As we gear up for the next Eurovision national final season, the European Braodcasting Union have today announced changes for the 2026 contest, around voting and fairness. It’s an announcement that many fans have been expecting, with many believing drastic changes were needed after a few issues over the past few years.
So what are these changes? The highlights surround juries, promotion of entries, and how many times viewers can vote for their favourite songs. There have been strong opinions about the lack of juries in semi-finals for the past 3 contests, and now the EBU are u-turning on this, bringing back this crucial element into the mix. We’ve got other huge changes to cover here, so let’s jump right in.
Scroll down for details from the EBU’s press release below
Voting Changes at Eurovision 2026
How televoting is affected
Let’s cover the changes in the actual voting process first. A key point for us to process is that the amount of televotes allowed per payment method has been halved. Instead of 20 votes per payment method, now viewers will only be able to do ten. Interestingly, the EBU also say “Fans will be actively encouraged to share their support across multiple entries”. It’s unsure what this means at present, with no further clarification on how fans will be asked to consider not maxxing out their votes on one song.
They also stated that “Enhanced technical safeguards will also be introduced, to detect and block coordinated or fraudulent voting activity”. They emphasise that they have been working “closely with [their] voting partner Once to expand the Contest’s advanced security systems, which detect and prevent fraudulent or coordinated voting activity, and strengthen monitoring of suspicious patterns to maintain trust in the results of the audience vote”.
Jury changes, including returning to the semi-finals
Welcome back to the semi-finals, juries! The juries will be back in the semi-finals, with the same 50/50 split they had on influence from 2009-2022. This move will be celebrated by many Eurovision fans, with the semi-finals of the last few years knocking out some cult classics, beloved by the fandom but needed that jury love to help with the wider audience.
Some fans believe that the quality of songs getting to the final has decreased in some cases, with artistic merit occasionally taking a back seat to a more attention-grabbing vibe. The EBU seem to acknowledge this somewhat, by saying “This change is intended to encourage the optimum musical balance and diversity in songs that qualify for the Grand Final, ensuring that high-quality entries with broad artistic merit are recognised alongside those with popular appeal.”.
Another change with the juries, is that there will now be 7 jurors per country, instead of 5. Two jurors from each participating country must also be between the ages of 18-25, to encourage voting from a younger viewers perspective. The EBU also say that “the range of professional backgrounds that jurors can be chosen from will be expanded to include music journalists and critics, music teachers, creative professionals such as choreographers and stage directors and experienced music industry figures”.
Stricter rules on how braodcasters promote their entries
Something that has caught the eye of fans recently is heavy promotion campaigns from specific countries. The EBU are planning to tackle this, by stopping promotion campaigns from third-parties such as governements or government agencies.
On this, the EBU have said “The updated Voting Instructions support appropriate promotion of artists and their songs (which is very much part of the professional music industry), but “discourage disproportionate promotion campaigns…particularly when undertaken or supported by third parties, including governments or governmental agencies.”
Participating broadcasters and artists are not permitted to actively engage in, facilitate or contribute to promotional campaigns by third parties that could influence the voting outcome and, as outlined in the updated Code of Conduct, any attempts to unduly influence the results will lead to sanctions”.
As they say, promoting an entry is standard practise in the music industry, but with examples in the past 2 contests having government-backed YouTube advertisments worth approximately a million Euros, it needed to be clarified. Fans can be assured that broadcasters cannot accept government help with informing people (fans of the contest or not) about their Eurovision entry.
A statement from Martin Green CBE, Director of the Eurovision Song Contest
Martin Green, the director of the Eurovision Song Contest, also had a statement in the announcement, ackonwledging fans concerns and saying that this is how they will address them going forwards.
He says “We’ve listened and we’ve acted”, said 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”.
It’s clear that despite recent difficulties in the Eurovision Song Contest’s voting, something is being done to future-proof this, and ensure they do everything they can to make winning the contest a fair game.
It’s not about question who is changing something- all Eurovision fans lost respect to EBU – you can check on official Eurovision TikTok Chanel they don’t restrict comments but they limit them ! It means they choose what they what be shown!
we need credible broadcaster!
EBU is not and we all know it –
Russian can buy them Israeli Americans or China can buy them / I mean in their pockets
I demand Eurovision must be given to BBC immediately!
its European loyal broadcaster from beginning!
Let Palestine to participate in Esc
A load of crap and that Country will still cheat.
hilarious as well considering earlier in the year the EBU claimed the result was fair and valid… yet they feel the need for half arsed changes.
After 2025, Martin Green literally said that there was no problem with the results because “Eurovision has the most controlled voting system in place”. Then why are so many changes needed? You literally need to overhaul the whole system instead of kicking out the one country that’s problematic (and that’s been problematic for over 3 years now).
Two darling, two.
2026 will be problematic too, sweetie so yes, three, three.
“The public televoters will be encouraged to share their 10 points through the entries”. I am sure that some ‘televoters’ are unencourageable to do so.
Instead I would suggest to allow 30 points for each televoter, but considering necessarily the classical 8/10/12 points way.
And obviously with a strong IP control security solution to prevent multiple voting.
You know, they can still vote if these rules are enough to satisfy the needs of the broadcasters at the General Assembly
Well the 7 people jury should be somewhat welcome, so that one jury member’s vote won’t have such a high impact on the outcome.
Italian jury has surprisingly always given high votes on songs that are not even contenders for the win, giving the indication that they’re trying to just shift votes so they have higher chance for better placing for themselves.
Italy decides on its own and doesn’t follow the odds and vote accordingly. It is good that they do this in my opinion as almost all countries (except 2025 happily) follow the same pattern and vote massively the precontest favorites and the jury announcement votes (except 2025) is very predictable and boring
Abolish the robot AI algorithm fake computer votes!
Decent changes now, just decrease the number of qualifiers in low participating years to like 6 or 7 to prevent meme qualifiers such last year’s Armenia and Poland.
In what world is Gaja a meme entry
It sucks and it’s low quality.
Survivor a meme, really?
REALLY???????
tbh i couldnt care about anything else except for the fact the juries are back in the semis so happy about that
Ditto
Turkey illegally occupies half of Cyprus which is an EU member state and never these countries reacted , the only country who boycotted the contest was Greece in 1975. When Cyprus tried to raise the issue through some of its entries in the 90s , Cyprus was accused of bringing politics and was voted down. But I see there are double standards and the hate of some countries’ governments towards USA and Israel, such as Sanchez of Spain makes him to cry all day about Israel participating in ESC. I m.sure he would welcome Turkey or Turkiye with open arms
Actually the fact that Turkey – along with all the other autocracies: Belarus, Hungary, Russia – saw itself out is very welcome. Israel should be next, they’ll be in good company at Intervision.
How does any of this solve any of the existing problems? They *discourage* mass advertising campaigns. Huge numbers of politically motivated votes from people not watching the contest will still win most countries with 10 votes per SIM instead of 20. They’ll get so much televote they’ll get out of the semis regardless. What is this meant to achieve?
The changes allow them to rig the voting spending less money. That’s great news for fraudsters.
So basically they rather rig the voting (juries) in favour of Green’s own country in order to restrict the political interference, and that’s not fair either (I love our neighbour Sweden but there shouldn’t be any favouritism). An ID based free-of-charge voting (one vote per person) would be way fairer than this televote plus juries. As a neutral, I truly hoped the whole Israeli debate would have brought in well-needed changes to the voting, but the solutions are just recycling the old. On the other hand, the key phrase of the EBU’s press release is “payment method”, so the participant… Read more »
I am so happy about this, this has been needed since they were taken out in 2023.
“We’ve listened and we’ve acted”, said Martin Green CBE, Director of the Eurovision Song Contest. But, what Martin Green ment to say was “We were forced to change the rules”, as in the very next moment he said: “…we are confident the 2025 Contest delivered a valid and robust result…” and with that once again completely brushed off the actual concerns of the participating members. It is like EBU just stated that none of these changes were actually needed because there were no problems with 2025…
Its time to boycot Eurovision in Vienna!
Oh definitely yes.
unfortunately there’s no other choice.
Sooooooooooooooo, what made you decide to come back? I thought you left for until Israel’s (hopefully pleasepleaseplease) ban
A follow-up to my last post: Watch the YouTube video from ‘Eurovision Breakdown with Muser Resolute’ (called “THIS is the Voting System Eurovision NEEDS!!!”), posted May 25, 2025. Ranked voting is the way the ESC should go.
the jury vote should definitely be just an overall aggregated ranking. this would lessen the effects of corruption and improper voting.
but i guess the ebu thought 3 years would be enough for us to forget about the 2022 sf2 voting scandal
One more proposal could do: One vote per person per phone line, where you vote for your top 10, with the following mandate: You must vote for all 10 if you want your top choice to get 12 points. Vote for 9, and your top choice gets only 10 points. Vote for 8, and your top choice gets only 8 points; and so on. Vote for only one, and your choice gets only 1 point.
The contender with the most points in any country gets 12 televote points from that country.
Too complicated, and most people don’t want to be so engaged to know 10 favorites (most actually want to know only one..)
Then the few die-hards who don’t mind keeping tabs on 10 or more entries will gladly decide the outcome. Then again, many who follow the contest in the months and weeks before the actual telecast have already made up their minds as to which 10 they would like to see at the top; or better yet, which one, two or three they would like to see at the very top.
Quite frankly, it’s not that complicated at all, because I see people here posting their top 10 all the time.
Love this system! Proposed something similar myself in 2023 but yours is better.
Funny how many are praising the return of semi-final juries when just a few years ago there were many praising their removal.
I’m guessing people complaining are not the same. Personnally I wasn’t happy with juries removal from semi finals and I’m glad they’re back.
Somebody is always going to complain. You can’t please everybody
It sounds like more capitulation to a certain country who has ruined the contest for the last 2 years.
Classic distraction manouver before announcing Israel it’s gonna participate again. Removed Russia for political reasons, mantain Israel because it’s not a political event, create a diversion like a typical political move. The flip flopping is hilarious by this point.
sigh more boring ballads in the final it is then
ESC is not only fun songs, we need serious too..
Otherwise we just have 30 hysterical Baby Lasagna entries, and one was enough
Mkay, so they listened when I suggested 10 instead of 20.
Thanks for this news, Lucy. I guess that somewhere at the EBU, there is a spreadsheet revealing what past Grand Final results would have been if only 10 votes per person had been allowed. Can this now be published?
Regarding juries for semi-finals, most of us protested their dropping in the first instance, but were fobbed off by EBU acolytes saying “the contest must evolve”. I hope they now realise how wrong they were in this instance.
it’s not 50/50 if they keep the ROW vote, sorry i’m a math freak
Indeed not. Could there be a ROW jury formed?
It has never been 50/50 what with “San Marino”s fake televote points, anyway.
You shouldn’t check out HRT’s Dora points system (and from what I gather some other countries too) if you wish to avoid a stroke.
they seem so clueless about what to do, it’s sad
They’ll do everything but do the one thing that will save this contest. The EBU has a lot of work to do to restore its reputation that they themselves tarnished.
Glad to see the juries back in the SF.
But nothing will change at all when the tevoting comes, we know it. A certain country will still receive 300 points.
It won’t. Without a government funded multi-platform campaign it simply can’t achieve that, but it’s sheer presence will still likely give it a somewhat disproportionate televote score. Only if the their jury vote would be high enough, say above 150 points, then a significant televote score could be justified, but not if the same scenario continues to repeat itself from the past 2 years where the televote score is 5 times higher than the jury vote. This did happen once with Keeino in 2019 with an even higher ratio, but that trio was a clear pre-contest favorite and severely down… Read more »
Regardless of Israel, these changes were needed. 7 jury members is much better than 5, and voting 20 times is crazy (even 10 times). Besides, without juries we would get Europapa and Espresso macchiato winning every year. This is unfair for serious musicians.
There has been a jury winner evey single year after juries were removed from the semifinals.
This is introducing more “subjective” elements to the rules, making them more vague and more open to interpretation = less transparent.
If Azerbaijan pays a lot of money to promote Armenian entry, with the purpose of having it disqualified/punished (they are a third party after all), what happens, huh?
As if…
In short, the EBU are pulling out all the stops to keep Israel in the competition, but also minimising their chances of winning by monitoring fraudulent televotes. I understand the EBU is trying to be neutral and keep all parties ”happy”, but this is not right way to do so.
Get ready for a Spanish, Dutch, Irish, Icelandic & Slovenian withdrawal, and the ultimate demise of this competition.
Good riddance to countries that withdraw for political reasons and boycotts. Keep politics out of Eurovision.
Their potential boycott is based on humanitarian reason, not politics. Humanitarian principles absolutely have a place in global events, including Eurovision.
No Palestinian cares whether Israel is allowed to sing for three minutes or not. It doesn’t change their situation whatsoever. The only who profits off that delusional hate campaign is Netanyahu.
It’s not that complicated.
They are boycotting because a country is using Eurovision for a political agenda. They are not the political ones, they are fighting for the contest survival and opportunity to be as free of politics as possible.
How can threatening to leave the contest and actively putting pressure on others to follow suit (like for instance Iceland aims to do) be possibly considered “fighting for the survival of the contest”?
If it wasn‘t for some countries antics in 2024, the whole Israel drama would have become pretty much like the Ukraine situation… nothing out of the ordinary. That‘s what motivated Netanyahu to massively rig the televote in 2025 in the first place.
It is demonstrating against a problem within the contest. Encouraging other’s to stand up for what is right and to keep another country out, that is delibrately trying to use the contest for their political agenda. Thereby those countries are not the one’s making it about politics, Israel is.
No it wouldn’t. Again they didn’t create that situation. They reacted to a problem. And Israel already tried to manipulate the voting in 2024, not just in 2025.
Do you seriously think Netanyahu personally got involved with this? Their president did because his role is ceremonial. The words ‘rig’ or ‘fraudulent’ suggest they tampered with the actual votes. No, they didn’t: They did politicize and instrumentalize the contest because the EBU rules were not categorical enough for them to rethink it. I suppose they did it to counter what they saw as a hate fest on the part of most Western European nations regarding their participation back in 2024 and consequently in 2025. Prior to that I don’t recall them ever resorting to tactics like that. They should… Read more »
Politics has always been part of ESC whether we like it or not. The killing in Gaza hasn’t gone away you know. 67 children have been killed since the ceasefire began, over 2 million people are living in a bombsite without the most basic necessities and you’re telling us that a song contest is more important. I’m glad that my country (Ireland) is one of those taking a stand even if most are just ploughing ahead as if Gaza wasn’t important. Shameful!
Thanks for exposing the true face of the countries who wish to make this contest political. Since you’re so knowledgable about the situation: how many innocent civillians in Gaza were killed or tortured by Hamas since the cease fire began? Your country consistently supports Hamas who started this war, who inflicted this horrible disaster on the palestinian people, who offers no hope to the palestinian ppl besides of war and missiles, who consistently, since 1994, sabotaged any chance for peace in this region. Shameful!
Coordinated voting takes place in almost every participating country to a higher or lower degree. People’s motivation to vote stems from various reasons and unfortunately patriotism, nationalism and betting odds for that matter fall into that mix. Israel should have been banned because the broadcaster was in collusion with the government. It didn’t have any ethical or legal dilemma with the government funding and taking over the entire social media campaign while KAN didn’t even spend a single dime out of its own budget. They got away with it because the EBU’s code of conduct was loose and unabiding. It… Read more »
I think one of the issues is that EBU made itself into a politics powerhouse. Banning Russia due to its action was a political stance and now EBU can’t back away from it, even if they want to appear apolitical
If they claim it’s about the music, then Russia should be invited back and compete as well. Belarus too
They do everything to save Israel it seems…sigh
And I was hoping for a 5th azeri elimination this year. EBU always making the most irritating changes…
Spain, Iceland, Ireland, Netherland, Slovenia. We are so proud of you!
Should we create a petit festival in Madrid and choose which of these countries should will this year The Song Contest?
The Alternative Song Contest.
(There ya go, I finally went down the Channel 4 Christmas message route.)
Like it or not, every country participating in Eurovision next year is participating in genocide whitewashing.
now we can try to make Israel nq with juries back in the semis
I thought it was a SONG contest? Why NQ with a good song? You know Israel nearly always brings quality. Good luck to them!
Juries back is good.
10 votes is good, though I’d rather 1 per person
Rest of the World votes needs to go though. It favours one particular country everytime
Yeah right, let’s just change everything again instead of kicking out the country that caused this. Curious what the promised people are going to cook up now to influence the televote.
Agree with this
I smell a fox when I read one. FYI, whether you read your Bible or not, believe or not, the term ‘The Promised Land’ was promised to both the Israelite tribes and the Ishmaelite tribes so what you’re more than insinuating is a slur. And yes, ‘That country’ needed to be suspended but there are many ways to make its presence in Vienna uncomfortable without transgression.
The bible doesn’t supersede international law you absolute clown.
I didn’t say that Bozo. You have a reflexive knee jerk reaction. Not surprising coming from from some of the Irish ‘devils’ here.
Now but sumtimes international law is wrong international law doesnt reckognize Tibetians kurds uyghurs sharawis etc. They are not seen as countries even tho the just like palestinians have a cultural identity. So basing everything on international reckognized isnt always right
And the Tibetans and Uyghurs etc should be free however, however the point still stands.
Using biblical quotes in order to justify a real world, current situation is backwards af
Is it possible that today there still are people who consider “The Bible” to be a source of authority?
Welcome back zero televote points ballaads like azerbaidzan 2022 ar Swiss 2022
So changing the rules because of past problems is good, but not enough. We need to see action taking against countries trying to use the contest for their political agenda. They clearly are aware that a certain country is doing this, otherwise these rules would not have been implemented – so a 2 year banned and further consideration on possible return would have been both the best and right option. As well as a max 10 votes total, but max 5 for one country. I say 10 instead of 20, because there are also tactical gameplay in voting for certain… Read more »
So, what’s your opinion on Spain after one jury member admitted to putting Israel in last place before even seeing the performance? Clearly Spain should be banned for two years as well, right?
There’s pretty huge difference between being a country investigated for genocide, attacking free press and actively using the contest to create a false narrative vs. a single jury member not following the rules of voting.
Totaly innocent spain wonder if all basques and catalonians agree on that
Catalunya and the Basque Country are probably the two most staunchly pro-palestinian regions in Europe. Israel will get very little love from them.
Hmm wonder why they are pro palestine. . It is the same reason as for why ireland is majority pro palestinians (At least as it seems). They see it as the same cause against opressors. What i meant is that catalunya and basque country might not agree on spain being alowed to vote biased becouse off them being innocent. I am not a defender of Israels actions. i just think there is hypocracy in eurovisin history there has been orher conflicts involved than just this and the outrage wasnt the same. We just care about what we can see.
Not just Spain, a Norwegian jury member did the same and there was a disproportionate number of jurors who ranked it last on their scoring sheets in 2024 and 2025. It still doesn’t ‘exonerate’ Israel from what it did, even if it was expected that it would get more televote points without a government funded campaign during a war time situation as all of its supporters, Israeli and non-Israelis, Jews and non-Jews alike had and still have the incentive to get mobilized in response to what they perceive as an attack on Israel. That will not change so soon which… Read more »
so you are now comparing one jury member who probably affected 2 points in the scoreboard to rigging the whole televote?
obviously either is bad, but read the situation a little better brother
My point is: a lot of people on here rightfully decry foul play by the Israeli government (although what they did wasn’t even against the rules until this week), yet turn a blind eye to rule breaks or even celebrate them as long as they target Israel. You can‘t have it both ways.
Lots of positive measures here, but they won’t change the fact that public votes for Israel will be motivated by solidarity with Israel a lot more than diaspora voting or just support for the actual song and performance. I would double check and triple check KAN to make sure beyond any suspicion that it doesn’t bend the rules or searches for loopholes, but the fact that government agencies are out of the picture means Israel will never come even close to 300 points again unless on its performance’s own merit which has never been done before and likely ever will.… Read more »
Thank god the juries are back in the semis!
I think the statement is positive. Personally i would have dropped the maximum votes to 5 but that said the maximum votes made from one to twelve by any country adds up to 10 therefore if an individual likes 10 songs out of say 26 finalists its up to them were their votes go.
Agreed, but perhaps it means you can only vote once for each country up to a total of 10 countries. That would be good if it means the eventual televote is more spread out.
The alterations all involve ‘goodwill’ self-policing so really have no hard effect. Juries back is good.
Nothing is more nectar-like than your breath.
They basically admitted there was foul play the last two years.
It’s not enough, and we know it. It won’t be enough. The thing is, if they expelled Russia and Belarus for x reasons, there is no excuse to not do the same now regarding ISR. It’s THAT simple.
The changes are good. They were necessary. But ISR shouldn’t participate.
Precisely
You seem to be confused as to why Russia and Belarus are no longer in the EBU. Russia left the EBU with both the member Russian broadcasters suspending their membership. Belarus was suspended for their treatment of journalist reporting on irregularities in the 2020 presidential elections. BTRC had on many occasions been warned about this and continued to ignore the EBU.
With all due respect, the fact that the Israeli army killed dozens of journalists ( not including those embedded as Hamas operatives) and is still denying the foreign press to enter into Gaza because it fears how Hamas will manipulate the stories coming out of there and how catastrophic the images and testimonies are going to resonate around the world are more than enough reasons to exclude Israel even if the initial reason for the war, the October 7th massacre was completely justified.
The EBU separates the actions of a government from the status of a national broadcaster, except when the government is shown to control the actions of the national broadcaster, as in the case of Belarus. Many here seem to want to give the EBU a greater mandate and powers than it has.
That is a fine arguement only that in Israel’s case, the broadcaster well that the government was running targeted ads and social campaigns through official government accounts in both 2024 and 2025 to boost its Eurovision entry to secure as many public votes as possible. The costs were incurres on tax payers money with the broadcaster not spending a dime. It let Yuval Raphael participate in those campaigns so it is an accessory to at least an ethical and moral wrong doing by politicizing and instrumentalizing the contest for its domestic and foreign propaganda.
There’s also more blood on their hands than Russias
Disencouraged. Not prohibit or ban.
Means ” please don’t do it, but nothing will happen if you do it
Great! EBU admits a country broke the rules but then does nothing to change them or punish the country. That’s the EBU we know..
Yeah; for me 2026 will be just national selections.
YESSSSS WE GOT JURIES BACK HAHAHAHAHA
And why am I the only one who’s happy????
And when Israel flagrantly breaks the rules again, EBU will look away.
I welcome the re-introduction of the juries in the semi-final!
Other than that, these measures seem to be in response to the obvious disgraces that occurred in the past 2 contests. Thus, with no punishment for those that committed them and with a mere effort to reduce them, the EBU once again tries to mitigate the crisis rather than not solve it.
And it is really obvious what should be done in order for the crisis to be solved.
Can i ask what you mean is obvious? Get rid of israel lose your main sponsor get bashed by new media boosting right wing parties like AFD,VOX,Assemble national that cut money to public broadcasters. Me myselfe love eurovision but I dont know this might be the only obvious way. But if you want it political you get it political.
You’re suggesting that had the sponsor not been an Israeli company, it would have paved the way to get rid of Israel this year. I doubt that very much. MoroccanOil’s contract with the EBU is legally binding until it reaches its term in May 2026 and any decision regarding Israel would have been completely separated from it. Assuming there’s a new sponsor in 2027, are we implying that the EBU could find an easier path to pin something on Israel in a year like that? Sounds ridiculous. And by the way, the likes of Netanyahu and other right wing nuts… Read more »
What i am saying is that the deal with moroccan oil doesnt make the narrative that banning israel is “the only obvious way” more sensibel. And yes in israel there is a problem with right wing Netanyahu, Ben gvir Smotrich but banning israel from eurovision or even EBU would be contraproductiv if you wanted to save free press and media in the country. The only reason KAN hasn’t been privatized is eurovision.
These are a few steps in the good direction. Let’s see if these measures are sufficient to prevent Israel from hijacking the competition for their propaganda.
I’m not sure that limiting the number of votes from 20 to 10 will solve the problem though. I would have kept the 20 votes but limit the vote for one country to 5.
I’m actually surprised they cut down the number of votes per person instead of increasing them to one vote per country (25 to 26 votes). No maximum limit for how many votes you can allocate towards one percent country, but then again with only 10 votes, you’ve gotta be really stingy.