an extraordinary general meeting will be done to decide i*rael's participation in eurovision 2026. >50% of votes is needed to pass the motion of banning the country from participation.

Just f***ing get rid already.

You would hope that with the withdrawals pending, any country thinking of the financials would just use the opportunity to get rid, but there's so many potential wildcards in this vote and I don't think anyone is quite clear on the process, does each broadcaster (not country) get a vote, and if so is it individual votes of their board (seen some references to 24 votes) or a joint decision.

Also many broadcasters involved who don't care about Eurovision and while many of those are not friendly to Israel, would abstentions end up halting the process either?

They should already be gone.

I really want to know what blackmail material KAN has on the EBU. There must be something for them to be so spineless

I'm glad Slovenia, Ireland, Spain and the Netherlands took a stand. If the November vote goes a certain way then this contest will go back to one semifinal (if at all).

I’m confused what they mean by public vote here. It’s obviously within EBU members so it’s not public or are they holding a televote (no chance of any riggory happening surely!!1)? Very confusion

God this gets more and more torturous to follow when we don't know whether the contest will be worth following for more months.

If the threat of being ousted from Eurovision and other international competitions was a factor however small in bringing Israel to the table in the recent ceasefire, it was worth it, but regardless, they should be out - as things stand their entries make a mockery of the public televote even without the moral factor.

Hope that a) the vote goes ahead in December anyway and Israel is barred for at least a year or b) broadcasters who have said or indicated that they would withdraw regardless, Spain, Ireland and the Netherlands at least I think have made statements to that effect, hold to it and deprive the contest of more countries by keeping them in.

Romania & Bulgaria return to the contest, announced over the last couple of days.

Ordinarily, would’ve been very excited by the above news. Two of my favourite nations of the 2010s.

It does reek of the ESC team pulling out all the stops to lure people back knowing people may pull out of Israel stay though and it’s just hard to get excited about anything regarding the contest while we’re still in such uncomfortable limbo.

On 31/10/2025 at 23:40, RobBot said:

Ordinarily, would’ve been very excited by the above news. Two of my favourite nations of the 2010s.

It does reek of the ESC team pulling out all the stops to lure people back knowing people may pull out of Israel stay though and it’s just hard to get excited about anything regarding the contest while we’re still in such uncomfortable limbo.

I totally agree. Every time a country returns it weakens the position of the countries threatening to boycott over Israel.

On 02/11/2025 at 19:04, Colm said:

I totally agree. Every time a country returns it weakens the position of the countries threatening to boycott over Israel.

I agree, its definitely the wrong year for any returnies.

https://www.ebu.ch/news/2025/11/ebu-announces-changes-to-eurovision-song-contest-voting-rules-to-strengthen-trust-and-transparency

The EBU announced today a bunch of changes to the rules of the contest

Key Changes for 2026

1. Clearer Rules on Promotion

The Voting Instructions and Code of Conduct for the competition, which all participating broadcasters must abide by, are being strengthened to further protect the Contest from attempts to unfairly influence the vote.

The updated Voting Instructions support appropriate promotion of artists and their songs (which is very much part of the professional music industry), but “discourage disproportionate promotion campaigns…particularly when undertaken or supported by third parties, including governments or governmental agencies.”

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 and, as outlined in the updated Code of Conduct, any attempts to unduly influence the results will lead to sanctions.

2. Fewer maximum votes

As part of the annual review of voting, changes have been made to the system to support audience participation.

For the 2026 Contest, the maximum number of votes per payment method (online, SMS and phone call) will be reduced from 20 to 10.

Fans will be actively encouraged to share their support across multiple entries.

3. 50/50 Voting Return for Semi-Finals and Juries Expanded

Professional juries of music experts will return to the Semi-Finals for the first time since 2022 - creating a roughly 50/50 split between jury and audience votes as in the Grand Final*.

This change is intended to encourage the optimum musical balance and diversity in songs that qualify for the Grand Final, ensuring that high-quality entries with broad artistic merit are recognized alongside those with popular appeal.

The number of jurors will increase from 5 to 7 and the range of professional backgrounds that jurors can be chosen from will be expanded to include music journalists and critics, music teachers, creative professionals such as choreographers and stage directors and experienced music industry figures. To reflect the appeal of the Contest with younger audiences, each jury will now include at least two jurors aged 18 - 25.

All jurors will have to sign up to a formal declaration to confirm they will vote independently and impartially, will not co-ordinate with other jurors before the Contest, and be mindful of their social media use i.e. not sharing their preferences online before the Contest concludes.

4. Enhanced Technical Safeguards

Alongside these enhancements, the EBU will continue to work closely with its voting partner Once to expand the Contest’s advanced security systems, which detect and prevent fraudulent or coordinated voting activity, and strengthen monitoring of suspicious patterns to maintain trust in the results of the audience vote.

Not a huge fan.

The clearer rules on promotion is clearly an acknowledgement that Israel 2025 cheated or at least went against the spirit of the rule, the most we've gotten so far. Yet despite the EBU obviously knowing which country they are talking about, and that they disagree with this, there are no sanctions for doing this and there's not even an outright ban on the practice.

Fewer maximum votes is a step towards the solution, but misses a cap on voting for the same song at the expense of giving some superfans a hard limit.

Juries returning to the semi-final, actively bad. You might get some claiming that this allows for jury bait to qualify again and dilute it in the final but there were actively bad jury songs qualifying at the end of that and this encourages delegations to go back to sending jury bait.

Jury expansion, good. I have been asking for this for years. 5 to 7 is possibly a bit too little, though the profession expansion and young jurors is welcomed, again I distrust that the safeguards that are allegedly put in place.

Does feel like they stopped short of putting in hard rules for this stuff which just weakens what they're trying to achieve.

ugh noooo not juries back in the semi finals

Honestly this feels like we’re headed for an Israel win. If juries are in the semis, we get more jury bait songs, more in the final. Sooner rather than later, we end up with less of a strong lead for the usual Israel crushing jury winner and the televotes still win out, since they’ve not really done a thing to stop that. Obviously it depends on what songs and I do think jury expansion is a good thing but we do not need them back in the semis.

A vote was held today at the EBU to accept the proposed rule changes. Talk was that if these vote changes failed to pass, then a vote would have been held to remove KAN from Eurovision. They passed, so that did not occur.

Netherlands have wasted no time and have officially withdrawn from Eurovision 2026.

Spain, Ireland and Slovenia gone too and it looks like Iceland will follow. RIP Eurovision.