Macedonia, presented in the contest as Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia,[1] officially debuted at the Eurovision Song Contest in 1998. However, the country had already made efforts to enter the contest two years before since 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 have FYR Macedonia made the 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.[2] Also, Macedonian composers wrote songs for candidates from other parts of Yugoslavia.[3] However, the Macedonian entries never managed to win, and the SR Macedonia was among the few federal states never to send a Yugoslav entry to the Eurovision Song Contest. An exception occurred when Maja Odžaklievska won the Yugoslav competition in 1979,[2] but she did not perform in the Eurovision Song Contest 1979 due to the Yugoslavian decision not to participate that year.
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 2014, Macedonia's voting history is as follows:
