The voting system for Eurovision 2025, to be held in Basel, Switzerland, will remain unchanged, reports the Croatian Head of Delegation to Eurovision.
Eurovision 2025 will be held in Basel, Switzerland, following Nemo‘s victory with the song “The Code“. Despite Switzerland’s controversial win at Eurovision 2024 in Malmö due to the Eurovision voting system, where the public vote winner doesn’t necessarily win the competition, it was revealed today that no changes will be made to the voting system for Eurovision 2025, and it will remain identical for at least another year. This news was shared in an interview by Tomislav Štengl, the Croatian Head of Delegation and a member of Eurovision’s governing board on behalf of the EBU, the Reference Group.
Voting System to Remain 50:50
According to Štengl, the voting will remain at a 50:50 ratio between the public and the jury this year. He said in the interview: “Changes have been made with different combinations at Eurovision. There was only a jury, then the public, and half jury, and then only the public. There’s always some flaw, it can’t be 100 percent good for everyone. For two years now, the public’s winner has finished second. However, the EBU’s position at the moment is that nothing will change. The principle of 50:50 jury and public remains.”
Controversial Outcomes in Recent Years
As known, the winner of the Eurovision final is determined by a combination of public voting, which receives half of the weight of the results, and jury voting, which receives the other half. Thus, the public and the jury decide equally 50%-50% who will be the winner of the competition. The voting system has evolved throughout Eurovision’s history to this form, which has existed for many years. However, this voting system has faced considerable criticism and has become controversial in the Eurovision world, mainly due to the excessive weight that a unanimous jury vote gives to one country, a weight that hardly allows the public vote to influence and therefore in these cases the winner of the public vote does not win the competition.
Such cases have occurred several times throughout Eurovision, and twice in a row in the last two years. In 2023, Loreen from Sweden won with the song “Tattoo” despite being second in the public vote, and the public’s winner Käärijä eventually came second with the song “Cha Cha Cha” and did not win. A year later, in 2024, another more extreme case occurred when the public’s winner Baby Lasagna from Croatia came second with “Rim Tim Tagi Dim” while Nemo, Switzerland’s representative, won the competition despite the public giving them only fifth place. This was a historical discrepancy between the public vote and the jury vote, who crowned Nemo first in their voting with a huge score, making it almost impossible for anyone else to win.
No Dramatic Changes Expected in the Near Future
Apparently, no dramatic changes in the public-jury ratio in Eurovision voting are expected in the foreseeable future. In 2022, a historic change was made when it was decided to turn the semi-final voting to 100% public, without judges. Until then, the method was similar to the decision in the Eurovision final – 50:50, and it also caused songs that the public preferred to advance to the final, not to enter it.
Source: HRT.
Eurovision 2025: The 69th Eurovision Song Contest will be held in Basel, Switzerland, on May 13, 15, and 17, 2025. The St. Jakobshalle arena, which will host the competition, is expected to accommodate about 12,000 spectators for each show. The contest will take place in Switzerland following the country’s third historical win with the song “The Code”, performed by singer Nemo. This will be the third time the competition has been hosted in Switzerland, after the contest was held there in 1956 and 1989.
