Bangkok, the capital of Thailand, is getting ready to host the Eurovision Song Contest Asia 2026, the first edition of the contest that takes the Eurovision format to the Asian continent.
On Saturday 14 November from 14:30 CET (13:30 UTC, 20:30 ICT in Bangkok), the One Bangkok Forum becomes the centre of Asian music as it stages the inaugural Eurovision Song Contest Asia.
With Woody Milintachinda and Cindy Bishop as hosts, the historic show brings together 11 countries: Bangladesh, Bhutan, Cambodia, Laos, Malaysia, Mongolia, Nepal, the Philippines, South Korea, Thailand and Vietnam. The aim is to bring the Eurovision format to Asia while showcasing the region’s cultural, linguistic and musical diversity.
The voting system for this first edition is now settled. The new contest uses a mixed format modelled on the Eurovision Song Contest, in which national juries and viewers both play a decisive role in choosing the winner.
The final ranking combines two sets of scores: the votes of professional juries from the participating countries and the public vote, cast online. According to the organisers, each accounts for 50% of the result. The big difference from the European contest is that public voting is entirely online and open both to viewers in the participating countries and to fans in the rest of the world.
National juries: half of the result
The first part of the vote belongs to the national juries. Each of the 11 participating broadcasters has put together a panel of experts made up of leading professionals from the Asian music and entertainment industries, who assess the competing entries.
As is usual at Eurovision, the juries base their votes on the dress rehearsal held on Friday 13 November, the so-called jury show. Each juror draws up their own ranking of the entries according to several criteria, including musical quality, songwriting, artistic performance, the overall strength of the entry, stage presence and vocal ability.
Each broadcaster then combines the individual rankings of its jurors into a full ranking, which determines the points that country awards. The scale is the traditional Eurovision one: 1 to 8, 10 and 12 points.
With 11 countries taking part, every entry receives points from every national jury, since no country can vote for itself. This is a quirk of the first edition: 11 is exactly the minimum number of participants the classic Eurovision scoring system needs to work.
The professional juries account for 50% of the result.
Eurovision Asia 2026 running order: Vietnam opens and Malaysia closes the show
Online voting: viewers decide the other half
Once the jury points are in, it is the viewers’ turn. One of the main innovations compared with the European contest is that the public vote takes place only online, with no phone or SMS lines, through the official platform at vote.eurovisionasia.com. According to the organisers, voting opens during the live show, and the results are independently verified by Forvis Mazars.
Vote in the Eurovision Song Contest Asia 2026
Voting is open to viewers in the 11 participating countries and to fans anywhere else in the world. Votes from territories not competing are grouped together as “Rest of the World”, which counts as an additional voting country and awards a set of points equivalent to that of each participant.
As at Eurovision, viewers in the participating countries cannot vote for their own entry, while international fans can back their favourites wherever they live.
The platform has a few particular rules. Each user gets eight free votes to share among their favourite entries, but they must be spread across at least three songs, a measure designed to stop viewers putting all their support behind a single entry. Those who want to vote more can buy up to ten extra votes WHY: Price is unverified: https://eurovisionasia.com/vote/ does not specify it and https://vote.eurovisionasia.com/ has no readable content. OLD: As is usual at Eurovision, the juries base their votes on the dress rehearsal held on Friday 13 November, the so-called jury show. NEW: The organisers have not confirmed when the juries assess the performances..
It is the same system used in the various national selections organised by Voxovation, the company that manages the rights to the international expansion of the Eurovision Song Contest, together with the participating broadcasters.
The organisers say the public vote accounts for 50% of the result, alongside the professional juries.
How will the Eurovision Asia 2026 results be announced?
The results presentation also follows the Eurovision Song Contest model. The points from the 11 national juries come first, and the public points are revealed afterwards.
In this second part, the audience points are announced in reverse order of the jury ranking, starting with the entry the juries placed lowest. Each country receives its public points as a single combined total, so support for each entry is revealed step by step.
After the broadcast, the organisers will publish the full breakdown of the scores, from both the national juries and the online vote, showing in detail how the final ranking was built.
With this system, Eurovision Asia keeps the essence of Eurovision voting while adding a digital model that lets fans anywhere in the world help choose the contest’s first ever winner.
Cindy Bishop and Woody Milintachinda to host Eurovision Asia 2026