1969: the year Eurovision had four winners
Four countries, 18 points each, no tie-break rule, and a row in the archive that still refuses to add up.
The short answer
Eurovision 1969 in Madrid ended in a four-way tie: France, the Netherlands, Spain and the United Kingdom finished level on 18 points, there was no tie-break rule, and all four were declared winners.
Every list of Eurovision winners has one row that refuses to fit, and it is 1969.
What happened
The 14th contest was held in Madrid, because Spain had won the year before in London with Massiel's "La, la, la". At the end of the voting, four countries were level on 18 points. The rules had no tie-break procedure, so there was nothing to apply, and all four were declared winners.
That is the whole story, and it is the entire entry in our archive: winner, "Four-way tie"; winning song, none; winning performer, none. The row's note carries the four names instead.
The four songs
| Country | Performer | Song |
|---|---|---|
| France | Frida Boccara | "Un jour, un enfant" |
| Netherlands | Lenny Kuhr | "De troubadour" |
| Spain | Salomé | "Vivo cantando" |
| United Kingdom | Lulu | "Boom Bang-a-Bang" |
Each of these is a full win in its country's record. France, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom count five wins apiece, and 1969 is one of them; Spain counts two, 1968 and 1969, and has not won since. Spain's second win came at home, in the contest it was hosting because of its first.
The year after
The 1970 contest went to Amsterdam, and Ireland won it with Dana's "All Kinds of Everything". But the archive's note on that year records something else: several countries sat the contest out in protest at the previous year's unresolved tie. A result that nobody could call wrong, since four countries had the same score and the rules said nothing, was still a result that some broadcasters would not accept.
Today's rulebook has a tie-break procedure. We do not set it out here, because the EBU republishes the rules for each contest and the version that applies in Burgas is the one worth reading; our rules explainer covers the rules that shape the show.
Why this row breaks every "count the winners" query
Our archive stores every contest since 1956, and it has one column for the winning country. For 1969 that column says "Four-way tie" and the winner slug is empty, because a single winner does not exist and writing one in would be the kind of tidy untruth the archive exists to avoid.
The consequence is arithmetic. Total up wins by counting winners in the contest table and France, the Netherlands, Spain and the United Kingdom each come out one short, so the grand total is four lower than the sum of every country's wins. That is not an error. It is a tied contest recorded honestly.
So each country's win count is stored as a fact in its own record, with the years listed, rather than derived from the contest table at query time. The two disagree by exactly four, and they are supposed to. The history page renders the stored numbers. If you ever see a site where four countries' win totals are one lower than everywhere else, you have found the query that forgot Madrid.
What is not settled for 2027
The full rulebook for Eurovision 2027 has not been published. The EBU announced three rule changes for 2027 on 12 August 2026, none of them about what happens if two entries finish level; we will link the published rulebook from the rules explainer when it appears. Nothing about 1969 is unsettled. It is the one contest whose result is four results, and the archive keeps it that way.
FAQ
Who won Eurovision 1969?
Four countries: France with Frida Boccara's "Un jour, un enfant", the Netherlands with Lenny Kuhr's "De troubadour", Spain with Salomé's "Vivo cantando" and the United Kingdom with Lulu's "Boom Bang-a-Bang". All four finished on 18 points in Madrid.
Why were there four Eurovision winners in 1969?
Because the rules had no tie-break procedure. Four entries finished level on 18 points, nothing in the rulebook separated them, and all four were declared winners.
What happens if there is a tie at Eurovision?
Today's rulebook has a tie-break procedure, which 1969 did not. The EBU republishes the rules for each contest, so the version that applies in Burgas in 2027 is the one to read when it is published; our rules explainer will link it.
