- Voting cap halved for 2026, encouraging fans to spread support across more entries
- Professional juries return to Semi-Finals with expanded, more diverse panels including young jurors aged 18–25
- Enhanced technical safeguards to detect and block coordinated or fraudulent voting activity
- disproportionate promotion campaigns, particularly those of affiliated third parties, such as governments (cough Israel cough) are now prohibited
Whether or not Israel gets to compete gets decided at the next EBU general assembly in a couple of weeks. This is just the reference group updating the rules for the contest itself.
And totally unrelated to Israel’s actions last year to use Eurovision as propaganda.