Macedonia in the Eurovision Song Contest

Macedonia
◄ Yugoslavia
Member station	Macedonian Radio Television
National selection events	National final Skopje Fest 1998 2000 2002 2005 2008–2011 2015 Nacionalen Evrosong 2006–2007 Internal Selection 2004 2012–2014 2016–2018
Participation summary
Appearances	18 (8 finals)
First appearance	1998
Best result	12th: 2006
Worst result	18th SF: 2018
External links
MRT page
Macedonia's page at Eurovision.tv
For the most recent participation see Macedonia in the Eurovision Song Contest 2018

Macedonia, presented in the contest as the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (F.Y.R. Macedonia), has participated in the Eurovision Song Contest 18 times since its official debut in 1998. The country had attempted to participate in 1996, but failed to qualify from the audio-only qualifying round. Macedonia is one of the most unsuccessful countries in the contest, having failed to crack the Top 10 in the 8 appearances it has made it to the final. Macedonia's best result in the contest is Elena Risteska's 12th-place finish in 2006. Macedonia has failed to qualify from the semi-final round in ten of the last eleven contests (2008–18), the exception being Kaliopi, who finished 13th in the 2012 final. The current Head of Delegation is Meri Popova.

History

Macedonia's first appearance in the contest was in 1998. However, the country had already made efforts to enter the contest two years before at the Eurovision Song Contest 1996's pre-selection round, where it submitted its first song entry, "Samo ti" (Само ти) sung by Kaliopi, which failed to qualify to the final thus eliminating the nation from competing for the first time. Macedonia's efforts to enter the contest were again hindered in 1997, when another new system was introduced where countries with the lowest average scores over the previous four years were excluded from participating.

The country's best result was in 2006, when Elena Risteska sang "Ninanajna" (Нинанајна) in Athens, Greece and came 12th. Macedonia is the only country to have qualified from every semi-final from 2004 to 2007 (other countries have qualified for every final but due to them finishing in the top 10 the previous year, they did not have to compete in the semi-final). Despite never finishing in the top 10, their record of qualifying for every final was only broken in 2008, when the jury vote used in the semi-final chose Sweden as a finalist, despite Tamara, Vrčak and Adrian having come 10th in the televote and not saved by the jury. Since then, only in 2012 Macedonia have made the final. In 2017, they were one of the favorites to win the contest with Jana Burceska and the song "Dance alone", but they only came 15th in the semi final.

Macedonian Radio-Television (MRT), which broadcasts the event, has used the Skopje Fest festival to select the national entry since the country's debut, although it made several changes in the national final format, so the 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, and 2012 national finals were organised outside the Skopje Festival.

Prior declaring independence in 1991, as a constituent country of SFR Yugoslavia, the Socialist Republic of Macedonia participated in the Yugoslav pre-selection called among the other Yugoslav federal units.^[1] Also, Macedonian composers wrote songs for candidates from other parts of Yugoslavia.^[2] However, the Macedonian entries never managed to win, and the SR Macedonia was the only federal state never to send a Yugoslav entry to the Eurovision Song Contest. An exception occurred when Maja Odžaklievska won the Yugoslav competition in 1979,^[1] but she did not perform in the Eurovision Song Contest 1979 due to the Yugoslavian decision not to participate that year.

Contestants

Table key

NOTES:

1. ^ Macedonia unsuccessfully attempted to participate in 1996, when there was an audio-only pre-qualifying round for all countries (excluding hosts Norway). The official Eurovision site does not count 1996 in Macedonia's list of appearances.

2. ^ Whilst 10th place in the televote would have been sufficient to qualify in previous years, in 2008 and 2009 only the top nine places qualified automatically and the tenth place was decided based on the votes of the backup juries. Macedonia did not progress to the final in either year: in 2008 Sweden beat Macedonia to the final, while the same occurred in 2009 with Finland.

3. If a country had won the previous year, they did not have to compete in the semi-finals the following year. The other reason being that back in 2004-2007, the top ten countries who were not members of the big four did not have to compete in the semi-finals the following year. If, for example, Germany and France placed inside the top ten with Spain and the United Kingdom finishing after 13th place, the countries who placed 11th and 12th were advanced to the following year's grand final along with the rest of the top ten countries.

Voting history

As of 2018, Macedonia's voting history is as follows:

Most points given in the grand finals only Rank Country Points 1  Albania 97 2  Serbia 94 3  Turkey 79 4  Croatia 77 4  Bosnia and Herzegovina 66 Most points received in the grand finals only Rank Country Points 1  Croatia 57 2  Bosnia and Herzegovina 43 3  Slovenia 37 4  Albania 30 5  Serbia and Montenegro 27

Most points given in the semis and finals Rank Country Points 1  Albania 209 2  Serbia 174 3  Bulgaria 160 4  Croatia 142 5  Turkey 125 Most points received in the semis and finals Rank Country Points 1  Albania 145 2  Croatia 116 3  Bosnia and Herzegovina 114 4  Serbia 111 5  Bulgaria 109

Commentators and spokespersons

• From 1961 until 1991 Macedonia participated as part of Yugoslavia.

Conductors

• Aleksandar Džambazov 1998 (finished 19th)

^[4]

Photogallery

• 
  Toše Proeski at Istanbul (2004)
• 
  Karolina Gočeva at Helsinki (2007)
• 
  Tamara, Vrčak and Adrian at Belgrade (2008)
• 
  Next Time at Moscow (2009)
• 
  Vlatko Ilievski at Düsseldorf (2011)
• 
  Esma Redžepova and Vlatko Lozanoski at Malmö (2013)
• 
  Tijana at Copenhagen (2014)
• 
  Daniel Kajmakoski at Vienna (2015)
• 
  Kaliopi at Stockholm (2016)
• 
  Jana Burčeska at Kiev (2017)
• 
  Eye Cue at Lisbon (2018)

See also

• Macedonia in the Junior Eurovision Song Contest
• Macedonia in the Türkvizyon Song Contest

References

External links

• Points to and from Macedonia eurovisioncovers.co.uk
• Eurovision Macedonia