- 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
Jury voting was taken out of the Eurovision semi‑finals (from 2023 onward) mainly to strengthen the contest’s integrity after a jury‑rigging scandal in 2022 and to make qualification depend purely on the public’s taste.
In Eurovision 2022, six countries’ jury votes were annulled in Semi‑Final 2 and in the Grand Final after “irregular voting patterns” showed they had systematically ranked each other unnaturally high, which the EBU treated as coordinated cheating.
Interesting. I remember that scandal, but I guess I missed what the outcome of that was.
It’s also funny (and annoying) that I didn’t know I could have voted in the semis… I’m still kind of upset that Australia didn’t make it to the final with milkshake man