The 50/50 jury+televote voting split, introduced in 2016 and refined in 2023, has produced consistently divergent rankings between professional juries (35 national broadcaster panels) and the public (35 country televotes + Rest-of-the-World online aggregate). Vienna 2026 produced some of the largest jury-versus-televote gaps the contest has seen in years โ many of them outside the top three where most analysis stops.
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Below, every Eurovision 2026 jury-vs-televote split where the per-pool rank gap was 5 positions or more, ranked by gap size.
The 7 splits, by gap size
| Country | Jury rank | Televote rank | Gap (positions) | Overall finish |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ๐จ๐ฟ Czechia | 10th (104 pts) | 20th (9 pts) | 10 | 16th |
| ๐ท๐ด Romania | 13th (64 pts) | 2nd (232 pts) | 11 | 3rd |
| ๐ซ๐ท France | 4th (144 pts) | 18th (14 pts) | 14 | 11th |
| ๐ฉ๐ฐ Denmark | T-2 (165 pts) | 11th (78 pts) | 9 | 7th |
| ๐ฒ๐ฉ Moldova | 17th (43 pts) | 4th (183 pts) | 13 | 8th |
| ๐ฒ๐น Malta | 11th (81 pts) | 21st (8 pts) | 10 | 18th |
| ๐บ๐ฆ Ukraine | 15th (54 pts) | 5th (167 pts) | 10 | 9th |
#1 โ France: 14-position gap (jury 4th, televote 18th)
Monroe's Regarde ! was the textbook 2026 jury entry โ a French chanson ballad with classic compositional structure, a refined vocal delivery, and a staging built around storytelling rather than spectacle. Juries rewarded it: 144 points, fourth-highest jury score behind only Bulgaria, Australia and Denmark.
The public gave it 14 points. Eighteenth overall on the televote, ahead only of Lithuania, Czechia, Sweden, Cyprus, Poland and the three televote-zeros (Belgium, Germany, UK).
The structural reading: 14-position jury-televote gaps are the strongest indicator that a country's jury cohort and audience cohort are diverging fast. France's jury appeal is structural โ Slimane (4th, 2024) and Barbara Pravi (2nd, 2021) both jury-leaned hard. The public's France appetite has shifted toward Anglophone or up-tempo entries that don't match what the French broadcaster has selected.
#2 โ Moldova: 13-position gap (jury 17th, televote 4th)
Satoshi's Viva, Moldova! is the inverse pattern. Juries scored it 43 points (17th of 25). The public scored it 183 points (4th of 25) โ between Israel and Ukraine on the televote leaderboard.
This is what a clean diaspora-televote dominant entry looks like. Moldovan diaspora communities across Italy, Romania, Russia (via RoW), Spain and Germany delivered consistent mid-to-high televote points across many voting blocs. Juries โ composed of professional music industry members โ rated the song lower on craft. The mathematical asymmetry: 50% of the voting weight rewarded Moldova's televote strength while the other 50% punished its modest jury appeal. Net result: 8th place overall.
#3 โ Romania: 11-position gap (jury 13th, televote 2nd)
Alexandra Cฤpitฤnescu's Choke Me is the 2026 example of the slot-24 running-order surge. Performing second-from-last in the Grand Final running order, the entry took 232 televote points (second only to Bulgaria's 312) on a 64-point jury performance.
Slot 24 has been one of the strongest televote-yielding slots in modern Eurovision โ only slot 25 (closing the show) consistently produces more televote points. Romania's pre-show price of 20.00 priced the entry effectively as a 5% probability event; the slot-24 televote ceiling alone should have moved that to closer to 9-10%, before any consideration of song quality or vocal performance.
#4 โ Czechia: 10-position gap (jury 10th, televote 20th)
Daniel ลฝiลพka's Crossroads took 104 jury points โ 10th-highest of 25 entries โ but only 9 televote points (20th). A 10-position gap on a 95-point absolute difference.
The reading: Czech entries since 2018 have consistently jury-leaned. Crossroads follows Vesna's My Sister's Crown (2023, 10th overall, 110 jury / 19 televote) and Mikolas Josef's Lie To Me (2018, 6th overall, 281 jury / not yet split-tracked) as Czech entries that win jury credibility without converting to a public audience anchor.
#5 โ Malta: 10-position gap (jury 11th, televote 21st)
AIDAN's Bella is a particularly tough one for Malta. The entry took 81 jury points (11th) and a Saturday-night YouTube live-performance video that crossed 1.3M views within hours โ more than every entry except Bulgaria. But the actual televote during the broadcast: 8 points. 21st of 25.
This is the "YouTube viewership โ Eurovision televote" pattern crystallising. Malta's pre-contest YouTube cumulative (7.2M views as of 10 May) was first of all 35 entries; the entry finished 18th overall. YouTube engagement and Eurovision televote conversion run on entirely different psychology.
#6 โ Ukraine: 10-position gap (jury 15th, televote 5th)
LELรKA's Ridnym is another diaspora-televote dominant entry. Juries rated it 15th (54 pts). The public rated it 5th (167 pts). Ukraine's televote performance has been consistently structurally high since the post-2022 era โ Kalush Orchestra's 2022 victory was built on the same template at a more extreme scale (4th jury / 1st televote / 1st overall).
#7 โ Denmark: 9-position gap (jury T-2nd, televote 11th)
Sรธren Torpegaard Lund's Fรธr Vi Gรฅr Hjem is the slot-1 jury-favourite penalty in action. Performing first in the show, the entry took 165 jury points (tied for second with Australia, behind only Bulgaria's 204). The public scored it 78 points โ 11th of 25, well behind the entry's jury ranking.
Slot 1 has been the structurally worst televote position in Eurovision Grand Finals for the past decade. Recency bias on a televote pool with a 30-40 minute voting window strongly favours later performers โ and Denmark, ballad-led, suffered the deepest version of that pattern.
What 2027 bettors should take from this
Five structural patterns to price into outright and sub-market bets next year:
- 14-position jury-televote gaps are not noise. They reflect a divergence between a national broadcaster's selection committee and what their public audience now wants. Bettors should discount jury-favoured French chanson and Czech ballad-rock entries by 20-25% at the outright level.
- Diaspora-televote countries (Moldova, Ukraine) are structurally undervalued in the outright market. Pre-contest pricing tends to weight jury indicators more heavily; the actual contest weighs them 50/50.
- Slot 24 and slot 25 are televote-yield slots. Add roughly 30-40% to the implied probability of any entry drawing those running-order positions.
- Slot 1 is a televote-penalty slot for ballads. Discount any ballad drawing slot 1 by roughly 25-30% of its pre-show implied probability.
- YouTube cumulative views are a noisy signal for televote. Malta 2026 (7.2M YouTube views, 18th finish) and Greece 2026 (5.7M views, 10th finish) both ran ahead of the public-vote translation.
How to cite this work
Ferretti, M. (2026). "Eurovision 2026 Jury vs Televote: The 7 Biggest Splits." EurovisionOdds.org, May 17, 2026.
Related
- Full jury-vs-televote divergence callouts on /results/2026
- Douze-points distribution (SF1, SF2, Final)
- The ยฃ30 punt that paid ยฃ530
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