Viral posts falsely claim Eurovision winner was secretly bought

A viral X post claiming that Eurovision’s 2026 contest was secretly “fixed” in Finland’s favour spread widely in the days leading up to this year’s final in Vienna.

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The post, which initially circulated on TikTok, amassed more than 1 million views and presented itself as testimony from a Eurovision “security guard.”

“I can freely say through a secret account that the winner is picked,” the viral post said, alleging that Finland had offered organisers of the competition around €16 million to secure victory.

However, this claim later unravelled during the final itself when Finland — tipped as a favourite to win the competition in betting markets and among fans — ultimately finished in sixth place once the televote was announced, with Bulgarian popstar Dara taking home the trophy.

The anonymous account behind the viral claim has no verifiable connection to Eurovision and no previous posts, nor did it provide screenshots, documents or any verifiable information linking itself to Eurovision’s organisers.

A spokesperson for the Geneva-based European Broadcasting Union (EBU), which organises the Eurovision Song Contest, told us in the run-up to the grand final that the allegation was “false information.”

How Eurovision’s voting system works

The claim the post makes directly contradicts how the EBU’s voting system works.

According to the broadcasting union, Eurovision’s final result combines public televotes with rankings submitted by professional juries in each participating country.

National juries are composed of seven music industry professionals who rank performances during a dress rehearsal before the live final.

Public viewers vote for their favourite acts during the final via phone, text message or online — all for a fee — although they are not allowed to vote for their own country.

Votes, according to the EBU, are processed through telecom operators, payment providers and national voting partners before they are independently verified.

This year, in response to concerns raised by broadcasters over promotional campaigns for acts, the EBU announced it would reduce the number of votes viewers can cast each from 20 to 10 and introduced new rules that discouraged “government-backed campaigns.”

It wasn’t the only false claim to spread amidst the contest. The Cube, Euronews’ fact-checking team, found a raft of claims circulating on social media claiming that the competition was rigged and posts claiming various countries had paid to win the contest.

After Dara was announced as the winner, social media users on Reddit and X circulated unsupported claims that Israel had funded the Bulgarian act alongside several others.

Eurovision acts are primarily funded by their country’s national public service broadcaster.

In this case, publicly available reports show that Bulgarian National Television (BNT), alongside Dara’s Bulgarian record label, Virginia Records, organised and supported Bulgaria’s Eurovision participation, including its national selection process, staging and costs to enter the contest. Dara partnered with international writers and producers for her hit “Bangaranga”.

We found no credible evidence of undisclosed Israeli government funding of Bulgaria’s entry.

False claims spread amidst controversy

The majority of allegations that Eurovision was rigged emerged on social media, among others, during heightened scrutiny over the contest’s voting system and promotional campaigns.

In the past two years, investigations by the New York Times and the EBU’s own fact-checking unit, Eurovision News Spotlight, have examined Israeli government-backed promotional campaigns encouraging viewers in participating countries across Europe to vote for Israel’s Eurovision entry.

Israeli broadcaster KAN said that it believed no Eurovision rules had been broken in response to the controversy.

Additional government support and promotion of Eurovision acts, beyond that provided by state-backed broadcasters, is not unusual, with tourism boards and cultural institutions in particular sponsoring artists’ promotional tours and publicity efforts.

The EBU said it remained confident that the 2025 contest had delivered a “valid and robust result” despite complaints from several public broadcasters over televoting transparency and promotional campaigns.

The EBU later tightened its rules on the number of public votes in response and introduced measures discouraging what it called “disproportionate” government-backed campaigns.

It’s not the first time the EBU has altered the competition’s rules amidst controversy. In 2022, it removed jury votes during the second semi-final from six countries: Azerbaijan, Georgia, Montenegro, Poland, Romania and San Marino, after identifying what it described as “irregular voting patterns.”

This controversy, which was denied by broadcasters, led to organisers temporarily removing professional juries from the semi-finals between 2023 and 2025. Jury votes in the semi-finals were reintroduced for this year’s competition.

However, unlike what viral posts claim, none of the controversies surrounding Eurovision’s voting system has produced credible evidence that the contest winner is secretly predetermined by countries offering the EBU money in exchange for victory.