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Broadcaster RTVE has requested a review of the televoting system following the 2025 Eurovision Song Contest. And so, a familiar cloud drifts over the glittering aftermath of the Grand Final: has someone been cheating?
The Eurovision Song Contest (ESC) has long been dogged by allegations of voting irregularities. While much of the drama tends to fade with the pyro smoke and sequins, there have been several documented attempts to influence results—ranging from Cold War-era political image-building to modern digital campaigning.
The 1968 Spanish Vote-Rigging Allegation
It’s perhaps poetic—if grimly so—that Spain now demands scrutiny of the 2025 result. The country’s 1968 victory remains the contest’s original great vote-rigging allegation.
Back then, General Franco’s regime was alleged to have orchestrated a behind-the-scenes campaign to ensure La, la, la, performed by Massiel, won over Cliff Richard’s Congratulations. The allegation was revived by a Spanish television documentary broadcast in 2008. It concerned RTVE executives allegedly using Spain’s international television and entertainment industries to cultivate favourable treatment from foreign broadcasters and artists.
There was no formal Eurovision investigation, and no documented audit has demonstrated that the 1968 jury result was rigged. The claim has been repeatedly reported, but remains contested and unproven. Franco’s interest in using Eurovision to project a modern, outward-looking image of Spain is a reasonable historical interpretation; it is not, on its own, proof that votes were manipulated.
Azerbaijan’s 2013 Voting Controversy
Azerbaijan’s participation has also been linked to allegations of organised voting. After Ell & Nikki won with Running Scared in 2011, there were separate concerns about jury voting and political voting patterns. Claims that Azerbaijan paid millions of euros in bribes to secure its result are not established by the EBU material available here.
The more concrete incident occurred in 2013, not 2023. Lithuanian news organisation 15min published undercover footage shortly before the final showing men allegedly offering cash and SIM cards to people prepared to cast multiple votes for Azerbaijan. The men claimed the operation extended across several countries.
The EBU investigated. On 21 May 2013 it said the intentions of those involved had not been fully established and that no link had been proven to Azerbaijan’s broadcaster, delegation or artist. It also said that its anti-“power-voting” systems were designed to detect and disregard systematically organised votes. A subsequent EBU inquiry, reported in 2014, concluded that attempts had been made to influence the vote but had not succeeded because of the contest’s security procedures.
The 2022 Jury Intervention
In 2022, the EBU took one of its most drastic steps yet: removing the jury results of six countries—Azerbaijan, Georgia, Montenegro, Poland, Romania and San Marino—after detecting irregular voting patterns in the second semi-final jury assessment.
The EBU did not publicly establish that all six countries had deliberately colluded, or that every high score was fraudulent. The official description was “irregular voting patterns”. Their jury results were replaced with substitute aggregated scores calculated from countries with similar voting records. The intervention also affected the relevant Grand Final jury allocations.
That is rather more precise than saying six juries were simply caught in a proven reciprocal-scores conspiracy. It was, nevertheless, an unprecedentedly visible reminder that the EBU is willing to intervene when its safeguards detect something it considers irregular.
What About the Televote?
Historically, most attention has focused on jury manipulation. But in recent years, and especially in 2025, the spotlight has shifted to the public vote.
The expansion of online voting, including the global Rest of World category, has widened access while raising obvious questions about organised campaigning and the limits of the system. VPNs, automated scripts (“bot farms”) and bulk SIM-card purchases are plausible vulnerabilities in any digital voting model. However, as of the original publication date, there was no verified evidence that any of these methods altered the 2025 Eurovision result.
Eurovision’s voting infrastructure has involved Digame, with the 2025 result described as externally audited by EY. The EBU has also described multiple security layers and supervision by more than 60 people. The point is not that safeguards do not exist. It is that the average viewer has little visibility into how suspected anomalies are assessed, rejected or, where necessary, corrected.
2025: Familiar Patterns, New Pressure
The 2025 Grand Final took place in Basel on Saturday, 17 May. Austria’s JJ won overall, while Israel’s Yuval Raphael won the public vote and finished second overall. Spain awarded Israel 12 televote points but none from its jury—a split that neatly illustrates why different parts of the voting system can produce very different impressions.
After the final, and therefore after this article was originally published, RTVE sought a complete review of the televoting system rather than merely an audit of votes recorded for Spain. Its concerns included alleged organised external interference, Israel’s participation, transparency and the legitimacy of the current voting model. Ireland’s RTÉ and Belgium’s VRT also sought greater information or review.
The EBU’s own investigation reported evidence that Israel’s Government Advertising Agency had run digital campaigns encouraging people to vote for Israel, including instructions referring to the maximum 20 votes per person. That is evidence of an organised promotional campaign. It is not proof that invalid votes entered the official result, nor has the EBU confirmed that the 2025 result was fraudulent.
On 23 May, after the original publication date, Eurovision director Martin Green said the EBU stood by the validity of the voting system while accepting that aspects of televoting and campaigning required review. The dispute is therefore less a settled case of cheating than a fight over where lawful campaigning ends, where unfair influence begins, and how much of that boundary the public is allowed to see.
Blurred Lines
Eurovision has never been entirely pure. It’s too big a beast to completely tame. Diaspora voting, neighbourly loyalties and cultural blocs are baked into the format. Some viewers argue this isn’t cheating—it’s just Eurovision being Eurovision.
But when manipulation crosses into covert funding, coordinated voting rings or systematic attempts to influence the public vote, the line between fandom and fraud begins to blur. The history is not one uninterrupted story of rigged contests. It is a progression: an unproven political allegation in 1968, documented attempts to influence voting in 2013, detected and replaced jury results in 2022, and a 2025 dispute over campaigning, televote design and transparency.
If the Song Contest is to survive another 70 years, it will need to keep evolving—not just in how it stages performances, but in how it protects the spirit of competition. And perhaps, occasionally, in how clearly it explains what happened after the sequins have settled.
