Race Across the World has been moved from its usual Thursday night slot to Wednesday, 13 May at 8pm as One clears prime-time space for Eurovision in Vienna. The change pushes Eurovision’s second live performance into the programme’s normal One home on Thursday, while Saturday night is reserved for the grand final live from 8pm until midnight.

The schedule shake-up reaches beyond one travel competition. Interior Design Masters was shifted from One to Two at 8pm on Tuesday, MasterChef temporarily moved to Two for the week, and Casualty was dropped from One’s Saturday night line-up altogether. Race Across the World normally airs on Thursdays, so its early airing this week is one of several direct collisions with the broadcaster’s Eurovision plans.

The reason is straightforward: Eurovision is taking over the channel for three nights, with the contest airing on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday evenings from 8pm. The has made room for the live semi-finals and grand final in Vienna by moving other established shows around the schedule, a familiar yearly disruption when the song contest lands in the peak-time grid.

This year’s contest also comes with tighter voting rules. Viewers will be limited to 10 votes per method, down from the previous 20, and online votes will only count if the payment method used was registered in the same country from which the vote was cast. Thomas Niedermeyer said the system enforces multiple safeguards, including blocking voting outside the official window, preventing voting for one’s own country, limiting total votes and using fraud detection measures such as verifying payment origin and stopping misuse of stolen cards. He added that payment methods such as credit cards carry country-of-origin data and are used for that purpose.

Those changes matter because the 2026 competition has already drawn criticism and scrutiny over how voting is handled, and the broadcaster’s schedule adjustments show how far Eurovision’s pull still reaches. The immediate answer for viewers is that Race Across the World is not disappearing, only moving a day earlier, while One makes room for a contest that still dominates the channel’s prime-time week.