Rules of the Eurovision Song Contest

A detailed set of rules and obligations which all participating broadcasters and participants in the annual Eurovision Song Contest () must uphold is produced annually ahead of each edition of the international song contest. These rules are drafted by the overall contest organisers the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) and approved by the contest's Reference Group, and typically outline which songs may be deemed eligible for entry, the format of the contest, the voting system employed to select a contest winner and how the results of this vote are presented to the televised audience, the overall values of the contest, and distribution and broadcasting rights through television, radio and streaming services.
Since the contest's inaugural edition in 1956 the rules upon which the event has been organised and contested have changed over time.
General format.
The Eurovision Song Contest is an international song competition held among broadcasting networks representing primarily European countries. Each participating broadcaster submits an original song to represent their respective country which is performed on live television and radio and transmitted via the European Broadcasting Union's Eurovision and Euroradio networks, hosted by one of the participating countries in an auditorium in a selected host city. Following all entries each participating country casts votes for their favourite performances from the other countries, and the song which has received the most points at the end of the programme is declared the winner.
Each contest typically consists of three live television shows held over one week in May. Two semi-finals are held on the Tuesday and Thursday of "Eurovision week", followed by a grand final on the Saturday. All competing countries compete in one of the two semi-finals, with the exception of the host country of that year's contest and the "Big Five" countries—, , , and the —who receive an automatic berth in the final as the contest's biggest financial contributors. All remaining competing countries are split randomly across the two semi-finals, and the 10-highest scoring countries in each semi-final qualify for the grand final; 26 countries in total therefore compete in the grand final each year.
The votes each country provides to determine the semi-final qualifiers and overall winner consists of two parts: television viewers and radio listeners in each country can vote for their favourite song through telephone and SMS voting or by voting through the official Eurovision app, with all votes tallied to create a public "top 10" for that country; a selected jury of five music professionals is also appointed by each country's participating broadcaster, who rank all entries in the shows to determine their "top 10" songs. Each country then provides two sets of points representing the views of the public and jury, with each set containing the points 1-8, 10 and 12, with the highest ranked song receiving 12 points.
The contest is a non-profit event, with financing for each year's event typically raised through a mandatory participation fee from each participating broadcaster, which varies for each country depending on its size and viewership, as well contributions from the host broadcaster and the host city, and commercial revenues from any contest sponsorships, ticket sales for the live shows, televoting revenues and merchandise.
Eligibility to participate in the contest is limited to Active Members of the EBU, which consist of member broadcasters from states which fall within the European Broadcasting Area or are member states of the Council of Europe. Associate Member broadcasters may also be allowed to compete in the contest, should they receive approval from the contest's Reference Group.
Organisation.
The contest is organised by the EBU, together with the participating broadcaster of the host country, and is overseen by the Reference Group on behalf of all participating broadcasters, who are each represented by a nominated Head of Delegation. The Head of Delegation for each country is responsible for leading their country's delegation at the event, and is their country's contact person with the EBU. A country's delegation will typically include a Head of Press, the contest participants, the songwriters and composers, backing performers, and the artist's entourage, and can range from 20 to 50 people depending on the country. The Heads of Delegation will typically meet in March before the contest is held, to receive detailed information about the shows, the venue, stage design, lighting and sound to best prepare their entry for the contest, as well as details on the event organisation, such as transportation and accommodation during the event.
Scrutineers and Executive Supervisors.
The contest's voting procedure is presided over by a scrutineer nominated by the EBU, who is responsible for ensuring that all points are allocated correctly and in turn. This role has been a consistent feature of the contest since its first edition, and has evolved into the present-day role of the Executive Supervisor, who is also responsible for overseeing the organisation of the contest on behalf of the EBU, enforcing the rules and monitoring the TV production during the live shows. Since 2011, the Executive Supervisor has been assisted by an Event Supervisor, who oversees and coordinates other matters related to the event on behalf of the EBU.
The below table outlines the holders of the posts of Executive Supervisor and Event Supervisor in the contest's history:
Reference Group.
The Reference Group is the contest's executive committee and works on behalf of all participating countries in the contest. The group of broadcast executives and producers from various EBU member organisations meets four to five times a year, and its role is to approve the development and format of the contest, secure financing, control the contest's branding, raise public awareness, and to oversee the yearly preparations of the contest with the host broadcaster.
The composition of the Reference Group consists of a Chairperson, 3 elected members from among the various Heads of Delegations, the Executive Producers of the host broadcasters from the upcoming host country as well as the 2 previous hosts, up to another 2 invited members with relevant competence and experience, and the contest's Executive Supervisor. The elected Chairperson typically comes from an EBU member broadcaster which does not participate in the contest, therefore allowing a degree of neutrality to the role.
The current membership of the Reference Group is as follows:
Song and artist eligibility.
The rules of the contest set out which songs may be eligible to compete. As the contest is for new compositions, and to prevent any one competing entry from having an advantage compared to the other entries, the contest organisers typically set a restriction on when a song may be released commercially for it to be considered eligible. Rules in recent years have typically seen this date set as the first day of September of the year before the contest is to be held, however this date has changed, and in the contest's history this has been as late as a few weeks before the contest is held. Previously songs were not allowed to be released commercially in any other country than that which it represented until after the grand final, however this criterion is no longer in place, and with the advancement in technology and the growth of internet streaming, songs are regularly published online and released globally, and are now promoted via the Eurovision official website and social media platforms ahead of the contest.
No rule has ever been implemented to limit the nationality or country of birth of the competing artists; many competing countries with a small population, such as and , were regularly represented by artists and composers from other countries, and several winning artists in the contest's history have held a different nationality or were born in a different country to that which they represented in the contest.
Each competing performance may only feature a maximum of six people on stage, and may not contain live animals. Since , all performers must be over the age of 16 on the day of the live show in which they perform; this rule was introduced after two artists in the were 11 and 12 years old on the day of the contest, which elicited complaints from some of the other participating countries. This rule's introduction means that Sandra Kim, who won the contest for in at the age of 13, would remain the contest's youngest winner in perpetuity. No performer may compete for more than one country at the contest in a given year.
Live music.
Live music has been an integral part of the contest since its first edition. The main vocals of the competing songs must be sung live on stage, however other rules on pre-recorded musical accompaniment have changed over time.
The orchestra was a prominent feature of the contest from 1956 to 1998. Pre-recorded backing tracks were first allowed in the contest in 1973, but under this rule the only instruments which could be pre-recorded had to also be seen being "performed" on stage; in 1997, this rule was changed to allow all instrumental music to be pre-recorded, however the host country was still required to provide an orchestra. In 1999, the rules were changed again, making the orchestra an optional requirement; the host broadcaster of the , Israel's IBA, subsequently decided not to provide an orchestra as a cost saving measure, meaning that all entries would use a backing track for the first time in the contest's history. The present-day rules of the contest now specify that all instrumental music should be pre-recorded, with no live instrumentation allowed, making the return of the orchestra for competing acts impossible under the current rules.
Before 2020, all vocals were required to be performed live, with no natural voices of any kind or vocal imitations allowed on backing tracks. The at the 1999 contest was sanctioned after the contest for including synthesised male vocals in defiance of this rule, with Croatia subsequently penalised through the docking of their score at that year's contest by 33% for the purposes of calculating their five-year points average for use in determining which countries would be relegated in future contests. Ahead of the , in an effort to make the contest more flexible to change following the cancellation of the 2020 event and to facilitate modernisation, the organisers' announced that recorded backing vocals will now be allowed on a trial basis and as an optional addition. Delegations are still free to provide live backing vocals if they prefer, and all lead vocals performing the melody of the song, including by the lead vocalist(s) and any supporting vocalists, must still be performed live.
Language.
As Eurovision is a "song" contest, all competing entries must include vocals and lyrics of some kind; purely instrumental pieces have never been allowed. Presently competing entries may be performed in any language, be that natural or constructed, however the rules on the language(s) in which a country's entry may be performed have varied over the course of the contest's history.
From 1956 to 1965, there were no rules in place to dictate which language a country may perform in, however all entries up to 1964 were performed in one of their countries' national languages. In the broke with this tradition by being performed in English; a new language rule was subsequently introduced for the for all competing countries, preventing entries from being performed in any language other than one of the relevant country's officially recognised national languages.
The language rule was first abolished in , allowing all participating countries to sing in the language of their choice; the rule was reintroduced ahead of the , however as the process for choosing the entries for and had already begun before the rule change was announced, they were permitted to perform in English for that year's edition. The language rule was abolished once again in 1999, resulting in 14 of that year's 23 competing entries featuring English lyrics.
Since the abolition of the language rule, the large majority of entries at each year's contest are now performed in English, given its status as a lingua franca; at the , only four songs did not contain any English lyrics. Following Salvador Sobral's victory in that year's contest with a song in Portuguese, however, the 2018 contest in Lisbon marked an increased number of entries in another language than English, a trend which was repeated in 2019. The freedom of language has, however, provided opportunities for artists to perform songs which would not have been possible previously, with a number of competing entries in this millenium having been performed in an invented language, and artists have also used this linguistic freedom to perform in languages other than English which are also not official languages of their country.
As the contest is presented in both English and French, at least one of the contest's hosts must be able to speak French as well as English.
Running order.
The order in which the competing countries perform had historically been decided through a random draw, however since the order has been determined by the contest's producers, and submitted to the EBU Executive Supervisor and Reference Group for approval before being announced publicly. This change was introduced to provide a better experience for television viewers, making the show more exciting and allowing all countries to stand out by avoiding cases where songs of similar style or tempo were performed in sequence. Under the current method, during the Semi-final Allocation Draw each country competing in a semi-final is drawn into either the first half or second half of that semi-final; once all songs have been selected the producers will then determine the running order for the semi-finals. Semi-final qualifiers make a draw at random during the winners' press conference to determine whether they will perform during the first or second half of the final; the automatic finalists will also randomly draw their competing half in the run-up to the grand final, except for the host country, whose exact performance position is determined at random in a separate draw. The running order for the final is then decided following the second semi-final by the producers, taking into consideration both the competing songs' musical qualities as well as stage performance, to best work around how to set up any props, lighting and other production considerations.
The process change in 2013 led to a mixed reaction from fans of the contests, with some expressing concern over potential corruption in allowing the producers to decide at which point each country would perform, while others were more optimistic about the change. The order in which competing countries perform is considered an important factor in the potential of winning the contest, and statistical analysis on this subject has been shown to corroborate that in a random draw songs which perform later in the contest have a better chance of being scored highly. Performing second in the final is particularly considered detrimental to a country's chances of winning the contest, and no song performing in this position has ever won the contest in its history.
Voting.
Various voting systems have been used in the history of the contest to determine the placing of the competing songs. The current system has been in place since 2016, which works on the basis of positional voting. Each country awards two sets of points: one set is based on the votes of each country's professional jury, consisting of five music professionals from that country; and a second set is based on the views of the general public in the competing countries conducted through telephone and SMS voting or via voting conducted through the official Eurovision app. Each set of points consists of 1–8, 10 and 12 points to the jury and public's 10 favourite songs, with the most preferred song receiving 12 points. National juries and the public in each country are not allowed to vote for their own country, a rule first introduced in 1957.
Historically, each country's points were determined by a jury, which has at times consisted of members of the public, music professionals, or both in combination. With advances in telecommunication technology, and in response to criticism regarding some jury picks for the contest winner, televoting was first introduced to the contest in 1997 on a trial basis. At , broadcasters in Austria, Germany, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom allowed their viewing public to determine their votes for the first time, and from televoting was extended to almost all competing countries. The was the first to make televoting mandatory for all competing countries, however each country was obligated to provide a "backup jury", which would be used in case of voting failure, or if the number of votes registered did not pass a set threshold to be considered valid. A jury was reintroduced for the grand final of the , with each country's points comprising both the votes of the jury and public in an equal split; this mix of jury and public voting was expanded into the semi-finals from 2010.
The current voting system is a modification of that used in the contest since 1975, when the "1–8, 10, 12 points" system was first introduced. Until 2016, each country provided one set of points, representing the votes of either the country's jury, public or, since the 2009 grand final, the votes of both combined.
Presentation of the votes.
Since 1957, each country's votes have been announced during a special voting segment as part of the contest's broadcast. After each country's votes have been calculated and verified, and following performances during the interval, the presenter(s) of the contest will call upon a spokesperson in each country in turn to invite them to announce the results of their country's vote in English or French. This spokesperson is typically a musician, broadcaster or journalist who is well known in their country, and previous spokespersons have included former Eurovision artists and hosts. Prior to 1994 the announcements were made through telephone lines from the countries of origin, with the audio piped through into the auditorium for the audience to hear and over the television transmission; the saw the introduction of satellite links for the voting, which has allowed the spokespersons to be seen visually by the audience and TV spectators.
The votes from each country are tallied via a scoreboard, which typically shows the total number of points each country has so far received, as well as the points being given out by the country currently being called upon by the presenter(s). The scoreboard was first introduced in 1957; voting at the first contest was held behind closed doors, but taking inspiration from the UK's "Festival of British Popular Songs" which featured voting by regional juries, the EBU decided to incorporate this idea into its own contest. This scoreboard was historically situated physically to the side of the stage and was updated manually as each country gave their votes; a graphical representation of this scoreboard was first introduced at the , which in recent contests is able to sort itself to place the country with the most votes at the top.
Historically, each country's spokesperson would announce sequentially the number of points being given to a specific country, which would then be repeated by the contest's presenter(s) in both English and French. With the increase in the number of competing countries, and therefore the number of countries voting in the final, the voting sequence soon became a lengthy process. From 2006, to save time, only each country's 8, 10 and 12 points were announced by their spokesperson, with points 1–7 displayed on-screen and then automatically added to the scoreboard. Since the introduction of the new voting system in 2016, the spokespersons now announce only their country's 12 points, with their 8 and 10 points now also being shown and added automatically.
From 1957 to 1962, the order in which the participating countries announced their votes was in reverse order of the presentation of their songs; from 1963 to 2003, countries were called upon in the same order in which they presented their songs, with the exception of the 1974 contest, where a drawing of lots was used to decide the order in which countries were called upon. With the introduction of semi-finals in 2004, a new system to determine the order of voting was required to account for the countries which failed to qualify for the final: in 2004, the countries were called upon in alphabetical order according to their two-letter ISO country codes; and in 2005, the votes of the non-qualifying semi-finalists were announced first, in the order in which they performed in the semi-final, followed by the finalist countries in the order in which they performed in the final. From 2006 to 2010, similar to 1974, a separate draw was held to determine the voting order; this draw was scrapped in 2011, and a new logarithmic system was implemented which used the jury votes submitted following the "jury final" dress rehearsal in an attempt to ensure the winner did not become apparent early on in the voting sequence, and subsequently to create a more suspenseful and exciting experience for the viewers.
Since 2016, the voting presentation begins with each country's spokespersons being called upon in turn to announce the points of their country's professional jury. Once the jury points from all countries have been announced, the contest's presenter(s) will then announce the total public points received for each finalist, with the votes for each country being consolidated and announced as a single value. From 2016 to 2018, the public points were announced in order from last to first, with the country with the lowest total score announced first; since 2019, these points have been announced in order according to their placing by the juries, with the country which received the fewest points from the juries receiving their public points first. The full televoting results, and the votes of each country's jury and individual jury members, are published on the official Eurovision website after the show; each country's individual televoting points are also typically displayed on-screen towards the end of the show by that country's broadcaster.
Ties for first place.
Since 1970, the rules of the contest have outlined how to determine the winning act in cases where two or more countries have the same number of points at the end of the voting. The method of breaking a tie has changed over time, and the current tie-break rule has been in place since 2016. In this event, a combined national televoting and jury result is calculated for each country, and the winner is the song which has obtained points from the highest number of countries.
The first tie-break rule was introduced following the 1969 contest, when four of the sixteen countries taking part—France, Spain, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom—all finished the voting with an equal number of votes. As there was no rule in place to break the tie, all four were declared joint winners. This result led to complaints from a number of other competing countries, and several countries refused to take part in the 1970 edition of the contest in protest.
, on only one occasion since 1969 has there been a tie for first place: in , the entries from and had received 146 points each at the end of the voting. The tie-breaking rule in place at the time specified that the country which had received the most sets of 12 points would be declared the winner; if there was still a tie, then the 10 points received, followed by 8 points, etc. would be used to break the tie. Both France and Sweden had received four sets of 12 points, however as Sweden had received more individual 10 points than France, Sweden's Carola was declared the winner.
Validation and observation.
A number of steps have been established to ensure that a valid voting result is obtained and that transparency in the vote and results is observed.
Each country's professional jury, as well as individual jury members, must meet a set criteria to be eligible, regarding professional background, and diversity in gender and age. A set criteria against which the competing entries should be evaluated is published by the EBU, and all jury members pledge in writing that they will use this criteria when ranking the entries, as well as stating that they are not connected to any of the contestants in any way that could influence their decision. Additionally, jury members may only sit on a jury once every three years. Each jury member votes independently of the other members of the jury, and no discussion or deliberation about the vote between members is permitted.
Since 2004, the televoting in each country has been overseen by the contest's official voting partner, the German-based Digame. This company gathers all televotes and, since 2009, jury votes in all countries, which are then processed by the company's Pan-European Response Platform, based out of their Voting Control Centre in Cologne, Germany. This system ensures that all votes are counted in accordance with the rules, and that any attempts to unfairly influence the vote are detected and mitigated. The entire voting process is overseen by independent observers from an external auditing company, which for the 2019 contest came from professional services firm EY.
Broadcasting.
Participating broadcasters from competing countries are required to air live the semi-final in which they compete, or in the case of the automatic finalists the semi-final in which they are required to vote, and the grand final, in its entirety, including all competing songs, the voting recap which contains short clips of the performances, the voting procedure or semi-final qualification reveal, and in the grand final the reprise of the winning song. Since 1999, broadcasters who wished to do so were given the opportunity to provide advertising during short, non-essential hiatuses in the show's schedule.
On a number of occasions participating broadcasters have been forced to delay or postpone broadcast of one or more live shows due to mitigating circumstances: in 2000, the contest was interrupted in the to provide emergency news coverage of the Enschede fireworks disaster, which meant a televote could not be held and the country's backup jury was used to provide the country's points; and in 2012, Albania broadcast the first semi-final, in which they were competing, deferred to provide coverage of the Qafa e Vishës bus accident. In both of these cases no sanctions were levied against the broadcasters due to the emergency nature of the incidents, however in 2009, when Spain deferred broadcast of the second semi-final to provide continuing coverage of the Madrid Open tennis tournament, the EBU announced that sanctions would be levied against the Spanish broadcaster RTVE.
The contest was first produced in colour in 1968, and has been broadcast in since 2005, and in high-definition since 2007.
Archive status.
An archiving project was initiated by the EBU in 2011, aiming to collate footage from all editions of the contest and related materials from its history ahead of the contest's 60th anniversary, in 2015. In collaborating with member broadcasters, the EBU now holds all editions of the contest except for the 1956 and 1964 editions, of which no video footage is believed to exist.
The first contest in 1956 was primarily a radio show, however cameras were present to broadcast the show for the few Europeans who had a television set; any video footage which may have been recorded has since been lost over time, however audio of the contest has been preserved and a short newsreel of the winning reprise has survived. Conflicting reports of the fate of any video footage of the in Copenhagen have been recanted over the years: one claim is that footage of the contest was destroyed in a fire at the studios of Danish broadcaster DR in the 1970s, with no footage from other broadcasters known to exist; other claims include that footage of the contest was lost when the tape was wiped by DR management for use in recording new programming, or that DR did not record the show at all due to a lack of available tape recorders. As with the 1956 contest, audio recordings of the 1964 contest, and some footage of the opening sequence and winning reprise have survived.
The copyright of each individual contest from 1956 to 2003 is held by the respective organising host broadcaster for that year's contest; copyright for contests held from 2004 onwards is held centrally by the EBU.