In recent weeks, the EBU have made announcements that have given us some more of the answers to the questions we asked in Super Early Eurovision Predictions, which saw over 300 of our readers predict certain scenarios for the upcoming contest.
Although we won’t be revealing specific scores and scoreboards until after the contest has finished, as news breaks out throughout the season, we will compare the news with the responses we received.
Will There Be An Anniversary Show For The 70th Edition?
Last week it was revealed by the EBU that there would be an arena tour after Vienna to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the contest. This marks the first time a tour celebrating the contest has happened on this scale organised by the EBU.
Previously in 2015, the 60th anniversary was celebrated in London with a one-off concert “Eurovision’s Greatest Hits”, where 15 artists from Eurovision past performed at the Hammersmith Apollo. Similarly in 2005, a competition was held titled “Congratulations: 50 Years of the Eurovision Song Contest” where the public was able to vote on the best song in the contest history. The contest took place in Copenhagen, where some of the competitors even took to the stage to perform their entries again.
Both London and Copenhagen are among the cities where the tour will be held, alongside Amsterdam, Cologne, Zurich, Hamburg, Milan, Stockholm, Paris and Antwerp.
An overwhelming majority of responses assumed the EBU would be celebrating this milestone in some way, albeit in a new format to what’s been done previously. As this was a simple Yes/No question, we will only be rewarding those who correctly answered “Yes”.
Although this anniversary tour has been announced, in the highly unlikely event that the tour were to not go ahead, the scores will be adjusted accordingly.
Will There Be Any Changes To The Voting System?
Ever since the contest began in 1956, the voting and scoring system used to define an eventual winner has been tweaked, fine-turned and evolved in several different ways. While there are several aspects and rules regarding how the voting takes place at the contest, this year, it has been confirmed that several changes will be made on both the jury side and televote side.
Firstly, the jury will be returning to the semi-finals for a 50/50 say in the result. The jury was previously used in the semi finals from 2010-2022 before it was decided for 2023 that the public had full say on who would make up the lineup for the final. Additionally to reach a wider variety of opinions, each country will have a jury comprising of seven members instead of five.
Within the televoting of the contest, viewers are now also limited to ten votes per person per method instead of 20. Viewers are also encouraged should they use these ten votes to vote for multiple entries instead of placing all on a singular option.
Once more, a majority of our voters had predicted that there would be changes in some way to how we vote at the contest. As this was also a simple Yes/No question, we will only be rewarding those who correctly answered “Yes”.
Though highly unlikely to be back traced, once more, in the event that the EBU decided to reverse these rules before the contest happens in Vienna, the scores will be adjusted accordingly.
The Story So Far
We have the answers now to 7 of the 20 questions set last summer.
- What will be the date of the Grand Final? was successfully predicted to be the 16th of May 2026 by 81.31% of the readers.
- What will be the host city? was successfully predicted to be Vienna by 76.07% of the readers.
- What will be the venue? was successfully predicted to be Wiener Stadthalle by 76.07% of the readers.
- How many countries will compete? was successfully predicted to be 35 countries by 2.30% of the readers.
- Will Moldova come back? was successfully predicted to be Yes by 76.07% of the readers.
- Will there be an anniversary show for the 70th edition? was successfully predicted to Yes by 76.72% of the readers.
- Will there be any changes to the voting system? was successfully predicted to be Yes by 65.90% of the readers.
