The aftermath of Eurovision 2025 was notable by the number of complaints or requests from national broadcasters regarding the public voting at the contest. Several, like RTVE (Spain), VRT (Belgium – Flanders), RÚV (Iceland) or NRK (Norway) have asked for detailed breakdowns of their own televoting, which the EBU has so far not provided. Some have also asked for a review and revision of the voting rules. According to NRK, this process may have started.
A review in the summer
NRK was among the broadcasters asking for a review of the voting rules, and it is the understanding of the Norwegian head of delegation, Mads Tørklep, who started in the job for the 2025 season.
We have expressed our concern to the EBU and requested a revision of the regulations and – from what I understand – this is what will now happen
Mads Tørklep, NRK’s Eurovision head of delegation
The review comes after strong doubts were cast over the public voting of Eurovision 2025, in which Israel won the public votes despite very limited chart success, and with a strong difference between jury and public voting, for a type of song that does not particularly tend to have such a difference. The geopolitical situation, and the very large advertising campaign financed by Israel’s government (and not its broadcaster) reinforced what critics have called a “credibility crisis” in the contest.
According to Tørklep, the EBU did not consider the advertisement campaign to go against the rules. This is not NRK’s position, however, as they see it as a politicisation of the contest by state actors.
We at NRK believe [the EBU’s position on the Israeli advertisement campaign] is unfortunate and think it is important to have regulations that keep the competition apolitical.
Mads Tørklep, NRK’s Eurovision head of delegation
We will follow up on this at future meetings and press the matter.
The matters will be discussed during a Reference Group meeting in the summer, and later on a meeting of all the participating countries (likely a pre-season Heads of Delegation meeting) will take place in the autumn, in Croatia.
Doubts about the 20 votes, but no breakdown
The delegation would put in the review the number of votes allowed for each credit or SIM card, which is twenty. As it has been shown and proved by journalists and fans, this allows people with several cards to vote up to more than 100 times, and individuals on social media have boasted about voting multiple sets of 20 times, without having watched the show.
It is the understanding of NRK that this topic will be part of the review. One element that could help to understand how influential this limit is would be a full breakdown of national televotes, and NRK did ask for its own detailed results. The EBU has so far refused, explaining that a detailed file would create the opportunity to analyse the results and make it easier to manipulate.
Are you in favour of reviewing the system? What would you change to make it more trusted and to restore confidence in the voting process? Tell us more in the comments below or on social media at @escxtra!
