The BBC has today announced it will no longer be using premium-rate phone voting, meaning the end to telephone voting at the Eurovision Song Contest in the United Kingdom.
Having first used telephone voting at the Eurovision Song Contest in 1997, the BBC has confirmed that 2025 was the last edition of the competition where telephone voting was used to help determine the United Kingdomโs public vote. The BBC has announced the end of premium-rate phone voting due to the cost of running phone voting, plus the end of support from BT which had previously provided the phone services the BBC utilised.
The United Kingdom now joins a number of countries that use online voting to determine the results of their voting at the Eurovision Song Contest. The platform, which was first introduced in 2022 for use in Australia, has been steadily expanded to additional countries.
The United Kingdom is set to compete in the 70th edition of the Eurovision Song Contest in Vienna, Austria. The BBC have not yet revealed how they will select their entrant for Eurovision 2026. Since 2020, all British Eurovision entrants have been internally selected.
Remember Monday represented the United Kingdom at Eurovision 2025 in Basel with their song, โWhat The Hell Just Happened?โ. They finished in 19th place with 88 points. For the second year in a row, the United Kingdom did not receive any points from the public vote.
Image Source: Sarah Louise Bennett/EBU | Source: BBC
The United Kingdom debuted in the Eurovision Song Contest in 1957 and holds the record for the most consecutive appearances in the contest. To date, the UK has won the contest a total of five times, with their first victory coming in 1967 and their latest in 1997. The UK holds the record for the most second-place finishes in the contest, having been runner-up a total of 16 times. Since 2000 the UK has finished within the top 10 only three times, this being in 2002 with Jessica Garlick, 2009 with Jade Ewen and 2022 with Sam Ryder who finished 2nd in Turin.
