ESC Rules Contest #30 {1985}

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ESC Rules Contest #30

This edition will have a similar structure to the Eurovision Song Contest 1985, but entries can be from any year. More details on rules below.

This edition there are 20 spots

Rules –

1. Places in this contest are first come, first serve, with no permanent players. You cannot select your own country – the countries are assigned randomly. You will not get the same country twice in a row (unless you won last time)

2. You can select a song from any year

3. Covers are not allowed

4. Instrumentals/samples are not allowed

5. In order to compete for a country, an artist must have…
a. been born or raised there
b. at least one parent from there (grandparents are not enough)
c. lived there for at least 3 years (if they are currently between two countries, they are considered eligible)

5.1. Borrowing -

- A song can compete for a country if at least one of the composers and lyricists are from that country (The vast majority of foreign acts in Eurovision fell under this category.)

- Monaco and Luxembourg can send any song in the French language. They can only sing in other languages if they send native acts.

- San Marino can borrow from Italy

- Andorra can borrow from Catalonia (The only permitted languages are English and Catalan)
 
- Ireland can borrow from Northern Ireland (they can also compete for UK but that's not considered borrowing)

- Artists from unrecognized countries (e.g.  ) can compete for the country they have the closest ethnic ties with (e.g. Kosovar Albanians can compete for Albania).  Ethnic minorities can compete for the country of their mother tongue, unless they come from a multi-lingual country (e.g. an Italian speaker from France can compete for Italy, but an Italian speaker from Switzerland cannot (unless they also have ties to ))

- Cyprus may borrow from Greece every second time a individual user is drawn the country. Note that you won't be informed when you can borrow from Greece so it's up to you to remember.

No approval is required for borrowing


6. The countries will withdraw and return based on when they withdrew/returned in the actual contest. The only exceptions are if they win or they withdrew because of poor results but they got good results in this contest.

7. You may hold a national selection in whatever format you like. Once a song competes in an NS, it cannot compete again.

8. The majority of broadcaster-specific rules are ignored (e.g. if you have Denmark after 1999, you do not have to send a song in English, even though it is required irl). One of the exceptions is Belgium’s dual broadcasters – they will alternate between a Flemish (Dutch) and Walloon (French) act each year

9. The song can be any length (there wasn’t much point in including the 3 minute rule)

10. A song cannot take part if it has competed in…
- (Junior) Eurovision
- (Junior) Northvision (unless they NQ'd before 2017/edition 18)
- Any forum contest in the last 6 months (based on confirmation date) (this is to prevent songs that aren’t overused at the time, but become overused by the results) (exceptions will be made for songs confirmed up to 3 days earlier - unless it's for Northvision or Fantasia)
- 3 or more forum contests

11. Songs/artist names cannot include product placement (e.g. Google Maps, Facebook)

Year specific rules –

1. For this edition, there will be 19 players.

2. You can have up to six lead singers

3. Belgium’s act must be from Wallonia (The French-speaking region)

4. All entries must be in an official/regional language of the country. This does not include diaspora languages (e.g. can sing in Welsh but not Polish). Songs with less than 50% foreign lyrics will be accepted

5. Each player must give and - to their top 10 (the voting system pre 2016)

6. Singers can be of any age

7. If anyone does not vote, they will receive a strike. Replacers will vote on their behalf (if replacers cannot be found, the votes of two other players will be combined together). Voting replacers will get an automatic spot in the following edition.

8. If there is a tie, there will a sing off, and the other participating countries will vote for their favourite. (According to the Eurovision wiki, the 'count-back' wasn't introduced until 1989)