Every Eurovision year, Malta goes through the exact same emotional cycle.We hype ourselves up, call relatives abroad to vote, celebrate every point that comes in… and then immediately start questioning how the voting system actually works.This year was no different.Following the Grand Final, many people online saw Malta’s televote score and assumed it meant very few people across Europe voted for AIDAN’s Bella. But Eurovision’s voting system is far more complicated than simply counting votes country by country.And according to rankings published through Eurovision’s official voting breakdowns, Malta actually averaged 16th place overall in televoting across participating countries in 2026 — while placing 12th on average with juries.So How Does Eurovision Televoting Actually Work?One of the biggest misconceptions around Eurovision is that points directly reflect the number of people who voted for a song.They don’t.Since 2009, Eurovision has operated using a 50/50 system. Half of every country’s score comes from the public televote, while the other half comes from a professional jury made up of music industry experts.But here’s the important part: televotes are not announced as raw vote totals.Instead, every country ranks songs based on how many votes they received from viewers in that country. The top-ranked song receives 12 points, second place gets 10 points, and then points continue from 8 down to 1.This means Malta could receive thousands of votes from viewers in a country and still walk away with no points if the song finished outside that country’s Top 10 ranking.Likewise, when Malta receives “8 points” during the live show, that does not mean eight people voted. It simply means Malta ranked highly enough overall in that country’s voting to receive that points allocation.The actual number of votes behind those rankings is never publicly revealed.When the dust settled after the final, Malta’s average televote ranking across participating countries came out at 16th place.That is an improvement over some previous Maltese Eurovision entries and significantly stronger than the dramatic “Europe hates us” reactions that usually flood Maltese social media during voting night.Meanwhile, Malta averaged 12th place with juries, continuing a long-standing trend where Maltese entries tend to perform more strongly with professional panels than with public voters.How Malta Has Averaged In Recent Eurovision FinalsLooking at the years Malta qualified for the Grand Final since the current voting system was introduced, an interesting pattern starts emerging.Ira Losco’s Walk On Water in 2016 averaged 20th place with televoters but performed much stronger with juries, averaging 11th.Michela Pace’s Chameleon in 2019 improved slightly with the public, averaging 17th place, while again averaging 11th with juries.Malta’s strongest recent result remains Destiny Chukunyere’s Je Me Casse in 2021, which averaged 11th place with televoters and an impressive 6th place with juries.Then came Miriana Conte in 2025 with Serving, which averaged 19th place with televoters and 13th with juries.This year, AIDAN’s Bella averaged 16th place with the public and 12th with juries, meaning Malta improved its average televote performance compared to 2025.What Do These Numbers Actually Tell Us?More than anything, these rankings show just how brutally competitive Eurovision has become.A song can be broadly liked across Europe while still struggling to collect major points because Eurovision rewards Top 10 placements in each country — not overall consistency.As always, Eurovision also reignited debate around how much Malta spends on the contest every year.Calls for transparency around the overall cost of this year’s campaign, promotion, staging, and participation have so far not been publicly answered, despite increasing public interest in whether Malta’s Eurovision investment matches its results.Whether you loved Bella or not, one thing is clear: Malta’s Eurovision result was far stronger and more competitive than the final scoreboard alone may have suggested.Across Europe, Bella consistently connected with viewers and juries alike, helping Malta achieve an average televote ranking of 16th place and a jury average of 12th — an improvement on recent years and proof that the song resonated with far more people than many realised during the live results.And while Eurovision will always come down to fine margins and rankings, the numbers show that Malta was very much part of the conversation this year — with Bella earning genuine support across Europe and giving Maltese fans plenty to be proud of.What do you make of these numbers?•