To have a conversation about who will win the Eurovision Song Contest in 2025, we have to start with how. All 37 competing national broadcasters submit two sets of scores as part of the competition: a televote score (by votes submitted by each country’s voting public) and a jury score (by a jury composed of five music experts chosen by each broadcaster), plus the additional Rest of the World televote, which has equal voting power to a single nation.
The Televote Factors
The televote score is determined by an infinite number of reasons why audience members vote for the songs they like.
It may be that the song has been played on the radio and come up on their streaming platform of choice enough times that the song feels familiar and therefore, the voter likes it most. It may be that the artist is well known to the voters and they cast their vote to support an artist they admire. It may be that the staging has a cool technological effect or that the artist authentically connects down the camera to the audience at home (or both). It may be that something about the song or the artist has gone viral on social media and so feels like a recognisable part of the day’s cultural zeitgeist which encourages the audience to vote for it. It may even be a vote cast because of the country in question rather than the artist whether that be because the voter is a member of said nation’s diaspora or votes in solidarity with the current events in that country or votes because of the cultural links between their country and the one that receives their vote.
In any case, there are so many reasons why a song receives televoters’ approval, which makes winning the Eurovision televote an impressive feat in itself.
The Judges Call
The jury score is determined by four reasons clearly outlined by the EBU as to which songs jury members should rank higher. Those four areas are ‘composition and originality of the song’, ‘quality of the performance on stage’, ‘vocal capacity of the performer(s)’ and ‘overall impression of the act’.
Each juror must rank every song from favourite to least favourite, and the sum of all values scored amongst a jury ultimately determines each set of jury points. For a significantly more detailed analysis of the effect of these criteria on the contest, please refer to Ben Robertson’s 2022 piece. The long and the short is that whilst these criteria are arguably quite subjective, in recent years, they have led to quite objective outcomes.
The other factor to consider is the introduction of 100 percent televote Semi Finals for Liverpool 2023, a move designed to give more power to the viewing public for the Semi Finals.
This has meant that all those going through the Semi Finals are tacitly encouraged to choose songs designed to appeal more to televoters and choose fewer songs designed to appeal more to juries. The result has been a smaller pool of jury-friendly songs available for juries to choose from in the Grand Final and, therefore, a greater likelihood of the jury points being concentrated around one song.
This has been reflected in the Grand Final jury results since the change, with the jury winner winning comprehensively amongst the juries. Sweden scored almost twice as many jury points as the jury second place Israel in 2023, and Switzerland had a 178 jury point lead over jury second place France in 2024.
Of course, you have to score points with juries and televotes in order to ultimately win the contest, but under the current format, it’s an easier job to score televotes with a jury-friendly song than it is to score jury points with a televote-friendly song.
The Class of 2025
So what does this mean for the landscape of this year’s Eurovision Song Contest? At the time of writing, there are six countries that I believe have a realistic shot at winning Eurovision in Basel… Sweden, Austria, France, Israel, The Netherlands and Finland.
Looking to Saturday Night
Sweden, Israel and Finland have paths to victory that rely on a higher televote score than jury score. Whilst it’s not impossible that these songs could score decently with the juries (Käärijä managed 150 jury points in 2023 and Baby Lasagna managed 230 points in 2024), I believe that all that a jury-friendly song (one that scores more than 250 points with the jury) needs to do to guarantee a win is score 200 points with the televote. This is because of the wide spread of songs expected to do well with televoters with the aforementioned trio joined by Estonia, Malta and Ukraine.
Whilst it’s unpredictable to tell to what degree these songs will attract jury voters and televoters, it’s significantly more predictable and reliable to tell which songs are expected to score well against the aforementioned jury criteria.
Leaning Into Friday Night
That leaves Austria, France and the Netherlands, all songs with more classic instrumentation and styling than the aforementioned televote-friendly songs. JJ, Louane & Claude are all singers with fantastic vocal range and capability, their songs are the right blend of traditional and original, and although we won’t see their stage shows until May, there are plenty of reasons to believe that the ‘overall impression of the act’ (according to jury voters) is going to be very strong.
I believe one of these three nations will win the jury vote. The question then becomes ‘by how many points will they win it by’ and ‘will they secure enough televotes to deliver the victory’. Whilst a case can be made for all of them, my prediction is that whilst Austria will win the jury vote, that their televote score will be low with the song failing to translate as effectively to mainstream audiences. However, I think France will come second in the jury vote and will score the televotes needed to outperform both its jury vote rivals and its televote-friendly competitors in the overall scores (with the big, bold disclaimer that the stagings have huge potential to transform the aforementioned picture).
Beyond Basel
So what does the class of Eurovision 2025 teach us about what to expect for next year’s show and beyond?
In 2023 and 2024, the iconic jury scores process in which nations from across Europe delegated their national jury’s points felt like coronations. The jury winner was known quite early on in the 40-minute process, offering a substantial margin of victory before the televoters were counted. While everything is still to play for 2025, there are few reasons to believe that the national juries won’t deliver a similarly comprehensive result to their chosen winner.
Where do we go from here? From my perspective, everybody will have their own decisions to make.
The EBU should reflect on the decision to make Semi Finals 100 percent televote and consider either returning to the Grand Final also being 100 percent televote, or returning the Semi Finals also being a 50-50 split result to ensure competitive consistency. They could also experiment with some kind of 60-40 or 75-25 split on either show, but the point remains the same, if the current circumstances remain (geo-political circumstances included), the jury-friendly songs will always have more opportunities than the televote-friendly ones.
Meanwhile, the broadcasters and artists who are serious about winning Eurovision should make hay whilst the sun shines. Nobody competing in the Semi Final wants to miss out on their country and act being highlighted in the Grand Final showcase, but perhaps chasing televotes the traditional way isn’t the optimal solution.
If a song like Alika’s ‘Bridges’ (Estonia’s 2023 entry) can qualify out of their televote-only Semi (she finished tenth), a jury-foucsed song has significantly more chance of scooping up available jury points once they get to the Grand Final; Estonia finished 8th overall and 5th with the juries in 2023. It’s similarly easy to forget that Nemo finished fourth in their Semi Final last year (62 points off first place) but ended up winning the Final by 44 points off the back of a high jury score.
Finally, we as a community should reflect on the type of music we want to see be successful at the Eurovision Song Contest. How happy would we feel about ‘Bara Bada Bastu’ or ‘Ich Komme’ joining the pantheon of Eurovision-winning songs? Would we like juries to have a greater say in the Semi Finals, even if it were at the expense of a song like ‘Milkshake Man’ or ‘Espresso Macchiato’? Do we trust the wider public to pick the right songs to succeed at Eurovision? What do we even mean by ‘the right songs’? Is a format change necessary to protect the ethos of the Song Contest under the current geo-political circumstances, or will the trends of the last few years smooth out as time goes by, and there’s nothing wrong with the current system anyway?
Let us know by commenting on our Bluesky (https://bsky.app/profile/escinsight.com) with your thoughts and feelings on what sort of music should be successful at Eurovision and what that means for the class of 2025?