The dramatic change in Serbia’s Eurovision national selection voting system has been unveiled: This is how past flaws will be corrected and a true balance between jury and public voting will be achieved.

The Serbian national broadcaster unveils a dramatic change in the voting system for the Serbian Eurovision national selection, “Pesma Za Evroviziju 2025”. This change comes after RTS confirmed Serbia’s participation in Eurovision 2025, to be held in Basel, Switzerland, in July. Serbia has already revealed the format for selecting their Eurovision representative and has closed the submission window for songs to the competition.

Previous System and Its Main Flaw

A significant change is emerging in the voting system for Serbia’s Eurovision 2025 national selection. This change aims to correct distortions discovered in previous years and create a better balance between jury opinions and public will. The new voting method, mentioned in Article 5 of the Serbian national selection regulations, introduces a proportional distribution between jury and public votes. This time, the vote ratio is set at 50% jury and 50% public, unlike the previous system where each side awarded points in a fixed system of 12, 10, and 8–1, which didn’t necessarily reflect the true preferences of voters.

In the previous voting system, jury scores were translated into a fixed point system: the leading candidate received 12 points, followed by 10, and then 8–1 points in descending order. A significant flaw in this method was that converting the ranking to the fixed system meant that jury scores didn’t always reflect the true differences between contestants, and sometimes the system created significant gaps between public opinion and jury ranking.

A notable example of this discrepancy occurred in Serbia’s previous national selection in 2024. The song “Ramonda” performed by Teya Dora won first place due to significant support from the judges, who awarded it 44 points – far more than other candidates. However, Breskvica, who performed the song “Orlovo gnezdo” (“Eagle’s Nest”), received overwhelming public support with 97 points, yet failed to win the competition and finished second, as the jury score was relatively low compared to that of the public. This scenario illustrates the gap between jury and public rankings, and how the previous system couldn’t adequately balance the different opinions.

The 2025 Change: Proportional Distribution

To address the flaws revealed in the previous system and provide a more accurate representation of public will, a new method based on proportional point distribution has been adopted this year. In this system, each of the five judges in the competition will award a total of 58 points, so that the total points from the judges will reach 290 points. Accordingly, the public vote will also be divided into 290 points. Thus, a song that receives, for example, 10% of the public vote, will also receive 10% of the total points allocated to the public – that is, 29 points.

The new system is based on the principle of proportional score distribution, giving judges and the public a balanced influence on the results. This way, every vote from both judges and the public is weighted more accurately, allowing for fairer and more balanced results. Additionally, the new method also considers the possibility of increasing the number of judges to increase the number of points distributed and ensure balance is maintained. In fact, the announcement of the new system didn’t come as a complete surprise; already in 2024, there was an intention to make a similar change, but due to late regulation adoption, they had to forgo it. Now it seems the change is final according to the new published regulations, although an official announcement on the matter has not yet been made.

If the new system had been implemented last year, Breskvica, who received the highest public support, might have won the competition and represented Serbia at Eurovision 2024. This change ensures that competition results will no longer be affected by the fixed point conversion, but will more accurately reflect the preferences of both sides – the public and the judges.

Competition Structure and Dates

“Pesma za Evroviziju ’25” will consist of two semi-finals and a final:

• First Semi-Final: February 25, 2025
• Second Semi-Final: February 27, 2025
• Final: March 1, 2025

The competition will be held at RTS Studio 8 Košutnjak in Belgrade. Results will be determined by a combination of professional jury and public voting.

Serbia in Eurovision 2024

Source: Evrovizija.rs.

Eurovision 2025: This will be Serbia’s 17th participation in Eurovision. Serbia joined the contest in 2007 and achieved its best result in the same year when singer Marija Šerifović won first place with the song “Molitva”.