Prior to the 2022 contest, Malta had participated in the Junior Eurovision Song Contest sixteen times since their first participation in the inaugural 2003 contest. Malta participated in every contest, with the exception of the 2011 and 2012 contests. Malta has won the contest twice: in 2013 with "The Start" performed by Gaia Cauchi, and in 2015 with "Not My Soul" performed by Destiny Chukunyere.[2] In the 2021 contest, Malta was represented by the song "My Home" performed by Ike and Kaya. The song placed 12th out of 19 entries with 97 points.[3]
Before Junior Eurovision
Malta Junior Eurovision Song Contest 2022
Malta's participation in the contest was confirmed by PBS in June 2022. PBS organised the national final Malta Junior Eurovision Song Contest 2022 to select the Maltese entry.[4]
Competing entries
Artists and songwriters were able to submit their entries between 24 June 2022 and 15 August 2022.[5] For the preliminary selection, PBS nominated a professional jury, which judged the studio versions of all submissions.[5] While applicants can submit more than one song, only one submission per lead artist can make the final participant list, unlike the previous edition.[5][6] The final list of participants was revealed on 1 September 2022.[5]
After the opening ceremony, which took place on 5 December 2022, it was announced that Malta would perform fourth on 11 December 2022, following Kazakhstan and preceding Italy.[11]
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.[12]
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.[13] 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.