Eurovision Song Contest Asia 2026

Eurovision Song Contest Asia 2026 is a single Grand Final held on Saturday 14 November 2026 at the IdeaLive arena inside the BRAVO BKK entertainment complex in Bangkok's Rama 9 district. There are no semi-finals in the inaugural edition: all 10 confirmed broadcasters send one entry directly to the live televised final. EBU Director Martin Green confirmed the single-final format publicly during Eurovision week in Vienna, telling fans that the launch contest is "starting small" and would expand in future editions.

Song rules.Eurovision Asia inherits the European contest's core rules. Songs must not exceed 3 minutes in length. No more than 6 performers can appear on stage at any time. Backing vocalists must be live (no full pre-recorded vocals on the lead line). Lyrical content must comply with the contest's non-political principles — Martin Green has been explicit that "in order to be part of Eurovision, you have to share our values", and Voxovation co-producer Peter Settman has said participating countries must sign off on those core principles.

Voting structure.The result is determined by a 50% professional jury / 50% public televote split, mirroring the European contest's 50/50 era. Each participating country contributes one jury and one televote ranking; both pools award 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, and 12 points to their top 10 entries. The contest hosts will read out jury scores live and then aggregate the televote in ascending order, starting from the act that received the fewest jury points. The act with the highest combined jury + televote total wins.

Language.Entries can be performed in English, any participating country's national language, or a blend. Voxovation organisers have stressed they want country-specific musical identity on stage rather than English-only entries — Khmer pop from Cambodia, V-pop from Vietnam, T-pop from Thailand, Bangla pop from Bangladesh, and so on. Korea's ENA open call explicitly invites any South Korean national to apply with any genre, though K-pop industry sources have signalled the major labels (HYBE, SM, JYP, YG, Kakao M) are unlikely to enter their A-tier acts in the inaugural year.

The host venue is IdeaLive at BRAVO BKK, a 4,234-seat live entertainment hall on the 5th floor of the BRAVO BKK complex in Bangkok's Rama 9 district. BRAVO BKK opened in 2024 as one of Bangkok's newest mixed-use entertainment venues, and IdeaLive is its flagship concert space. At 4,234 seats it is roughly 26% the capacity of the Wiener Stadthalle (~16,000) that staged Eurovision 2026 in May — Eurovision Asia is being built around a more intimate, TV-first format rather than the European contest's arena scale.

Host broadcaster. The contest is produced for Thai TV by Channel 3 (BEC World), the largest commercial broadcaster in Thailand. Channel 3 is part of the BEC World public listed group and reaches roughly 95% of Thai households. Several mainstream press outlets in the first 48 hours after the EBU announcement misreported the host broadcaster as Thai PBS — the correct host is Channel 3. Voxovation, the production company set up by Eurovision veterans Peter Settman, Christer Björkman and Assaf Blecher, produces the show alongside Channel 3 and the EBU.

Production approach.Voxovation CEO of Asia Marcus Tang has emphasised that production is being built in close collaboration with each participating broadcaster rather than transplanted wholesale from Europe. Asian broadcasters from Thailand, Laos and Nepal travelled to Vienna for Eurovision 2026 to study the European contest's production. Executive producer Assaf Blecher described the goal as "learning their culture, their music, what kind of flavour we can bring" — explicitly NOT replicating Europe.

Broadcast.The Grand Final airs live on the official Eurovision YouTube channel globally, plus terrestrial TV on each participating country's broadcaster (Channel 3 in Thailand, ENA in South Korea, ABS-CBN in the Philippines, VTV3 in Vietnam, TV3 Media Prima in Malaysia, NTV in Bangladesh, Himalaya TV in Nepal, TV5 in Cambodia, VTE9 in Laos, BBS in Bhutan). International broadcasters outside the participant pool may acquire rights for tape-delayed or live broadcast.

Hosting in 2027.Unlike the European contest, where the previous year's winner automatically hosts the following edition, Eurovision Asia uses a Junior Eurovision-style bidding process. A separate host selection will take place after the November 2026 contest. Several broadcasters in the region have already signalled interest in hosting future editions.

Eurovision Asia is the first sustained territorial expansion of the Eurovision brand beyond Europe. Previous attempts to franchise the format internationally have a chequered history: Eurovision Asia-Pacific with SBS Australia was floated in 2017 and shelved by 2019; the American Song Contest (NBC) ran for a single 2022 season before being cancelled. Voxovation co-producer Peter Settman has been candid that Eurovision Asia is engineered specifically to avoid those failure modes.

The American Song Contest lessons.Settman has publicly identified two structural mistakes in the US edition. First, the show abandoned country-vs-country competition in favour of US-state-vs-state, which removed the diaspora-voting cultural energy that drives the European contest. Second, NBC chose not to use the Eurovision brand name, which removed the franchise's most valuable asset. Eurovision Asia keeps both: countries compete against each other, and the "Eurovision" name is front-and-centre (the choice was Eurovision Song Contest Asia rather than "Asiavision").

The cultural-diversity bet.Asia is roughly 4.7 billion people across thousands of language groups, six dominant religions, and music industries with wildly different commercial structures. Settman has argued that the diversity itself is the contest's competitive advantage: "Having countries with so much diversity when it comes to traditions, religions, language will automatically create a much broader palette of songs." Where Eurovision Europe has consolidated around English-language dance-pop in recent years, Eurovision Asia is being positioned to lean into K-pop, V-pop, T-pop, Bangla pop, Khmer pop, and the regional fusion sounds that don't fit neatly into European charts.

Digital-first design.Settman has described Asia as "larger, younger, faster, more digital, more mobile than anywhere else on this beautiful planet" — and the show is being designed accordingly. Expect heavier emphasis on real-time digital engagement (in-show polls, social-feed integration, official YouTube live) than the European contest currently offers. The intimate 4,234-seat IdeaLive venue is part of that calculus: the production is engineered for camera and stream rather than arena spectacle.

Long-term strategy.Martin Green has been explicit that the goal in year one is sustainability rather than scale: "Let's start small and grow." A single Grand Final, 10 countries, one venue. If the show works commercially and editorially in November 2026, the format can expand to semi-finals, more participating countries, and a 2027 host bid from a different territory.