SMS vote in Ukraine: what to check before you enter
An SMS vote in Ukraine is a vote cast by text message in a contest, and in the Eurovision national selections the published examples name it alongside the app-based vote. The 2016 selection allowed one SMS from each phone so that the vote would be as fair as possible, and the 2026 selection drew a petition for a re-vote that claimed technical trouble sending SMS messages. The contest's own rules decide who can vote by text, how a message is counted and when the window closes, so read those before sending anything.
Rechecked on 21 October 2026.
Text messages are one channel, not the whole vote
An SMS vote sits beside other channels in the examples on this page, and in the 2025 final the Diia app and text messages were both open to viewers. That makes the text channel one way of casting a vote, not a separate contest with its own result. Whether the SMS count is added to the app count or kept apart is a question the contest's rules must answer, and the published examples do not answer it.
The SMS channel depends on a mobile network path that the app does not use, and the 2026 petition described technical difficulties on exactly that path. A reader who sees a channel failure reported should first ask which channel failed, because a fault in one route tells the reader nothing about the other. The examples name the problem but do not show how a contest tracks it.
A petition is a claim, and this page reports the claim as a claim. The petition asked for a re-vote and said that sending messages had gone wrong, and the report does not show how many messages were affected or what the organiser decided in reply. Anyone repeating that story should say it was a petition, and should not treat its wording as a finding.
- Text messages were one channel in the 2025 final.
- The Diia app was the other channel in 2025.
- A 2026 petition for a re-vote cited SMS sending trouble.
- The 2016 selection allowed one SMS per phone.
- A petition's claim is not a finding.
Per-phone limits come from the contest's own rules
The 2016 national selection set a limit of one SMS from each phone, and the stated reason was fairness: the organisers wanted the vote to be as fair as possible. A per-phone limit is a rule the contest writes, so a reader should look for it in the text of the contest being watched, not in the 2016 example.
A per-phone limit and a per-person limit are different rules, and the published examples name only the first. A reader who meets one of them should check the wording of the contest's rules rather than carry the other across by assumption, since the two can be written in very different ways.
The 2016 organisers gave fairness as the reason for their limit, and that reason is the only one the examples on this page supply. Where a limit is missing from the text of a later selection, the reader has to ask the organiser before assuming there is none, because silence in the text is not the same as a rule that allows more.
- The 2016 national selection allowed one SMS per phone.
- The stated aim was to keep the vote as fair as possible.
- A per-phone limit is different from a per-person limit.
- Check the SMS limit in the contest's text.
- The 2016 limit was part of the published voting rules.
The vote window belongs to the contest's own rules
The national selection final for Eurovision in Ukraine took place on 8 February 2025, and the SMS option was open on that day alongside the app. The date of an event is not the closing time of a vote, so a reader should look for the vote's own window in the rules rather than read it from the event date.
A 2026 petition asked for a re-vote of the national selection, after the selection had run. A petition raises the question of a window, but a petition does not set one, and the page cannot tell a reader what the 2026 window was from the petition alone.
What the published examples do not say is how an SMS is timed against the window, or whether a message that arrives late still counts. That question belongs in the contest's rules and, where those are silent, with the organiser who runs the selection.
- The 2025 final took place on 8 February 2025.
- The 2026 petition asked for a re-vote of the selection.
- The event date is not the closing time of the vote.
- Late-arriving messages are a question for the rules.
- Read the vote window in the rules before sending.
Organisers set the fairness steps, and entrants read them
The 2016 organisers chose a per-phone limit as their fairness step, and it is the only such step the examples on this page name. A reader should not assume that a later national selection uses the same step, because each selection sets its own terms and the examples do not show a standard that carries forward.
The 2025 final offered two routes to the same vote, which means a fairness rule written for one route does not cover the other unless the text says so. The examples name no rule that applies across both routes, so a reader who wants one has to find it in the contest's own text.
The examples do not say what happens to a message that breaks a rule, so the answer belongs in the contest's text or with the organiser. Until that answer is found, a reader should treat the consequence of a broken SMS rule as unknown rather than as a standard penalty.
- The 2016 organisers set one SMS per phone as the rule.
- Fairness was the stated reason for that limit.
- The 2025 final offered the app and SMS routes side by side.
- No example here states what happens to a broken rule.
- Ask the organiser what a breach of the SMS rule means.
Checks before sending a text vote in a national selection
Start with the channels: find out whether the contest runs an app, text messages or both, and whether the two counts are combined. The 2025 final ran both routes, so the combination question was live there and the answer had to come from the rules.
Then find the per-phone or per-person limit and the vote window in the contest's own rules, since the examples name a limit and a window but no general standard for either one that would apply to every selection. Where the rules are silent on any of these points, the gap is one the organiser has to close before the reader relies on the channel.
The examples on this page describe national selections, not commercial text services, so a worry about an unknown text-vote site falls outside them. An entrant should check that the organiser named in the rules is the body that runs the selection, and should confirm the window from that body's own text.
- Find out whether the contest runs an app, SMS or both.
- Check the per-phone limit in the contest's rules.
- The 2025 final ran both the app and SMS routes.
- Check that the organiser named in the rules runs the selection.
- A missing rule is a question to put to the organiser.
Rules that apply
Each contest named on this page sets its own rules for text messages, and the published terms of that contest are the ones that apply. The published examples cover the Eurovision national selections of 2016, 2025 and 2026 and name no Ukrainian regulator. Editorial note: the sources behind this page were checked on 2026-10-21 and reviewed against three published reports: an account of the 2025 national selection final, a report from Interfax-Ukraine on the 2026 petition for a re-vote, and a Ukrainian news site's report on the 2016 voting rules. Later changes to those terms have not been reviewed.
What we decline
The page does not carry one contest's SMS limit over to another, and it cannot say whether any given text vote was counted correctly. It cannot reopen a closed window, rule on a petition or predict the terms of the next selection. Nothing here helps anyone exceed a limit a contest sets. The Eurovision national selections named above are run by the contests and organisers that publish their own terms, not by this page.
Questions and answers
In Ukraine an SMS vote is a vote sent by text message in a contest such as a Eurovision national selection. The 2025 final offered it beside the Diia app, and the 2026 petition described trouble sending SMS messages for the vote. Whether a text counts the same as an app vote is set by the contest's own rules.
No regulator is named in the published examples, so this page states no regulator's position on an SMS vote. Both examples come from the contests themselves and from reporting on them, and neither names a regulator. Whether a text vote meets Ukrainian law falls outside the evidence here, and this page leaves that question open.
The examples show organisers stating two things about the SMS channel: a per-phone limit, as in 2016, and the channel itself, as in the 2025 final where SMS sat beside the app. They do not show whether organisers must state a closing time for text messages, so a reader should look for that line in the rules.
Check first which channels the contest runs and whether the counts are combined. Then find the per-phone limit, the vote window and the rule on late messages in the contest's own text. Finally, confirm that the organiser named in the rules is the body that runs the selection, since the examples cannot confirm that for you.
The national selection final for Eurovision in Ukraine is one example: on 8 February 2025 viewers had the option to vote through the Diia app and also by SMS. The 2016 selection is another, where organisers allowed one SMS from each phone. The 2026 selection shows the other side, with a petition for a re-vote that claimed technical trouble sending SMS messages.
The first mistake is treating a text vote as separate from the contest's own count, when the 2025 final ran it beside the app. The second is assuming the 2016 per-phone limit applies to every later selection. The third is taking a petition's claim as proof of what happened to the votes, when a petition is a claim and nothing more.