Prior to the 2021 contest, North Macedonia had participated in the Junior Eurovision Song Contest fifteen times, under the provisional reference of "Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia", since its debut at the inaugural contest in 2003.[3][4] North Macedonia were absent twice from the Junior Eurovision Song Contest in 2012 and 2014.[5] They have never won the contest, with their best results being at the 2007 and 2008, represented by the duo Rosica Kulakova and Dimitar Stojmenovski, and Bobi Andonov respectively, achieving fifth place.[5] North Macedonia continued to participate in the contest, but the country withdrew in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.[6]
Before Junior Eurovision
On 12 October 2021, MRT announced that a group of children from the television series Dajte muzika (Дајте музика) will represent the country in the Junior Eurovision Song Contest 2021. The selected song "Green Forces" was composed by Robert Bilbilov and Robin Zimbakov, and was released on November 12.[7][8]
After the opening ceremony, which took place on 13 December 2021, it was announced that North Macedonia would perform eighteenth on 19 December 2021, following Serbia and preceding Portugal.[11]
At the end of the contest, North Macedonia received 114 points, placing 9th out of 19 participating countries.
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 17 December 2021 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 17 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.
