Eurovision boss warns on vote meddling as EBU tightens rules

Eurovision is tightening its voting rules after a year of pressure over whether outside campaigns could distort the result, and Martin Green said attempts to influence voters would be taken seriously even as he stopped short of promising sanctions.

The fallout from Eurovision 2025 was immediate. After Austria’s JJ won with Wasted Love and Israel’s Yuval Raphael finished second with New Day Will Rise, broadcasters including RTVE in Spain, VRT in Belgium, RÚV in Iceland, Yle in Finland, RTÉ in Ireland and NRK in Norway asked the European Broadcasting Union for voting details. RTVSLO in Slovenia went further, calling for a debate on whether Israel should still be allowed to compete, as criticism focused on Israel’s promotion campaign and broader questions about external interference and manipulation.

Green has defended the contest’s voting architecture as more robust than its critics suggest. In his earlier open letter, he said Eurovision used multiple security layers and specially designed anti-fraud systems, with more than 60 staff in Cologne, plus teams in Vienna and Amsterdam, monitoring voting in each country. He also said independent compliance oversight by EY authenticated the results, and that the Eurovision Reference Group would review the data in June and consider possible actions.

The EBU later set out a major overhaul for Eurovision 2026, announcing the changes on 21 November 2025 after what Green described as an extensive consultation with members. The new framework imposed stronger limits on promotion, including campaigns backed by governments or governmental agencies, halved the voting cap, and brought professional juries back to the semi-finals. It also expanded those juries to make them more diverse, including 18-25-year-old jurors, while adding enhanced technical safeguards to detect and block coordinated or fraudulent voting activity.

The changes amount to an admission that legitimacy now matters as much as spectacle. Green said the aim was to protect the contest’s neutrality, transparency and “a neutral space” for music rather than political instrumentalization. With suspicion lingering after 2025, Eurovision is betting that stronger controls will persuade viewers that the result is still earned, not engineered.