Eurovision 2023: Russia will not be able to vote in the “Rest of the World” category!
An interesting change coming to Eurovision 2023 is the introduction of the “Rest of the World” category, which means that people from non-participating countries will be able to vote for their favorites in this year’s contest. The votes received from all around the globe will be counted as the votes from a single country, which translates to a total of 58 points. There is slight advantage to the audience votes this year, because there will not be a “Rest of the World” category in Jury votes.
In today’s press conference, the executive supervisor of Eurovision, Martin Österdahl, mentioned that the “Rest of the World” category was inspired by Junior Eurovision that uses an Online vote since 2017.
I was taken aback that 182 countries voted in Junior Eurovision 2020 in Warsaw, and says something about Eurovision becoming a global phenomenon.
It was also confirmed that EBU will not publish the list of countries that will be eligible to vote using the “Rest of The World” platform. On the other hand, it was known that some countries will not be eligible to vote. One of these is Russia, because payment providers have suspended operations in the country.
Russia, as a result of the ongoing Russian-Ukrainian war since February 2022, is expelled from the European Broadcasting Union(EBU), losing its rights to participate and broadcast the EBU programs, including Eurovision. The same might apply also to Belarus, that had its broadcaster expelled from the EBU in 2021 and can reapply for membership in 2024.
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Photo: Peter Wixtröm/Aftonbladet
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