The Eurovision rules, in plain language

Eurovision's rulebook is longer than anyone needs. These are the rules that actually shape what you see on the screen, and where each one came from.

The rules that decide the song

Three minutes is the oldest of these and the least negotiable. Songs that exist in longer form are re-cut for the contest, and the Eurovision edit is frequently a different and better arrangement than the original — three minutes forces a decision about what a song is actually for.

Six performers is a fire-and-camera limit as much as an artistic one. Everyone on that stage has to be tracked by a live director cutting between cameras in real time.

Sixteen exists because of one entry. In 1989 an eleven-year-old competed for Israel and a twelve-year-old for France, and the discomfort that followed produced the age limit. It is measured on the date of the grand final, which has caught out delegations before.

1 September is the anti-hit rule. A song cannot have been commercially released before that date in the preceding year, which stops a country entering something the whole continent has already been streaming for a year.

Live vocals, and what "live" means here

Lead vocals must be performed live. That has never changed and it is what stops the contest becoming a mime competition.

Everything else has moved. There has been no orchestra since 1998, and no live instrumentation is amplified — all instrumental music comes from a pre-recorded backing track. Since 2021, backing vocals may also be pre-recorded, at each delegation's choice.

That last change is more consequential than it was reported to be. A country with a small budget no longer has to fly and house six people to get a choral sound, which quietly narrowed a gap between rich and poor delegations. It also means a guitar you can see being played on stage is frequently not the guitar you can hear.

No politics, and how loosely that holds

The rules prohibit lyrics, speeches and gestures of a political nature, and prohibit anything that would bring the contest into disrepute.

In practice this is enforced unevenly and always has been. Songs have been rejected for being too pointed and admitted while being obviously about something. The rule is best understood not as "no politics" but as "nothing the EBU cannot describe as non-political with a straight face" — which is a much lower bar, and one that moves depending on the year.

Who actually decides

A reference group of broadcaster representatives oversees the contest, and the executive supervisor rules on eligibility. Delegations submit songs for approval; entries have been rejected, and entries have been changed and resubmitted.

What is not settled for 2027

The rules are republished for each contest. Nothing above is guaranteed to carry into Bulgaria 2027 until the EBU publishes that edition, and the backing-vocal and jury rules in particular have both changed within the last five years. We will update this page against the published 2027 rules when they exist, rather than assuming.