In , the Eurovision Song Contest introduced a "Rest of the World" vote in which viewers from non-participating countries could cast votes for their favourites, with their votes aggregated and presented as one individual set of points, equivalent to one participating country.
The first rest of the world vote for a Eurovision event was held in 2014, when audiences from non-participating countries in the Junior Eurovision Song Contest 2014 were able to vote for their favourites online. The vote had no influence over the result of the contest, but the winner of the online vote was presented with a special trophy following the contest. The Junior Eurovision Song Contest switched to a full online vote in , replacing the televoting; viewers could vote for any country regardless of their place of residence. The then-executive supervisor of the Eurovision Song Contest and Junior Eurovision Song Contest, Jon Ola Sand, stated that an online vote could be implemented in Eurovision in future editions.
On 22 November 2022, the European Broadcasting Union announced that, starting from , the Eurovision Song Contest would include a televote from non-participating countries for the first time. Viewers from those countries are able to vote in all shows, with their votes aggregated and presented as one individual set of points under "Rest of the World" or "RoW". Those viewers are able to cast votes via the Esc.vote online platform, which requires ownership of a credit or debit card for verification.
The introduction of the Rest of the World vote meant that the televote has gained a slight advantage over the jury result with approximately 51% over 49% instead of the usual 50:50 system.
Since the vote was introduced in 2023, the EBU has revealed a list of around ten non-participating countries, in no particular order, which provided the most votes across all three live shows each year. To date, seven countries have appeared in the list in every edition where the Rest of the World vote was used: Canada, Hungary, Mexico, Slovakia, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, and the United States. Three of these countries, namely , , and , have previously participated in the contest.