The biannual meeting of the EBU will take place in early December, sparking curiosity about more potential changes to the contest as we know it.
The 97th EBU General Assembly has officially been scheduled to take place on December 3rd-4th 2026 at EBU headquarters in Geneva, and has invited delegations from as many as 57 countries to attend the meeting. Of course the main topic here on the agenda will be the upcoming Eurovision Song Contest taking place in Burgas, Bulgaria come the week of May 11th 2027.
The contest has undergone some major transformations, particularly very recently, and many of the changes have been officially discussed at these very meetings. As the date of the assembly creeps closer, the question becomes: what can we expect from the upcoming meeting, and will the contest once again be altered majorly?
Recent Meetings
We can look at the previous meetings to see where we are now. The 95th General Assembly in the winter of 2026 saw major voting reforms, including a new cap on the public vote and a return of the juries to the semi-finals for the first time since Eurovision 2023. Also implemented after the meeting was a ban on third-party and state-bodied sponsored ad-campaigns, and a partnership with a cyber-security firm to prevent fraudulent votes, all in the name of ensuring the purity of the public vote.
But this was all just a prelude, however, to one of the most impactful assembly votes in Eurovision history: were these reforms enough for the public broadcasters to not need another separate vote on Israel staying in the contest? Via secret ballot, an overwhelming majority voted yes and Israel continued on to the contest in Vienna, closing out one of the more heated and controversial EBU General Assemblies ever. But it didn’t come without its consequences: the result of the vote triggered an immediate and indefinite boycott of five countries.
The last meeting took place June 24th-26th 2026, and though there would be another significant change, it would be in a much less heated atmosphere and maybe even a more inclusive one. There were executive leadership elections and media policy discussions, but the real eye-opener was the approval of adjustments to EBU membership rules, paving the way for CBC/Radio-Canada to officially become a full member of the EBU and make its debut at Eurovision 2027 and perhaps other countries in the future.
Out with the old, in with the new
All this brings us to September 2026, where yet another significant shift took place as well: the EBU Reference Group, created in 1998, was removed and a new group called ESC Committee established in its place. Its primary purpose was decision-making on behalf of the broadcasters on various topics such as rule changes, financial oversight, etc. Now, this change in committee effectively allows the public broadcasters themselves to have a much larger hand in the decisions, allowing them to report straight to the executive board with no middleman. This is all due to heavy pressure from the Belgian VRT and Dutch NPO, who demanded more transparency, closer control and direct involvement in the policymaking.
The 97th General Assembly-Where does that leave us?
With the new committee representing the broadcasters unknown as of yet when to officially start and who the leader will be, we look to the topics that may be brought up at the meeting, according to the website songfestival.be:
- Participating broadcasters will be required to explicitly endorse the values of the competition, including universality, diversity, equality, independence and inclusion.
- Giving a more central place to the history and values of the competition, including a campaign emphasizing that the slogan “United by Music” is a unifying mission and not just a slogan.
- More voting changes and stricter supervision; full details unknown as of yet.
The cooperation with Israeli sponsor Moroccanoil will finally end after the current Eurovision.
The EBU has already made other new rules as well in preparation for Eurovision 2027. For example, a ban on advertising campaigns that give an unfair advantage or negatively affect the vote under threat of sanctions; automatic denial of hosting from a winning country in the event of security instability or a sensitive geopolitical situation; and raising the minimum age for participation from 16 to 18.
Eurovision as a contest is constantly growing and evolving in many ways. The picture will slowly begin to take shape as we get closer and closer to May 2027, but for now the Eurovision universe will have to wait until December 3rd-4th 2026 to really get an idea of what the upcoming contest in Burgas will look like.
Eurovision 2027: The 71st Eurovision Song Contest will be held in Bulgaria, following the country’s historic win with the song “BAGARANGA” performed by DARA. This will be the first time the contest is hosted in Bulgaria.
