Norway states EBU is set to review Eurovision voting process

Norway's national broadcaster, NRK, has stated that EBU are set to review the voting of Eurovision.

The move follows disquiet among fans and broadcasters after the 2025 Contest's process and promotion, particularly concerning Israel's entry.

In an interview with vg.no, Mads Tørklep, NRK's head of delegation, expressed their worries over the current voting regulations, stating:

"We have expressed our concern to the EBU and requested a revision of the regulations and – from what I understand – this is what will now happen." 

The catalyst for issues raised this was the extensive campaign for people to vote for Israel, who won the public vote.

This included advertisements on YouTube, social media, and even Times Square in New York. 

However, this doesn't break any current rules, and other countries such as Malta also advertised extensively during Eurovision 2025 and in previous Contests.

The Norwegian publication interviewing Mads Tørklep, said he provided examples showing 80 votes for Israel from people who had not seen the program.

"We see that this can open up coordinated and strategic voting," he said.

He also requested figures of the Norwegian public vote but was denied over concerns that the data could be used to manipulate votes in the future.

While the EBU did not consider Israel's promotional efforts a violation of current rules, NRK believes such actions threaten the contest's political neutrality. 

Tørklep emphasized the importance of maintaining an apolitical competition and indicated that NRK would continue to advocate for changes in upcoming meetings. 

The EBU plans to discuss these issues further in its steering group this summer, with a broader meeting involving all participating countries scheduled in Croatia this autumn. 

Review echoes previous statements form Eurovision

Martin Green, Director of the Eurovision Song Contest with the EBU penned an open letter after the competition this year.

It covered the issue of voting.

He stated that they have a "specially designed systems [that] are used to monitor and prevent fraud."

But acknowledged that diaspora voting or motivated communities will have an impact.

"All audience voting, be it SMS, call or online shows evidence of the motivation of communities or diasporas around certain contestants," he said.

"This can be for many reasons including personal attributes, back stories, geographic affiliations and current affairs. Historically the ESC has been as open to this as other singing and music competitions and reality television."

He also stated in the letter they will look at the voting and campaigns.

"Every year the Reference Group for the Contest, which contains representatives from and acts on behalf of our Members, studies the data provided by our voting partner Once to make recommendations of any actions available to us to ensure our rules and systems remain fail safe and take into account contemporary external factors such as advances in technology and external influences," he said.

"Alongside the discussions of the Reference Group, one aspect the EBU will be looking at is the promotion of our acts by their delegations and associated parties.

"Such promotion is allowed under our rules and acts to celebrate the artists, increase their profile and launch future careers – it’s very much part of the music industry - but we want to ensure that such promotion is not disproportionally affecting the natural mobilization of communities and diasporas we see in all entertainment audience voting.

"Another example is the number of votes we allow per person – 20 per payment method. This is designed to ensure that audiences of all ages can vote for more than one of their favourite songs and there is no current evidence that it disproportionally effects the final result – but the question has been asked and so we will look at it."

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