is set to compete in the Junior Eurovision Song Contest 2023 in France, which will be held on 26 November 2023 in Nice. National television station KiKa is responsible for the participation and selected the nation's entrant via national selection, won by Fia with the song "Ohne Worte".
Background
Germany announced on 8 July 2020 that it would debut in the contest held in Warsaw, Poland. Children's station KiKa, a joint venture of the German national broadcasters ARD and ZDF, broadcasts the event within Germany and organises the selection of the nation's entry. Their most recent entry before the 2023 contest was Pauline and her song "Imagine Us", who placed 17th with 61 points in the contest.
In 2022, the country chose not to participate and instead took a "creative break" due to partial travel warnings for host country Armenia issued by the Federal Foreign Office. KiKa still broadcast the show and expressed interest in returning to the 2023 competition.
Before Junior Eurovision
The German broadcaster confirmed on 25 May 2023 that they would take part and, for the first time, select the German representative internally. However, in early August it was reported that more details regarding the country's participation would be revealed at the end of the month, and on 23 August it was revealed that a national final with 5 acts approached by the public broadcaster NDR would be held in September to select the German act for the contest instead.
National final
The participants and one-minute excerpts of the demo versions of their songs were revealed on 8 September with a voting platform launching immediately afterwards, where viewers from Germany, Austria and Switzerland could cast their votes until 17 September. Following the combination of the results of the online voting (50%) and an international expert jury (50%), German child singer of Chinese descent Fia was announced as the winner of the selection on 18 September. The international jury consisted of Kelvin Jones, Tom Gregory and Christopher, as well as other unnamed members from France, Germany, Poland, Portugal and the United Kingdom.
The full version of "Ohne Worte", recorded following the national final, was released on 13 October, together with an accompanying music video.