when Ukraine finish in 4th place with Darina Krasnovetska’s performance of “Say Love”.

In the final running order Aussivision jury favourite to win the contest, Carla with “Bim bam toi” from France came second. Throughout the JESC history JESC winners have only won in the first half twice and the last time there was a winner from the second running order place was at the inaugural contest in 2003 where Croatia won with Dino Jelusić’s performance of "Ti si moja prva ljubav”. From 2009 to 2018 the JESC winner has been positioned near the end of the running order.

Though things are a little different with Junior Eurovision where the public voting is conducted online and opens two days before the final and you can vote for your own country.

You can watch the full opening ceremony here: (there is a glitch where the audio doesnt work for the first 12 minutes)

Don's miss out on Jordan Anthony's performance of "We Will Rise" and all of your JESC favourites, where you can watch Junior Eurovision 2019 live online, on the 24 November European time at junioreurovision.tv. Alternatively each country will show case the Contest on their participating broadcasters’ channels. Australians will be able to watch the show on ABC ME on Monday 25 November at 6pm AEDT.

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