The EBU has announced new rules for the Eurovision Song Contest, following an extensive review of the Contest. The new rules include changes to the voting processes to safeguard the integrity of the results, as well as new rules on promotion.
Why is there an overhaul of the rules?
As some of you may remember, the aftermaths of both the 2024 and 2025 contests were not devoid of drama. Broadcasters from different countries criticised several aspects of Eurovision, especially the integrity of the public vote. Some, like RTV Slovenia, asked for a public audit of the 2025 voting, with others asking for a review (like YLE from Finland).
Norway’s NRK understood that a review would take place, and the consequences of this review have now been publicly presented by the EBU.
We’ve listened and we’ve acted
mARTIN gREEN cbe, dIRECTOR OF THE euROVISION sONG coNTEST
The neutrality and integrity of the Eurovision Song Contest is of paramount importance to the EBU, its Members, and all our audiences. It is essential that the fairness of the Contest is always protected.
We are taking clear and decisive steps to ensure the contest remains a celebration of music and unity. The Contest should remain a neutral space and must not be instrumentalized.
Alongside the changes we are announcing today, we will also strengthen enforcement of our existing rules to prevent any misuse of the Contest for example through song lyrics or staging. And we will work closely with Members to ensure they fully understand and are also accountable for upholding the rules and values that define the Song Contest.
A new cap on public votes and enhanced technical safeguards
A new cap of 10 votes
One of the important criticism of the voting system in recent years has been the ability to vote up to 20 times during each show. Indeed, each “voting method” (an individual phone line, an individual credit card, etc.) can vote up to 20 times, and a person with several phone lines or credit cards can vote 20 times their number of voting methods.
This could allow a minority of individuals, regardless of their good (devoted fans) or bad (political actors) intentions, to strongly influence the results of a country’s vote, with a cost that can be relatively low in some countries, especially if you assume that most “regular” voters only cast one or two votes.
To respond to these rising concerns, the EBU will lower the cap to 10 votes per voting method, dividing it by two. The BU also stated that “fans will be actively encouraged to share their support across multiple entries”, which may mean that commentators and hosts may actively ask viewers to spread their votes.
Enhanced safeguards to maintain trust in the results
The EBU will also strengthen, with its voting partner Once, the safeguards around the voting. These are meant to detect fraudulent voting activities, such as coordinated voting activity, suspicious patterns, etc. Such safeguards concern both the public and the juries, and have helped the EBU detect the voting irregularities from six juries back in 2022.
These measures are designed to keep the focus where it belongs – on music, creativity and connection.
mARTIN gREEN cbe, dIRECTOR OF THE euROVISION sONG coNTEST
While we are confident the 2025 Contest delivered a valid and robust result, these changes will help provide stronger safeguards and increase engagement so fans can be sure that every vote counts and every voice is heard.
The Eurovision Song Contest must always remain a place where music takes centre stage – and where we continue to stand truly United by Music.
Expanded and more diverse juries back in the semi-finals
The juries will also be reformed, and return to vote in the semi-finals.
A return to the semi-finals
After the aforementioned 2022 jury scandal (in which six juries had suspicious patterns in the second semi-final, where each ranked the others very high and on average much higher than the rest of the juries), the 2023 semi-finals only used public voting to determine the qualifiers (with the exception of San Marino), with this system used again in 2024 and 2025. Although understandable considering that 6 countries represent about a third of the participants, fans and press feared two consequences:
- a greater influence from televoting patterns (diaspora, potential manipulation, etc.)
- a “bopification” of semi-final entries, with no incentive for semi-finalists to send songs that would be deemed “jury-friendly” because they would not enough points to qualify, with two consequences:
- A lack of diversity in Grand Final entries (with many uptempo songs)
- An advantage to the automatic qualifiers (Big Five and Host) who could send jury-friendly songs with no risk, reaping the reward of a line-up of qualifiers not necessarily appreciated by the juries
These hypothesis were partly confirmed in reality, with the last three winners being the jury favourites (but having qualified from semi-finals nonetheless).
The EBU has now announced that juries will come back to the semi-finals, meaning we will return to a 50/50 split (although slightly tilted towards the public vote, which will retain an extra set of points from the “Rest of the World”). The previously mentioned worries were recognised by the EBU, as they explained that the change will ensure “that high-quality entries with broad artistic merit are recognized alongside those with popular appeal.”
Seven jurors in each jury, with more diversity
The juries will also go from five to seven members, thus lowering the individual influence of each juror in the voting.
The membership will also be expanded in terms of demographics, with broadcasters now allowed to invite music journalists and critics, music teachers, figures from the music industry, as well as “creative professionals”, such as stage directors and choreographers. Each jury will also need to have at least two members aged between 18 and 25, to ensure a representation from “younger audiences”.
With this, juries are expected to be more diverse, more representative of current audiences and trend. And by allowing “creative professionals” from outside the single industry of music, it may also give more incentive to countries to invest on strong staging.
Rules on entries’ promotion clarified
It is no secret that Israel’s participation has been a hot topic in the Eurovision world, especially after 2025, when it was revealed by the EBU’s fact-checking unit that the Israeli Government had heavily sponsored online promotion for its entry, which managed to win the televote in Basel.
Several broadcasters raised concerns about these actions, including some that have threatened to boycott over Israel’s participation. As such, the rules on promotion of artists and songs have been clarified and strengthened. The EBU will update documents such as the “Code of Conduct” and the “Voting instructions”.
Updated rules will allow “appropriate promotion of artists and their songs”, but “discourage disproportionate promotion campaigns […] particularly when undertaken by third parties, including government and governmental agencies“. One way to ensure that is that broadcasters and artists will not be allowed to “actively engage in, facilitate or contribute to promotional campaigns by third parties that could influence the voting outcome“.
The specifics are of course hard to pinpoint, but the 2025 Israeli campaign used footage that was specifically filmed with artist Yuval Raphael: with the new rules, she may have been forbidden to film such footage.
Will this convince broadcasters to stay?
These new rules were approved by the Reference Group, and will be presented to members at the December General Assembly, where the EBU hopes they will consider them “sufficient to meet their concerns around participation without having a vote on the topic.”
Assuming this goes well, the EBU expects to finalise the list of participating broadcasters in December and to announce it before Christmas.
How do you feel about these new rules ? Do they meet your concerns about the voting? Tell us more in the comments below or on social media!
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