In this week's episode, I've got new rules. I count em. Eurovision announces changes to the regs for 2026. But will it be enough to stave off the anti Israel rebellion? Plus second thoughts, why is it so hard to win from the so called death slot? I'm Stephen Perkins and this is Douzpoix. Hello, London, we are ready for your vote. Hello. It is Monday, 1st of December, and in lieu of an advent calendar, we're bringing you a brand new deep dive into the history of Eurovision. As I crunch the numbers to work, my second in the running order has historically been the spot that nobody wants and whether we can expect anybody to win the contest from there anytime soon. But first, as always, we're going to take a look through the headlines from the last fortnight. The biggest story of the last two weeks has of course been the announcement from the EBU that they are implementing new rules from the 2026 contest onwards, allegedly in response to the concerns raised by fans and broadcasters alike following this year's event. Those new changes the return of the juries to the semi finals. The number of jurors for each country being expanded from five to seven, with the stipulation that at least two jurors must be aged between 18 and 25. The deployment of enhanced technical safeguards to monitor fraudulent or coordinated voting attempts, the maximum number of votes being capped at 10 rather than 20. And clearer rules on the promotion of songs and artists. Let's go through each of them in turn. First of all, the return of the juries to the semi finals. It feels slightly farcical that this has happened as part of a rules patch to restore faith in the integrity of the voting process. Given that the reason for removing juries from the semi finals from 2023 onwards was because there was obvious corruption in the jury votes in 2022, the EBU has stated that jurors will have to sign a formal declaration stating that they will vote independently and impartially. Although quite what's stopping them from doing this while making a huge theatrical wink to the camera is a little unclear. Having said all of that, I do ultimately support the return of the juries to the semi finals because I think it will make the process. The problem with the system that we have at the moment is that the absence of juries in the semi finals means that all of the countries who have to actually compete in them try to enter the most televote friendly songs they can think of in order to secure their qualification through to the final, only to find themselves then playing by a completely different set of rules on the Saturday night when the juries are involved, and it creates a somewhat uneven playing field because it is a problem not faced by the Big Five or the host country. While I don't think that bringing the juries back for the semis is a foolproof solution by any means, I do think that you need to score the semi finals in the same way that you score the finals, whatever system you are using. As for ensuring that there are younger representatives on the juries themselves, that's an interesting experiment. It's not entirely new to the competition because the voting system used between 1971 and 1973 required the use of just two jurors, one over 25 and one under 25, with at least a 10 year age gap between them. But it will be interesting to see how this change plays out and whether it leads to any sort of difference in the trend of the sort of song that juries tend to vote for. If it does lead to fewer discrepancies between the juries and the televote, overall I'm inclined to see that as a good thing. Moving on to the enhanced technical safeguards without having more specific information on what these are, what form they will take, how they will be used, information which I highly doubt the EBU is planning to make public, I have limited faith in this. The EBU has already repeatedly stated that the televote in 2024 and 2025 was robust and legitimate despite all evidence to the contrary. So this just feels a bit like window Dr. Perhaps more specific information will be revealed to member broadcasters at the General assembly later this week, but it doesn't seem like something we as mere punters can really draw much of a conclusion from right now capping the maximum number of votes at 10 rather than 20. I'm not fully convinced that this is going to restore the integrity of the televote to any noticeable degree. Assuming that most normal Eurovision voters will spread their allocation across multiple entries that they enjoyed, this still means that a concerted or organised campaign for a particular country could skew the results. To my mind, the way to tackle this problem is to do something similar to how the voting works at Junior Eurovision and cap the number of votes each person can give any particular entry at, say, 1 or 2. Simply capping the overall number of votes allowed to be cast might slightly diminish the impact of a coordinated campaign, but it doesn't completely remove it. Finally, the promotion issue. Under the new guidelines, disproportionate voting campaigns are discouraged and participating broadcasters and artists are not permitted to actively engage, facilitate or contribute to promotional campaigns by third parties, including governments or government agencies that could influence the voting outcome, and any attempt to unduly influence the result will lead to sanctions. Oh boy. So after being repeatedly told that Israel weren't doing anything wrong for the last two years, the rules have been changed to explicitly outlaw the thing that they, and only they were doing. It's all very well saying that the EBU will take action against these sorts of activities, but they've comprehensively failed to do so in the past two contests, and I'm not convinced that if it happens again in 2020, the EBU won't just turn around and claim the rules were somehow not broken. Any attempt to unduly influence the result will lead to sanctions should always be the case at the contest. And yet the EBU have ignored what's been going on right under their noses until a group of member broadcasters force the issue again. This seems like a rule whose effectiveness can only really be measured once we see how the 2026 contest goes, and depending on the outcome, it might simply be too late to undo the damage by then. Clearly these measures were introduced in a bid to quell the threats to withdraw by Ireland, the Netherlands, Slovenia and Spain. Though since the new measures were announced, both Slovenia and Spain have released statements that their positions remain unchanged. Jose Pablo Lopez, the chair of Spanish broadcaster rtve, stated that the EBU knows that these measures are an improvement, but not enough and more importantly, they do not sanction Israel. We need more measures and this is what we will raise at the General Assembly. What we asked for months ago is the same that we ask for now. The General assembly is due to be held on the 4th and 5th of December, so in our next episode, which will be the last one for this year, we'll take a look at the decisions that were made and what that means for the contest going forward. In other news, the Kazakhstan Ministry of Culture and Information has stated that the EBU will consider the possibility of the country's debut at Eurovision early next year. The Ministry has however, stated that their involvement in the contest would require a significant financial investment as the broadcaster Kabhar Agency lacks the necessary resources at present. Kazakhstan joining Eurovision is something that has been rumoured for a while now. They participated at Junior Eurovision five times from 2018 to 2022, including two second place finishes, but withdrew for financial reasons from 2023 onwards and decided that it would be a better use of their energy to focus on participation in the main contest at some point in the future. As an associate member of the ebu, Kazakhstan cannot apply to participate on their own and would require an invitation from the Contest Reference Group in order to take part. There have also been some odd developments coming from this year's Junior Eurovision set to be held in Tbilisi on 13th December. The venue for the contest was originally announced as the Olympic palace. However, on 24 November it was reported that it had been moved to the Gymnastic hall of Olympic City in the same city due to the unavailability of the original venue for an assessment visit by the ebu. These reports were subsequently confirmed through the official website. It does feel like something is going quite wrong with the organisation of the contest for the venue to be changed at such a late stage, so I'm intrigued to see how this year's event is going to play out. And finally, for those of you still wanting to attend the contest in Vienna next year, the Eurovision website has had a facelift and is changing from Eurovision TV to Eurovision.com and will allow fans to create their own EuroFan accounts with early access to tickets, exclusive merchandise and whatnot. So you might want to pop over there and give the new site a look after you finish listening to this podcast. Okay, so picture this scene. Congratulations, you have survived the semi finals and made it through to the Grand Final of the Eurovision Song Contest. You are going to be seen on millions of screens around the world on Saturday night and you've theoretically got a 1 in 26 chance of winning the whole thing. But oh no, the producers have just revealed the running order for the final and the worst possible thing has happened. You are on second. That's right, in the nearly 70 year history of the Eurovision Song Contest, nobody has ever won the competition from position number two in the running order to the point where it's outright regarded as entirely ruining the chances of whoever is unlucky enough to fill it. But just how doomed are you if you find yourself in the so called death slot? I decided to sit down and crunch the numbers to work that out. So once I pulled my spreadsheet together, the first thing that emerged from the data is that while it is indeed true that nobody has ever won the contest after performing second, it's not the only cursed spot. People don't make quite such a song and dance about it. But nobody has ever won from 16th in the running order either. It's also true that nobody has ever won from 25th or 26th, although there even being that many Spots in the final is a relatively recent invention. We had 25 competitors for four years in the mid-90s, but there being 25 guaranteed finalists every year only became a thing from 2008 onwards, and the increase to 26 came in 2012 when Italy returned to the contest and gained big five status. And of course, depending on how academic you want to be about how we're defining these terms. Yes, we haven't had anyone win from 25th or 26th yet, but we have had Axe win from the last spot in the running order six times in 1960-1970-1977-1982, 1983 and 1989, and from the penultimate place four times in 1972, 1997, 2002 and 2008. There are also certain other spots that have only been lucky once in a blue moon. Turkey's Sertarna is the only artist to win from fourth in the running order in 2003 with Every Way that I Can, and 2002's Victory for Latvia's Marie N with Iwanna is to date the only time a country has won from slot 23. Only the United Kingdom has ever won from seventh, and that was part of the four way tie for first place in 1969, so the water is already a bit muddy on that one. And nobody has won from position number six since the Netherlands in 1957. However, none of these slots get the same degree of bad press that second does, and perhaps the reason for that is that few countries have even come close to winning from second to date. The most successful entry to have gone second in the running order in terms of pure podium positions is the United Kingdom's Cathy Kirby with I belong in 1965, which finished as the runner up to that year's winner, Luxembourg's France Galle with Poupet de Sire, Poupe de son. There are three countries who've managed to take bronze from spot number two, Turkey's Sedna Paker and group Etnik with Dinle in 1997, the United Kingdom's Jessica Garlic with Comeback in 2002, although she had to share third place with Estonia's Saleh, who performed eighth on the night, and most recently Ukraine's Alena Alena and Jerry Hale in 2024 with Teresa and Maria. I wish I could say there was some better news further down the table, but out of all the artists who've performed second at a Eurovision final in this century, Jessica Garlic and Alena and Jerry are the only acts to have managed a top five finish and when you look at the results from all of the countries who performed second since 2004, they've all ended up on the right hand side of the scoreboard, apart from Bosnia and Herzegovina in 2011 and Ukraine in 2023. So it's clear that this isn't just hyperbole. Being on second really does damage your chances of success. Having said that, it's worth considering. Is it really being on second that dooms your chances? Or is it more that slot number two is a convenient position for the producers to drop an entry that they don't really have that much faith in? Looking at that period that I was just talking about, from 2004 to the present day, it has been used almost exclusively for songs that had either pre qualified for the final or which had been in lower realms of the qualifying entries from the semis until the aforementioned 2011 entry from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Love in Rewind by Dino Merlin, which had finished fifth in its semi and went on to place sixth in the final despite having an unfavourable performance slot. The same Trend continued until 2014 where Belarus Teo with cheesecake finished 5th in the semi final but only 16th in the final. But that feels like a bit of a borderline case at best. It was a moderate success both times it was performed, and it might have placed slightly better if it had been performed in a more favourable slot. But 2014 was a really competitive year and I don't think that song was likely to land much higher in the overall finishing position wherever you placed it in the running order. After that we were back in the same territory again until we get to 2024 when Ukraine, who finish second in their semi final, are put in slot two and end up finishing third overall. So I'm really struggling to find a recent example of a song that was a genuine contender to do well and was scuppered by being placed second. It seems to be a place where producers are happy to drop either a song that qualified automatically for the final and is perceived as uncompetitive competitive, or a song that got through in the semis from somewhere between 7th and 10th place. In other words, acts that are just happy to be there at all and have no real expectation of winning. And that's probably because ultimately, at the end of the day, the Eurovision Song Contest is a television show and the producers want it to have a sense of momentum. Ideally, you want to keep your big hitters to go out somewhere between the middle and three quarters of the way through. You want a suitably climactic closing song and you want an opener that is going to get the party started. Somebody has to follow that spectacular opening, so why not one of the lower impact entries to give yourself somewhere to build up to from there? And speaking of going on first, we should probably talk about that briefly. Only three countries have ever won from the opening the Netherlands Teach in with Ding a Dong in 1975, the United Kingdom's brotherhood of man with Save youe Kisses for Me the following year, and then Sweden's Herre's with digiloo digilei in 1984. So even though getting to start the show is something of a prime slot, it's still pretty unlikely to lead you to an overall victory. Up until fairly recently, the narrative was always that you needed to be somewhere around 17th to 23rd in the running order to have the best chance of winning, and those are probably still the best slots you can hope for. But it's not completely make or break. There have been a few occasions recently where a presumed frontrunner has been seemingly sandbagged by drawing a performance slot in the first half, but has still gone on to win. In fact, looking at a sample size of the last 10 contests, six of the winners performed 12th or earlier, the earliest being ninth for both Sweden's Larene with Tattoo in 2020 and Austria's JJ with Wasted Love in 2025. One other thing I wanted to look at while we were here was whether any particular country had been overburdened with second place performance slots over the course of the competition. Before I started actually working out the data, I would have put money on the United Kingdom having performed second more than any other country, because I remembered an era in the early 2000s where we seemed to almost always be on in slot number two, but the data doesn't quite seem to back that up on either count. We were out in front until as recently as 2025, but the producers in Basel deciding to put Laura Thorne on second with La Poupet Montlucon means that we are now tied with Luxembourg on six appearances, the UK's in 1965-1974-1996-2002, 2005 and 2008 and Luxembourg in 1957-1967-1969-1982, 1984 and 2025. And the Netherlands is hot on the heels of both countries with five appearances, the most recent being in the year 2000. So what have we learned from all of this number crunching? It is still true that you really don't want to be told you're performing second in the final, although the doomed nature of that position is as much of a self fulfilling prophecy as anything at this point, because producers don't tend to put anything in there that has a particularly strong chance of winning. 2024 being the rare outlier that proves that when you do pop a bonafide crowdpleasr in there, it can still do really well. So is there a chance that someone could win from second in the future? Of course it's always possible, but realistically you are going to need producers willing to take the risk of putting a heavily favoured song in that slot in the first place. Which I imagine a lot of them aren't going to, but I'd love to see someone try that's it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening. As I mentioned, our next episode will be the last one before we go on hiatus for Christmas and at present the plan is for that one to be a roundup of where we are in the wake of the ebu's General assembly later this week. So do keep an ear out for that one in the fortnight's time. If you haven't done so already, please do subscribe on your podcast platform of choice to ensure that all of our upcoming episodes are automatically downloaded to your device. And while you're there, if you feel like we deserve it, I would love for you to leave us a five star review to help us climb those all important podcast charts. We will be back in two weeks, so until then, Goodnight Europe and Good Morning Australia.