Understanding a SMS vote in Romania: rules and examples
An SMS vote in Romania is a vote sent as a text message to a short number, with the song's contest number inside the message. For the Eurovision contest of 2026, Eurovision Romania (TVR) told viewers to text 1399, and Euronews Romania listed phone, SMS and online as channels. A 2016 ANCOM press release says users must be given clear tariff and billing details for SMS to short numbers. The reports say nothing on tariffs for the 1399 text, scam cases or disqualification.
Rechecked on 21 October 2026.
The short number and the contest number do the work
The SMS line in the Eurovision case has two parts, and the reports name each one separately. The first is the short number, 1399, which is the address the text is sent to. The second is the song's contest number, which the message has to carry so that the text points at one entry in the contest. Neither part is optional in the instruction as reported, so a text with only one of them is not the vote the broadcast asked for.
The reports do not say how a text is handled once it reaches 1399. They do not name the operator behind the number, and they do not say who receives the messages on the broadcaster's side. This page does not fill those gaps with guesses. Each of the three items a reader can check, the number, the contest code and the channel, is stated in the instruction as reported, which makes them the part of the process a reader can verify before sending.
Phone and online voting sit beside the SMS line in the same public vote, according to the Euronews Romania report on the final. For a reader, that makes SMS one channel among three rather than a procedure with steps of its own. The reports do not say whether the three channels feed a single count, and this page does not assume that they do. Nothing in the material settles it.
- The Eurovision SMS line in Romania uses the short number 1399.
- The text must carry the song's contest number to identify the entry.
- Phone, SMS and online were the three channels named for the final.
- The reports do not say how a text to 1399 is processed.
- A text without the contest number is not the instruction reported.
The ANCOM release sets a tariff duty, not a contest rule
ANCOM's 2016 press release concerns SMS sent to short numbers in general, and its message to users is about information. Users must be given clear details of the tariff that applies and of the billing method. A tariff tells a sender what a message costs, and a billing method tells the sender how that cost reaches the bill. The emphasis is on the duty to inform, and the material shows no limit on what a sender can send.
The release dates from 2016, years before the Eurovision instruction reported in May 2026. Nothing in the material ties it to a contest, a vote or a broadcaster. A reader who wants the tariff for the 1399 text therefore has the principle the release sets out, but not the figure, and the material does not supply the figure.
Two questions follow for a reader. The first is which tariff applies to the 1399 text. The second is how the charge appears on the bill. The reports answer neither question, so a reader who needs both answers has to look to the operator and to the broadcaster's own terms, and this page does not supply those terms.
- ANCOM's 2016 release concerns SMS to short numbers in general.
- The release says the tariff must be made plain to the user.
- The billing method is part of the information the release requires.
- The material shows no contest-specific tariff line in that release.
- No tariff for the 1399 text is stated in any of the three reports.
Eurovision Romania's instruction is the only organiser line in the reports
The organiser line in the reports comes from Eurovision Romania (TVR), as Hotnews relays it. It asks Romanian viewers to send an SMS to 1399 with the contest number of their song. Nothing else in the material is an organiser's statement about how the SMS line works, and the instruction is short enough for a reader to check in seconds.
What an organiser must state about a vote is not set out in the material. The reports show what the broadcast asked viewers to do, and they list none of the items a Romanian organiser is obliged to print. The only obligation the material carries is the ANCOM tariff principle, and that principle concerns the SMS service rather than the contest.
A useful test for any organiser's text is whether it gives the number, the contest code and the channels, as the Eurovision instruction does, and whether it also gives the tariff, which the reports do not show. A text that gives the first three and not the fourth leaves the reader's cost question open.
- Eurovision Romania, through TVR, gave the SMS instruction to viewers.
- The instruction names the number 1399 and the song's contest number.
- The reports list no organiser duty on tariff disclosure for contests.
- Euronews Romania's coverage lists phone, SMS and online side by side.
- No other organiser text on Romanian SMS votes is found in the material.
What an entrant checks before texting a vote
An entrant starts with the number. The Eurovision instruction in the reports gives 1399, so a text to any other number is not the channel that report describes. Confirm the digits against the broadcast's own material before anything is sent, because none of the three reports gives a second number to compare against. A wrong digit is easy to make when a number is copied from a screen.
The next check is the contest code. The report says the text carries the song's contest number, so a message without that number does not follow the instruction it reports. The reports do not say where the code is printed, and the reader has to find it through the contest's own material.
The tariff is the last check. The ANCOM release says users must be given clear tariff and billing information, so a reader who has not seen that information has not been given what the release says must be given. Look for it before sending. If it is absent, the reports offer no answer, and the reader decides with the gap in view.
- Confirm that the number is 1399 before anything is sent.
- Put the song's contest number in the message, as the instruction says.
- Look for the tariff and billing information the ANCOM release describes.
- Compare the SMS line with the phone and online options before choosing.
- Stop if no tariff information is shown, because the reports give no answer.
What the reports leave open: legality, scam cases and disqualification
The reports do not settle whether an SMS vote is lawful in Romania. They show a broadcaster using SMS as one of three vote channels and a general line on SMS to short numbers from ANCOM. Those are two facts, and neither is a ruling on contests. A reader who wants a legal answer needs a Romanian source written for that question.
No report in the material names a scam case, a fake contest or a fraud finding involving SMS votes in Romania. The page does not say that such cases are rare, and it does not say they are common. It says only that the material is silent, and a reader should weigh that silence as silence, not as reassurance.
Disqualification is one more open question. The reports say nothing about which SMS votes are counted, which are set aside, or what happens to an entrant whose text lacks the contest number. Those points belong in the organiser's own rules, which a reader should read before entering the contest.
- Lawfulness of an SMS vote in Romania is not settled by these reports.
- The material names no scam case for an SMS vote in Romania.
- The reports say nothing about disqualification for an SMS vote.
- The organiser's own rules are the place to look for counting and disqualification.
- The page makes no claim about how a broadcaster checks or counts texts.
Rules that apply
Two layers apply to an SMS vote in Romania as the reports show it. The first is the contest's own instruction: Eurovision Romania, through TVR, asked viewers to text the number 1399 with the song's contest number, as Hotnews reported in May 2026. The second is a general line on SMS to short numbers, which ANCOM set out for users in a 2016 press release. Nothing in the reports ties that release to any one contest, so the two layers are read side by side and never merged. Editorial note: this page was checked against three sources, a Hotnews report, a Euronews Romania article and the ANCOM press release, and it was reviewed on 21 October 2026.
What we decline
The page gives no tariff for a text to 1399, because the reports print none, and it does not say what a sender pays. It is not a legal opinion on whether an SMS vote is lawful in Romania. It does not predict how a broadcaster checks or counts texts, and it offers no place in the final, no prize and no outcome for any entry. Nothing here changes what Eurovision Romania, TVR or the organiser of any other contest decides.
Questions and answers
An SMS vote in Romania is a vote cast by text message to a short number, with the contest number of the song in the message. In the Eurovision case the reports describe, the number is 1399, and Romanian viewers were told to send it with the contest number of the song they back. Eurovision Romania (TVR) gave the instruction, and Hotnews reported it in May 2026. The same final offered phone and online voting, as Euronews Romania reports, so the SMS line is one of three channels rather than the whole vote.
ANCOM is the only body the reports name on SMS to short numbers, and its 2016 press release asks that users get clear tariff and billing information. The release is a general statement about short numbers, and the material shows no ruling by any authority on a contest vote. Because the Eurovision text goes to a short number, the release is the nearest rule the reports offer, and it speaks to the SMS service rather than to how a contest counts. Where the material is silent, this page says so and does not stretch the release over contest counting.
The reports name no list of items an organiser must state about an SMS vote. The one organiser instruction they carry comes from Eurovision Romania (TVR), relayed by Hotnews: text 1399 with the song's contest number. Euronews Romania adds that phone, SMS and online are the channels for the final. What the reports do not show is whether an organiser prints a tariff for the text, and the ANCOM release is the only rule on that point. A reader checking a Romanian SMS vote should look for the number, the contest code and the tariff in the same place, and treat a missing tariff as an open question.
An entrant should check the number first, which the reports give as 1399. Next comes the song's contest number, which the text has to carry. Then the tariff: the ANCOM release says users must be given clear tariff and billing information, so the reader looks for it before sending. Finally the reader compares the SMS line with the phone and online options that Euronews Romania lists. Where a check fails, the reports offer no fallback, and an entrant should not assume that a text sent without the contest number is counted.
Yes. The Eurovision final of 2026 is the example the reports carry: Euronews Romania says viewers can vote for Alexandra Căpitănescu by phone, SMS or online, and Hotnews reports the 1399 text with the song's contest number. Read together, the two reports show one event in two forms, a number and a code in one case and a choice of three channels in the other. Neither report gives a tariff for the text, a count method or a closing time, so the example shows the mechanism and nothing about cost or timing.
The reports name no common mistake made by viewers or organisers, so the errors below come from the rules the reports do state. The first is a text to 1399 without the song's contest number, since the instruction says the number goes with the text. The second is a text sent before the tariff has been looked at, although the ANCOM release says users must be given that information. The third is reading only the SMS line and skipping the phone and online channels that Euronews Romania lists for the same final. None of these describes what happens to a text after it is sent.