The Euro Yard’s Eurovision scoring rubric has undergone a big change in 2025.
The system we used to score the 2024 contest, as well as the past contests we have reviewed from 1956 through 1964, is no more. A new and more detailed rubric has hit the streets. In a separate article, we will detail the changes to those earlier contests. You’ll have to wait a little while to get the re-score for the 2024 contest.
Why Change Your Eurovision Scoring Rubric?
As we grow in knowledge both about the Eurovision Song Contest and about adjudicating music in general, why shouldn’t our methods for judging the songs evolve as well? Our original scoring system, before The Euro Yard even existed, had just four components and had a maximum score of 150 points.
The new system we are rolling out here in 2025 has 18, with a maximum score of 1,000 points. The factors remain the same as what the contest tells its juries to pay attention to during the performances: the overall impression, composition, vocals, and staging. We have just gone to a much higher level of detail in breaking down categories.
There are good reasons why we needed to do this as we search for what we call “Eurovision greatness.” For example, I can find a singer’s vocal choices off-putting but acknowledge that they have great technical skills as a singer. Under our prior systems, there was no way to account for this, but this 2025 rubric does.
Eurovision Scoring Rubric 2025: The Basics
This table might help explain the general change to the rubric we have made.
| Category | Prior Rubric (2024) | Current Rubric (2025) |
|---|---|---|
| Max Points | 500 | 1,000 |
| Overall Impression | 40% (200) | 35% (350) |
| Vocals | 28% (140) | 30% (300) |
| Composition | 20% (100) | 25% (250) |
| Staging | 12% (60) | 10% (100) |
| Bonus/Penalties | ± 10 points | ± 15 points |
There are also now numerous sub-categories under each of these as well, totaling 18 different factors for which we will account. Without going into each one – this is a proprietary blend, after all – we account for things like the quality of the melody, how well the singer(s) projected volume and the adequacy of their range, the complexity of the composition, the depth of the lyrics, and whether the staging fit the context of the song.
Please note that staging is a much smaller factor than the others because for the first 40 years of the contest, the visual spectacle was a very limited consideration. While it should count for something, making it too big of a factor would unfairly penalize older Eurovision songs where they just stood at a microphone in ball gowns.
Each question is scored from 0 to 100. Zero represents a uniquely awful effort, while 100 is just about perfection, or unique excellence. 50, of course, is average. For example, if the question for a song is “the adequacy of the singer(s) range” and we score it a 62, that means it was above-average. However, if it’s a 30, that’s bad.
| Score (0-100) | Text Equivalent |
|---|---|
| 0 | Uniquely awful |
| 10 | Awful |
| 20 | Very Bad |
| 30 | Bad |
| 40 | Below-Average |
| 50 | Average |
| 60 | Above-Average |
| 70 | Good |
| 80 | Very Good |
| 90 | Excellent |
| 100 | Uniquely excellent |
We feed in those scores for each of the 18 questions and then our system spits out a final score for the song, which is how we determine placement.
This Seems Like A Lot, Are You OK?
Oh of course not.
Did Some Placements Change A Lot?
There were no massive shifts in placements of songs through 1964, but some did move, and yes, a douze point or two did change. That will be addressed in another article.
What Is “Eurovision Greatness?”
The reason we started this journey was to find the greatest songs in Eurovision history. This can include those songs generally regarded as the best, but the intent was also to find the forgotten hidden gems through decades of contest history. I feel strongly that we have done this, but having a more finely-tuned system like the one we do now will help us come even closer to doing so.
At the end of the day, our goal is to come up with a fair evaluation of each and every song. No song, even the very best one, is perfect, but it does not have to be in order to succeed in our eyes.
