Rules of the Worldvision Song Contest

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  Generic logo of the contest since Q4-22
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  Generic logo of the contest since Q3-25

Rules of the «Worldvision» Contest

The current set of Rules has been update on OCT 15, 2025 and is effective for all the "Worldvision" competitions

1. Main Rules of the Project

1.1. Contest «WorldVision» (herein - Project) is one of the Projects that is organized by IECO, fully inherit all the rules of the Organization itself and made within its main Rules.
1.1.1. Participation within the Project is provided only to the full members of the IECO Organization with an active membership. (herein - Participant)
1.1.2. Associated members can enter participation if invited by IECO to do so. Associated members must receive an invitation every time till they receive full membership
1.2. The Project is set to be organized quarterly (four times per year) within these periods: January - March, April - June, July - September, October - December. Each edition of the Project (herein - Season) is named after «Quarter - Year» and numerated incrementally.
1.3. Each Participant of the Project must submit a song within the dedicated timeline (herein - Submission) and participate in voting, wherever applicable.
1.3.1. The timeframe for Submissions of the Season is announced individually within the official channels of IECO.
1.4. These rules are subject to change and has to be approved from the IECO Reference Group

2. Video Requirements

2.1. Contest Submission must include an Official Music Video (e.g. OMV or clip) from YouTube
2.2. The video must be in high-definition (HD or higher) and be released not older that 1st January 2022
2.3. The video must have less than 75M views on its time of announcement by the country to compete in the Season (contest or national selection). Unless the singer is connected with the country or the song performed in its national language
2.4. It is not allowed to create a replacement for the video if the song does not have an OMV or to use a fan-made video from YouTube or upload your own
2.5. Lyric Videos or Visualizers must have a decent quality and look like a music video clip. Static images, equalizers, screens with effects, flying texts, karaoke videos, repeated frames etc. are not allowed
2.6. Live performances or placing a song over the live performances is not permitted

3. Song Requirements

3.1. The song must have lyrics and be written in English, French, Spanish, German, Italian or in one of the official or close to the official languages of the country that it will represent. (at least 50% or more of it)
3.2. It is allowed to request a quota for any other language, but not more than once every 4 Seasons. The quotas can be granted to the first three Submissions within each Season. If the singer was born or raised in the participating country or have ties with it, the song can be performed in any language
3.3. The song can be selected openly with a national Selection (herein - Selection) or internally as per the Participant's choice. Successful completion of the Selection grants access to the "Second Chance" contest
3.4. Language quotas are combined for "Worldvision" and "Second Chance" and no longer required for the national selections itself. (see National Selections)
3.5. The song must be original: It is not allowed to submit song covers, instrumentals, remixes or any other remakes of the song. 3.6. It is not allowed to resend the song again, if it has already participated in any of the IECO Projects earlier. (see Archive)

4. Singer Requirements

4.1. Singers that participated at Eurovision, Junior Eurovision, Americanvision or Intervision are not allowed to participate. (Even if the contest was cancelled or yet to happen or the participant withdrew/disqualified)
4.1.1. Singers from the national selections to these shows are allowed, but with any song that has not competed in the national selection.
4.2. The singer must be a real adult person (not AI or robot) and be alive on the time of Submission. If the singer dies during the Season, the country gets continue its participation and gets automatically disqualified.
4.3. The singer must not be included into the Stop-List. As of now 150 singers has been included into the list and are not permitted to be taken to participate (see Stop-List)
4.4. If the singer has won "Worldvision" for any country, it can no longer participate in future editions from any other countries (Winner's exclusive rights)

5. National Selection Requirements

5.1. National Selection (herein - Selection) is a specific event organized by a participant, consisting of one or more stages, held within the Submission period, where a recap is compiled from three or more songs that are evaluated by the organizer and other invited participants or non-participants, and a specific factual result is calculated, which determines the placement of all the participating songs
5.1.1. Selection Recap can be created within the Recap Maker Tools like Scoryx or edited with video editors
5.2. Selection runner-ups or second runner-ups may enter to the "Second Chance" contest (See rules of "Second Chance")
5.3. National Selections that do not follow the rules (eg. have no recap, less than three songs, does not follow the timeframe for submissions or have no specific factual results calculated or published) are considered as a semi-open Selections. Organizers of the semi-open Selection are not eligible to participate at "Second Chance"
5.4. National Selections can have up to 20 songs within one Edition (Season)
5.5. As soon as the participants of the Selection announced, they are automatically reserved by the Selection organizer till the results published.
5.5.1. Participant may submit song reservations for the current Season to Supervisor. Submitted requests will not be verified or saved. Participants are responsible for verifying their reservations independently using publicly available tools and retaining their booking confirmation. IECO does not maintain any records of reservations and can only support Participants with valid booking confirmations and in the event of disputes. Since the chance of a match is minimal, no dispute resolution will be conducted unless two or more countries submit the same request.
5.6. It is Selection Organizer responsibility to check that the songs within the Selection are eligible and following the rules. If the winning song is not eligible, it will be not accepted. Selection Organizer must consider a runner-up or subsequent place in the Selection. In case none of the songs are compliant with the submission rules, the selection is cancelled.
5.7. Invitations to participate in the National Selection voting can be sent not often than two times per day
5.8. After the Selection Ends, all songs are added into Archive and cannot be chosen for the next episode. Any of the participating songs from a National Selection can simultaneously enter in another Selection and can be taken in case they didn't win in the originally claimed Selection. If the song participated in two different Selections within one Season, it cannot participate in any other.

6. Contest Flow: Format & Organizing

6.1. The contest is held and organized by the Participant, who won the previous edition within one single location & venue. The venue and the location are subject to the Reference Group and the head of the IECO approval and must match the demanding criteria. If there is no possibility to find the location or there is no wish of the winning Participant to organize the new Season's Project, the head of the IECO shall appoint the new organizing Participant. As a good gesture, usually the first approach initiated to the previous edition runner-up, then a second runner-up. The approach is not limited to runner-ups or mandatory to follow the order: the final decision is behind the IECO and made in the best interest of the Project.
6.1.1. In case the winning Participant wants to organize the Contest, but don't have infrastructure for it or there is a valid reason not to produce the Contest there, another country may hold the Contest in partnership with the winner on their behalf.
6.2 The contest consists of the Grand Final and if the amount of the participants bigger than 28 - one or two Semi-Final(s). The format of each Season and the amount of the shows is decided by the IECO Reference Group.
6.3. All shows must be live streamed and aired for the Participants to watch the Broadcast. After the show, a recording must be published.
6.4. The Grand final consists of the auto-finalists and 10 Participants with the highest score that are qualified from each Semi-Final.
6.4.1. The Auto-finalists are determined based on the previous Season results and combined result of the past three Season. The quantity of countries that Advance to the Grand Final is decided based on the format of the Season. Host country must advance to the Grand Final regardless of the results.
6.4.2. Auto-finalists do not participate in the Semi-Finals but watch and vote in them. They also can be invited to perform to showcase their songs within the same time as Semi-Finalists.
6.5. Each Participating delegation consists of the Head of the Participating Delegation that holds the membership (HOD or Country Curator) and the invited Observer. It is an obligatory of the Participant to secure their Observers. IECO can also assist countries with securing their Observers
6.5.1. The quantity of the Observers should equally match to the amount of the Participants. Appointed Observer cannot be changed within the Contest if they participated in any of the stages of the Edition already. In case the Observer cannot continue to rank Participants in the advancing stages of the ongoing Season or a voting discrepancy have been found or other rules are broken, the voting is generated based on the voting replacement rules.
6.5.2. IECO also invites five "International Observers" (herein - Rest Of The World or ROTW) from all around the world. These five additional invited Observers will produce together one additional set of ROTW points. (see - Voting)

7. Allocation Draw

7.1. After all the participating songs were secured and verified, and the Season format has been decided, IECO should organize allocation draw. In case there are Semi-Finals held, Distribution Pots must be formed in order to produce balanced Semi-Finals.
7.2. Semi-Final Allocation Pots are formed based on the study of the Participants negotiations: previous voting patterns, friendships, similarities in taste, relations etc. in order to split the Participants in the way that would minimize voting patterns.
7.3. The countries are split into halves of the Semi-Finals by taking rounds with pulling one Country from each of the Pots. Each round the Semi-Final and half alternates, so the Countries from the same pot are drawn into different halves and semi-finals. Allocation draw must be performed publicly with Participants given access to the live stream or with provided transparent proof of the its performing that can be verified
7.3.1. If it is a Grand Final allocation draw or if there is only One Semi-Final, halves are determined by giving Participants an envelope to choose from. Each envelope contains a random pre-determined outcome: One-fourth of the envelopes are having first half, another one-fourth - second half, while the rest (half) of the envelopes have Producer's choice (any half). The order for choosing an envelope is based on the announcements of qualification.
7.4. After all Participants have received their halves in the particular Stage, the Supervisor determines the running order with an algorithm based on the songs tempo, language, clip, vocal in order to reduce similar songs performing next to each other and making the Contest more dynamic and exciting.
7.5. Hosting nation receives two random numbers to perform and chooses their running order, which can be declined. In case the two random numbers are declined, a new random number is pulled and that new random number becomes the selected one with no choice of declining or changing it.

8. The Voting

8.1. All Heads of Delegations (assigned as Juries), Observers (assigned as Televotes) and ROTW are required to submit their full rankings from all of the presented songs in each stage of the Season where determined.
8.2. The first place of each ranking gets 12 points, second - 10, third - 8, then other countries in top-10 get 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2 and 1 respectively. Rankings below the top-10 receive no points
8.3. Rankings of five ROTW members are combined together into one set of points with an exponential formula 12*0.827^(n-1), where n - is the Countries placement. 8.4. The winner is decided by summarizing all points together: the Country with the highest amount of points wins.
8.5. Points from all Juries and Televoters are absolutely equal in their value. Therefore, the final tally is made up of 50% of the jury's scores, 50% of the televoting scores, and one additional pair of scores from ROTW that is added to the televote results.
8.6. In case of a tie, The winner of a tie is the Country that received more points from the televoting, then the country that received points from more countries in the televoting, then the country that received more 12 points in the televoting, then 10 points, all the way down to 1. In case all scores in televoting are identical, the winner of a tie is the Country that received points from more countries in the juries, then the country that received more 12 points in the juries, then 10 points, all the way down to 1. If the tie cannot be broken in this way, the country that performed earlier wins the tie.
8.7. At the Grand Final live stream, the Jury results are announced individually and juries are encouraged to record their announcements, while televoting results (including the additional set of points from ROTW) are announced combined.
8.8. The Semi-Finals follow the same process to produce the results, but the qualified countries are announced randomly and the results are kept in secret till the end of the Season.

9. Other Moments

9.1. Failure to vote, collusion, randomness, intentional falsification, irregular voting patterns, generating rankings from AI or a refusal to provide rankings in full will result in disqualification of the Participant from the next Season of the Project. IECO will calculate a substitute aggregated result (a fallback) for each country concerned and the voting will be replaced using jury results of all other countries from the Allocation Draw pots with an exponential formula (Section 8.3).
9.2. If an Observer refuses to participate in voting, fails to vote with accordance to the rules or is unable to do so, they will be replaced and another Observer shall be appointed instead. If they have already casted their votes in any of the previous stages of the Season, IECO will calculate a substitute aggregated result and the voting will be replaced using televoting results of all other countries from the Allocation Draw pots with an exponential formula (Section 8.3). Observers that were identified with certain irregular voting patterns shall not be invited again to participate in the next Season.
9.3. If the Participant have a valid reason and informed the organizers of inability to vote due to circumstances, the replacing voting will be calculated, but no penalties will be introduced to the Participant
9.4. In case it is proven that the Participant or Observer have not watched a recap in full, their votes would be cancelled and IECO will calculate a substitute aggregated result instead with accordance to the rules 9.1 and 9.2.
9.5. HOD's cannot withdraw or replace their submitted participation after the song has been announced and confirmed.
9.6. Members of IECO can be downgraded to Associate Members or expelled from IECO in case of breaking the rules.