What is a public vote in Greece? Definition, rules and examples
A public vote in Greece is the stage of a contest or award at which members of the public cast votes, as four organisers in the published reports show. The Vikos-Aoos Geopark photo contest took its public vote on its own website between 16 November and 10 December 2016. The European Business Awards Greece opened its public vote on 9 January 2017, and Sing for Greece 2026 offered online voting alongside text messages.
Rechecked on 21 October 2026.
A public vote is one stage of a contest, not the whole contest
In the European Business Awards Greece, the public vote opened on 9 January 2017 and was one step before the category winners were named. The winners were due at a Gala Final in May 2017, so the public stage and the announcement fall on different dates. A reader who wants the whole contest has to follow the vote into the gala.
Sing for Greece 2026 shows the same structure in another form. Online public voting was added to the Greek Eurovision national final, with semi-finals on 11 and 13 February 2026. The vote is a stage inside a selection rather than the selection itself, and the reports describe no other stage of the vote.
The Vikos-Aoos Geopark photo contest had a public vote of its own, run electronically on its website. The reports describe the vote as a separate step on the contest's website, and nothing in the reports says what else decided the winners. Read the contest's own terms before assuming that the vote alone settled a result.
- The European Business Awards example separates the vote from the gala.
- Winners were due at a Gala Final in May 2017, after the vote.
- Sing for Greece 2026 held semi-finals on 11 and 13 February 2026.
- The Greek national final added online voting in 2026.
- A public vote is a stage, and the outcome comes later.
The examples collect public choices through websites, text messages and a platform
The Vikos-Aoos Geopark took its vote on its own website, electronically, from 16 November to 10 December 2016. That is the simplest channel in the set: one site and one window. The reports name no broadcast or messaging channel for it, so a reader should not assume one.
Sing for Greece 2026 used two channels, online voting on the official platform and voting by text message from Greek numbers. Both channels appear in the same report, so a reader can compare them directly. The reports describe both as open inside and outside Greece, which is a rule about access, not about how votes are counted.
The MAD Video Music Awards 2026 public vote went live in April 2026 on the broadcaster's own site. The broadcaster is MAD TV, and the reports say nothing about a second channel for its vote. A single channel is a fact about that example and cannot be generalised to the others.
- The Vikos-Aoos Geopark ran its vote electronically on its own website.
- Sing for Greece 2026 offered online voting and text messages from Greek numbers.
- Online voting was open both inside and outside Greece.
- The MAD Video Music Awards 2026 vote went live on the broadcaster's site.
- Each example names one channel or two, and none names a third.
Sing for Greece voting was open inside and outside Greece
The reports make one access point explicit: Sing for Greece 2026 allowed online voting from inside and outside Greece. An entrant from outside the country is therefore not shut out by the channel, although the reports do not say whether other conditions apply.
The Vikos-Aoos and European Business Awards examples say nothing about location. Their reports name a website and a gala, and no place of residence, so a reader cannot tell from them who was allowed to vote. Location rules are a question for each organiser's own terms.
Location is one of the points where a voter's choice meets the organiser's terms. A reader from outside Greece should check that the terms cover them before voting, and should not assume that the Sing for Greece access rule applies to a different contest.
- Voters inside Greece reached the Sing for Greece 2026 vote online.
- Voters outside Greece were included in the same online voting.
- The reports say nothing about residency checks for any example.
- A location rule belongs in the organiser's terms, not in a news report.
- Check the location line in each contest's own terms before voting.
The published reports name no Greek regulator for public votes
None of the published reports cites a Greek regulator, a consumer body or a court on a public vote. That absence is a fact about the reports, and it leaves the regulatory question open.
Legality is the question most readers bring, and it gets one answer here. The reports carry no Greek statute on public votes, no ruling on fake engagement and no consumer complaint route, so no legal position is stated on this page.
Where the question matters for one contest, that contest's rules and its organiser are the first places to read, and a national authority is the place for a binding answer. The reports name neither in a way that settles the point, so the point stays open.
- No published report cites a Greek regulator on public votes.
- The reports carry no Greek statute on public votes.
- No consumer complaint route is named in the published reports.
- No legal position is stated on this page.
- A specific contest's own rules are the first place to check legality.
A vote date, a gala date and a broadcast date are different facts
The European Business Awards Greece example puts two dates in one sentence: the public vote opened on 9 January 2017, and the category winners were due at a Gala Final in May 2017. Those are different facts. A reader who takes the gala month as the close of voting has read the wrong date from the example.
The Vikos-Aoos Geopark gives a start and an end, both in late 2016, and the reports state them as the window for its web vote. The MAD example gives a going-live date in April 2026, which is when its vote opened on the broadcaster's site, not when it closed.
A broadcast can run after a vote closes, and the reports do not say when the MAD results were given. Keep the three dates on separate lines when comparing examples, and mark which one the organiser actually states.
- The European Business Awards Greece vote opened on 9 January 2017.
- Category winners were due at the Gala Final in May 2017.
- The Vikos-Aoos window ran from 16 November to 10 December 2016.
- The MAD public vote went live in April 2026.
- A gala date is not the closing date of a vote.
Rules that apply
The sources were checked and reviewed on 21 October 2026. There are four of them: a European Business Awards Greece release distributed by a press-release service, an ERT report on Sing for Greece 2026 carried by a Greek news site, a MAD TV item on the MAD Video Music Awards carried by a Greek news site, and the Vikos-Aoos Geopark's own page about its photo contest. Each date and name above comes from one of those four, and no Greek regulator, consumer body or platform rule was found in the material, so none is described.
What we decline
This explainer does not rank the examples or call any of them fair, and it cannot say whether any Greek vote was counted correctly, because the reports hold no counts to test. It offers no legal opinion on public votes in Greece, and it never treats a photo contest's vote as the same thing as a broadcast vote. Nothing here shows how an organiser checks its own result, and no step that affects a count is described. Where an organiser's own rules are silent, this guide stays silent too.
Questions and answers
The public vote is the stage of a contest or award at which members of the public cast votes for an entry, a nominee or a photo. The four examples on record are the European Business Awards Greece, Sing for Greece 2026, the Vikos-Aoos Geopark photo contest and the MAD Video Music Awards. In each one the organiser runs the process, and none of the reports treats the public stage as a separate legal category.
The published reports name no Greek regulator and quote no regulator's ruling on public votes, so their treatment cannot be stated from them. The examples show organisers running votes on their own websites, on a broadcaster's platform and through text messages, and none of the reports ties those choices to an authority's position. Anyone who needs that position should ask the authority itself.
The reports show what these organisers did state, not what a law requires them to state. The European Business Awards Greece gave the opening day of its vote and the Gala Final month for its winners, Sing for Greece 2026 gave its semi-final dates and its channels, and the Vikos-Aoos Geopark gave its website and its window. A legal list of required statements is not in the reports, so the items above are examples, not requirements.
Start with the dates, since the examples separate the vote opening, the close and the outcome: the Vikos-Aoos window ran from 16 November to 10 December 2016, and the European Business Awards winners were due at a May 2017 gala. Next check the channels, because Sing for Greece 2026 used text messages from Greek numbers as well as online voting. The rules that govern a given entry belong to its organiser, and the published reports contain none of them.
Yes. The Vikos-Aoos Geopark photo contest ran its public vote electronically on its own website from 16 November to 10 December 2016, which is the simplest case in the published reports, with one channel and one window.
The easiest mistake is to read one date as the whole window. The European Business Awards Greece vote opened on 9 January 2017, while its category winners were due at a May 2017 gala, so the opening and the outcome fall on different dates. Taking the gala month for the close of voting, or a report's publication date for the vote date, misreads the example.