How to vote & Rules of voting

Voting period

  • Voting opens: 2 February 2026, 08:00 CET
  • Secret voting starts: 16 February 2026, 00:00 CET
  • Voting closes: 22 February 2026, 16:00 CET

 

How to vote

  • Each person can vote only once using their personal email address.
  • Each voter chooses two trees in the competition.
  • After selecting your favourites, please confirm your vote through the link sent to your email.
  • Votes sent from disposable or temporary email addresses will not be accepted.
  • Email addresses containing a “+” sign will neither be accepted.

 

Tree Points system

This year introduces the new Tree Points system.
The total support for each tree is adjusted proportionally to the population size of its country, ensuring fair competition between all countries, large and small.
 

Throughout public communication, we may use both “votes” and “tree points” — they refer to the same result within this adjusted system.

 

Voting phases

Phase 1: Partly visible results (2–15 February 2026)

  • Trees will be shown in ranking order.
  • The number of Tree Points will appear only after you cast your vote and accept cookies.
     

Phase 2: Secret voting (16–22 February 2026)

  • Voting becomes fully secret.
  • Trees will appear alphabetically, with ranking and results hidden to keep the final announcement a surprise.

 

Website access

During periods of high traffic, a virtual waiting room may appear if the website reaches full capacity. If this happens, please return after about 30 minutes — your favourite tree will still be waiting for you!

Feel free to visit status page for more informations in case of a website outage. https://status.treeoftheyear.org/

 

Fair voting & integrity

The organisers reserve the right to:

  • Verify email addresses and remove invalid or fraudulent votes.
  • Pause or stop voting temporarily in case of technical issues or suspicious activity.
  • Modify or close the voting process if necessary to ensure fairness and transparency.

 

Detailed rules

  1. A person can only vote once using their personal email address
  2. The voter always selects two candidates for the European Tree of the Year and confirms the vote
  3. Votes sent from disposable email addresses are not allowed and will be not accepted
  4. Environmental Partnership Association reserves the privilege to check if an email address is used in line with the rules of the competition and if it is not, to delete such a vote
  5. In case the server gets overloaded with fraudulent votes,  Environmental Partnership Association, the organizer of the contest, reserves the privilege to stop the voting
  6. Personal data (email addresses) are only used to identify voters and will not be used for other purposes or disclosed to third parties unless you have chosen to receive the newsletter. 
  7. Environmental Partnership Association, the organizer of the contest, reserves the right to stop voting or change the rules of voting

 

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