Stockholm Revisited Part Six: The Voting

08 July 2016 at 19:00 CEST

The voting is the most watched part of the Eurovision Song Contest. In previous years the results of the professional juries and viewers have been presented as a combined result, each accounting for 50 percent of the final score. In the 2016 Eurovision Song Contest, the professional juries and televoters from each country were awarded as a separate set of points from 1 to 8, 10 and 12. In part six of our Stockholm Revisited series we look back at the biggest change to the voting system since 1975, a format which added a new level of excitement for hundreds of millions of viewers across Europe and beyond.

For several years, the winner of the Eurovision Song Contest has been known well before the end of the voting as technically no other act could catch up. Previously the winner was even announced by the presenters before the voting had finished. Under the new system introduced in Stockholm in 2016, the winner was only known in the final minutes of the show.

After close jury voting, Australia took the lead before the public votes were announced in reverse order. Australia, which finished 4th in the televote with 191 points, took second place leaving Russia and Ukraine to battle for the victory in one of the most thrilling voting sequences in over a decade. You can relive the exciting moment the winner was announced in our video below.

The change in the voting format was the outcome of a long process that started in the Reference Group, the governing body of the contest on behalf of the Participating Broadcasters, and was an initiative of the EBU and Swedish broadcaster SVT. The change was accepted by the Reference Group in 2015 and consequently approved by the EBU Television Committee. You can find out more about the voting system in our detailed explanation published earlier this year.