The first finalists in Junior Songfestival 2026, the Dutch selection for the Junior Eurovision Song Contest, have been announced.
These finalists were revealed during a surprise road-trip style announcement video released by AVROTROS, where former Dutch Junior Eurovision participant Matheu Hinzen travelled across the Netherlands in a bus to surprise the selected contestants.
The first five successful contestants are:
- Nolan (12)
- Lay (11)
- Catelynn (12)
- Noud (12)
- Zoë (12)
Finalists will be chosen and sorted into four acts. Each act will get an original song and film a music video for it. The four acts will then compete in the live final of Junior Songfestival 2026 on September 19, where the winner will represent the Netherlands at Junior Eurovision 2026.
Meadow represented the Netherlands at Junior Eurovision 2025 with “Freeze”. She placed 10th in the final scoring 93 points, the Netherlands were 10th with the jury and 13th with the public vote.
Source: AVROTROS
The Netherlands debuted at the first edition of the Junior Eurovision Song Contest in 2003 and is the only country to have taken part in every edition to date. To date, the country has only won the competition once. Their only victory came in 2009, when Ralf Mackenbach performed “Click Clack”, scoring a total of 121 points. This was just 5 points more than runners-up Armenia and Russia. The Netherlands narrowly lost the contest in 2011, when Rachel performed “Teenager”. She missed out on victory by 5 points. The Netherlands’ worst result came in 2021 when Ayana finished in 19th place out of 19 competing countries.
