25 November 2025

After several years of insane voting by the jury and accusations of Israel cheating to accumulate large public vote totals, the European Broadcasting Union announced a suite of rule changes for the 2026 Eurovision Song Contest, to be hosted in Vienna, Austria.

WHAT ARE THE CHANGES AND WILL THEY MATTER?

Fewer Individual Public Votes

Only 10 votes, down from 20, can be cast from a single device. Eurovision Director, Martin Green, said this was driven by fans and broadcasters that want more balanced voting from the public, especially from those furious that Israel nearly won in 2025. Lost in that hysteria is that public’s favourite in 2022 (Ukraine), 2023 (Finland) and 2024 (Croatia) all got many more public votes than Israel in 2025, so, historically, Israel’s vote tally could not even be described as unusual. Curiously, Green also stated that “the number of votes previously allowed did not unduly influence the results of previous Contests.” My interpretation of this is that the raw vote margins (the EBU never release the raw votes) are often so astronomically large for the most popular songs and that relatively few people send 20 votes to one song, that if only 10 votes were allowed, the result doesn’t change. In fact, with just 10 votes, the public might determine they have fewer spare votes to throw around to other songs. End result: good for perception; no real change.

Jury Expansion

The jury for each country will increase from five to seven members and include at least two members aged 18-25. Members can now be music journalists, teachers and other professions previously not eligible for Eurovision juries. This change is likely designed to halt the rampant jury voting for the last three years, especially in 2023 and 2024, to deny the respective overwhelming public favourites (Finland and Croatia) the victory. Juries not only voted for their favourites to ridiculous levels (the avalanche for Switzerland in 2024 was especially absurd), they actively sabotage the public favourites from a chance of winning by low voting. Israel in 2025 highlighted this particularly well with a mammoth 237 vote disparity between the public and jury votes (297 to 60). Remember, juries rank every song so can actively “down vote” an entry. The public can only “up vote” entries with their voting habits. Russia in 2016 was another notorious case of “down voting” when scoring 18 fewer points in the grand final than in the semi final despite double the amount of juries voting. This change to the juries is outstanding and hopefully does restore some sanity to the jury vote. The juries are only ever meant to be at ESC for balance, not to be the decisive factor that determines each year’s winner.

Juries Return for the Semi Finals

Juries should never have been removed from the semi finals. After three years out, they are back. The EBU justified their removal at the time by stating the public and the jury almost entirely aligned for their top 10 in the semi finals, therefore, just leave it to the people. While Green says, “We want to make sure that songs with artistic merit, strong musical foundations and creative ambition have a fair chance to reach the Grand Final alongside those with widespread public support”, completely ignored is that juries actually encourage such entries to enter Eurovision in the first place. It was never a surprise that, with the public solely voting in the semis, more and more frivolous and silly entries began to appear at the Eurovision Song Contest. I classified 20 such entries that appeared in 2025.

Clearer Rules on Promotion

This is another one more about perception after Israel was accused by their detractors of illegal promotion and even buying votes. Complete nonsense and the EBU found nothing untoward following their investigations. All broadcasters promote their songs publicly anyway, and that actually is still allowed. The clarification now relates to third parties and banning any coordination: “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.”

Enhanced Technical Safeguards

This relates to strengthening existing systems that detect and prevent fraudulent or coordinated voting activity. The EBU constantly ensures us of valid votes, so this measure is more for extra peace of mind.

Basel 2025: It’s JJ with Wasted Love for Austria – Grand Final Review

Source: New voting overhaul announced for Eurovision 2026