Changes to the way the voting procedure is presented during the Eurovision Semi-Finals are under consideration for 2025. 

Swiss broadcaster SRG SSR is organising the competition for the first time in 35 years following Nemo’s victory in Malmö back in May this year. 

Click to read this story at a glance…

• Changes to Semi-Final Voting: Swiss broadcaster SRG SSR are considering changes to how the qualifiers are presented during the Eurovision Semi-Finals in 2025, in the hope of making the process more exciting
• Grand Final Duration and Efficiency: The team is exploring ways to shorten the length of the Grand Final, which has recently exceeded four hours, by adjusting elements like interval acts and the voting duration
• Host and Show Details for 2025: The hosts for the 2025 Eurovision contest in Basel will be announced in January, while creative preparations for the interval acts are underway

Despite admitting that making big changes to the way Eurovision comes across on television is a difficult task, Executive Producers Moritz Stadler and Reto Peritz are keen to make the Semi-Finals more exciting. 

“We are thinking of changes for the Semi-Finals,” Peritz told The Euro Trip in a sit-down interview. 

“The voting is amazing in the Grand Final – there are a lot of emotions. 

“For the Semi-Finals it’s not that exciting because you just say who’s in the Grand Final. 

“So, we are thinking a lot about this with our creative team on how to make the voting and the final results for the Semi-Finals more exciting.” 

While organising the 2023 edition of the contest, host broadcaster BBC tried to make its own changes to the way the finalists were presented at the end of the Semi-Finals. 

The BBC’s idea was to have the artists competing in the Semi-Finals find out whether they’d qualified for the Grand Final by standing side-by-side on the stage, rather than being sat with their delegations in the green room. 

The new system was scrapped after one trial run during the first dress rehearsal for the first Semi-Final, just two hours before the evening preview show. 

Peritz didn’t elaborate on any of the creative ideas the Swiss team have had for changing the way the qualifiers would be presented. 

Grand Final length

In the 2024 edition of the contest in Malmö, voting opened just before the first song was performed in the Grand Final. 

The decision on whether to keep this in place for 2025 hasn’t been made, so for now it remains as it was in Malmö. 

Peritz and Stadler have been looking at other slight changes and adaptations to the Grand Final to make the broadcast more efficient. 

Recent editions of the Grand Final of Eurovision have exceeded four hours in length – a time that is still the absolute upper limit for SRG SSR. 

“There is a limit where it becomes too long,” Stadler said. 

“In 2025 we will not extend it, but we are looking at how to shorten it. 

“What’s clear is that there are incompressible elements in the show that you cannot shorten. 

“What you can play is the duration of interval acts, the duration at the end of the voting procedure. 

“We are looking at this in a reasonable way, but we need to be conscious of the amount of things we need to fit into this show to bring the feeling across the screen. 

“We will find the right compromises, but we will not divide the time by two – that’s impossible.” 

In a wide ranging interview with The Euro Trip, Peritz also confirmed that the hosts of next year’s contest in Basel will be revealed in January. 

The creative team led by Head of Show Yves Schifferle is currently working on the interval acts for the three live shows next May, but there is no date set for the announcement of special guests.