Prior to the 2020 contest, Belarus had participated in the Junior Eurovision Song Contest seventeen times since its first entry at the inaugural contest in 2003.[3] Belarus have taken part in every edition of the contest since 2003,[4] and have won the contest twice: in 2005 with Ksenia Sitnik performing the song "My vmeste";[5] and again in 2007 with Alexey Zhigalkovich performing the entry "S druz'yami".[6] The country previously hosted the 2010 contest in Minsk and hosted for a second year in 2018, with Daniel Yastremski representing the country with the song "Time". It placed 11th with 114 points.
Before Junior Eurovision
In July 2020, the Belarusian broadcaster Belarusian Television and Radio Company (BTRC) revealed it would pick its representative either via a national final or internal selection, depending on the situation in the country at a later date.[7][8] A registration period was opened on 15 July and lasted until 15 August, after which up to 15 finalists were picked to compete in the final.[8] In the end, BTRC decided not to hold a televised national final and instead selected its entry internally, due to 2020 Belarusian protests and stating "it would be impossible to meet the social distancing requirement" had a national final been held.[9] On 8 October 2020, BTRC announced that Arina Pehtereva would represent Belarus in the Junior Eurovision Song Contest 2020 with the song "Aliens".[1]
At Junior Eurovision
After the opening ceremony, which took place on 23 November 2020, it was announced that Belarus will perform fifth on 29 November 2020, following Serbia and preceding Poland.[10]
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.[11] 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 27 November 2020 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 29 November 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.