Rules

Format
◁ Each edition of the Harmony Song Contest will be broken down into phases - the confirmation period, the song submission period, semi-finals, and the grand final.

◁ In the confirmation period, each participating user must confirm participation (or withdrawal) with their country. In this time, any free countries will be drawn too.

◁ In the song submission period, countries must submit their song(s) to the council for approval, either selecting their song internally or hosting a national selection, and then reveal them before the deadline.

◁ HSC will always be composed of two semi-finals, with the top 10 songs from each semi-final qualifying to the grand final.

◁ The top six of each edition will automatically qualify to the grand final of the following edition, with the winning country invited to host. Should one of the top six withdraw the following edition, the next-placed entry will take its place in the final and so on.

◁ The first edition is the exception to this rule - with no automatic qualifiers and 13 qualifiers from each semi-final to still make a 26 song grand final.

Songs
◁ Each participating country will be represented by one song per edition.

◁ Entries must not be posted without the council's approval, whether they are internally selected or in a national selection.

◁ Songs must not be released before 2010.

◁ Your artist must be over the age of 16 at the time of the song's release.

◁ Your song must not have participated in the Eurovision Song Contest, the Junior Eurovision Song Contest, or the Eurovision Song Contest Tengaged (or the Second Chance Contest). This includes songs that are part of an ongoing national selection.

◁ Your song must not have over 25 million views. If you are participating as a borrowing nation (Andorra, Luxembourg, Monaco or San Marino), you are unable to borrow a song from another country that has over 1 million views.

◀ Andorra may borrow from Spain

◀ Luxembourg may borrow from Belgium

◀ Monaco may borrow from France

◀ San Marino may borrow from Italy

◁ The same artist cannot represent more than one country per edition. If an artist is eligible for more than one country, an agreement must be reached between the two countries before the entry is approved. This applies to both internal submissions and national selections.

Voting
◁ The voting system is in old Eurovision style - one ranking of 12, 10, 8-1 points.

◁ Countries are required to vote in the semi-final they are participating in, or the one they are allocated to vote in as an automatic qualifier.

◀ Countries are allowed to vote in the opposite semi-final as a Rest of the World voter - all Rest of the World votes will be combined into one 12, 10, 8-1 set.

◁ All countries, regardless of whether they qualified or not, are required to vote in the grand final.

◁ You must under no circumstances reveal your votes before the grand final results. You may reveal your semi-final votes for non-qualifying countries only after the semi-final results.