We present the discovery and spectroscopic confirmation with the ESO NTT and
Gemini South telescopes of eight new 6.0 < z < 6.5 quasars with zAB <
21.0. These quasars were photometrically selected without any star-galaxy
morphological criteria from 1533 deg2 using SED model fitting to
photometric data from the Dark Energy Survey (g, r, i, z, Y), the VISTA
Hemisphere Survey (J, H, K) and the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer (W1,
W2). The photometric data was fitted with a grid of quasar model SEDs with
redshift dependent Lyman-{\alpha} forest absorption and a range of intrinsic
reddening as well as a series of low mass cool star models. Candidates were
ranked using on a SED-model based χ2-statistic, which is extendable to
other future imaging surveys (e.g. LSST, Euclid). Our spectral confirmation
success rate is 100% without the need for follow-up photometric observations as
used in other studies of this type. Combined with automatic removal of the main
types of non-astrophysical contaminants the method allows large data sets to be
processed without human intervention and without being over run by spurious
false candidates. We also present a robust parametric redshift estimating
technique that gives comparable accuracy to MgII and CO based redshift
estimators. We find two z ∼ 6.2 quasars with HII near zone sizes < 3
proper Mpc which could indicate that these quasars may be young with ages <
106 - 107 years or lie in over dense regions of the IGM. The z = 6.5
quasar VDESJ0224-4711 has JAB = 19.75 is the second most luminous quasar
known with z > 6.5