At least five public broadcasters in Europe — Ireland, Slovenia, Iceland, the Netherlands, and Spain — have in the past two weeks declared they would not participate in the Eurovision Song Contest if longstanding entrant Israel remains part of the competition.
The declarations, framed as protests against Israel’s ongoing war against the jihadist terrorist organization Hamas, follow intense pressure since the October 7, 2023, massacre of Israeli civilians by Hamas to ostracize Israel in the contest. A loud sector of the Eurovision fanbase has repeatedly called for Israel’s ouster from the contest despite its consistently impressive performances in the event, including a second-place finish last year propelled by winning the popular vote. In 2024, several competing artists made headlines for being disrespectful and unsportsmanlike to Israel’s singer, Eden Golan. The 2024 contest took place in Malmö, Sweden, a city notorious for its large Muslim immigrant population.
The 2025 contest featured a slightly more congenial atmosphere among competitors, allowing Israel’s singer, October 7 survivor Yuval Raphael, to walk the event’s emblematic “turquoise carpet” and engage with some of the other acts. Pro-Hamas crowds swarmed the event in Basel, Switzerland, however, including one man caught on camera making a throat-slitting gesture against Raphael.
Rather than defend Israel in the face of vitriol from left-wing agitators, multiple countries’ public broadcasting organizations — the groups in charge of their Eurovision delegations — have threatened to boycott the 2026 event if Israel is allowed to continue participating. The 2026 Eurovision Song Contest is scheduled to take place in Vienna, Austria, in May of that year. The contest itself, one of the most-watched live events of the year around the globe, is organized and controlled by the European Broadcast Union.
On Tuesday, Spain’s RTV issued a statement threatening to withdraw from the event should Israel participate. Spain is one of Eurovision’s “Big 5” — the countries that spend the most putting together the contest — making it an influential voice despite its consistently poor performance in the competition.
“While Israel has regularly participated in the competition, the current events and the genocide currently taking place make it impossible for us to look the other way.” RTVE President José Pablo López said in a statement on behalf of the broadcaster. “It is not accurate to claim that Eurovision is merely an apolitical music festival. We are all aware that the contest carries significant political implications. The Israeli government is equally aware of this fact and leverages the event on the international stage.”
The Eurovision Song Contest is an explicitly non-political event. Artists are banned from performing songs with political content in their lyrics or making political statements and gestures during the broadcast. The event is nonetheless consistently plagued with controversies involving delegations either attempting to submit political songs, displaying symbols considered to have a political meaning, or broadcasters making political statements. RTVE, for example, aired a statement condemning Israel before the Eurovision Grand Final this year.
Slovenia’s RTVSLO was the first country to declare it would abandon the contest should Israel remain invited this month. Ireland followed; its RTE broadcaster declared in a statement that “Ireland’s participation would be unconscionable given the ongoing and appalling loss of lives in Gaza.” Ireland’s 2024 competitor, “non-binary” performer Bambie Thug, was among the most high-profile to disparage Israel during her performance, claiming to have cried in disappointment when Israel’s competitor Golan qualified to perform in the grand final.
Last week, the Dutch broadcaster AVROTROS announced that it would also not participate in an Israel-inclusive Eurovision “given the ongoing and severe human suffering in Gaza.” The Netherlands was at the center of the most high-profile controversy of the 2024 contest, which did not involve Israel despite widespread rumors to the contrary. Its competing artist, Joost Klein, was abruptly disqualified from competing in the grand final over an unspecified incident with a “female member of the production crew” that resulted in a police investigation. Klein denied any wrongdoing and no charges were filed in the incident. Eurovision fans began speculating that Klein had antagonized a member of the Israeli delegation or an employee with the Israeli broadcaster KAN, but the EBU emphasized in its statement on the matter that the incident “did not involve any other performer or delegation member.”
Klein would go on to release a song titled “United by Music” — the slogan of the Eurovision contest, containing the lyrics, “fuck the EBU/I don’t want to go to court.”
While some of the Eurovision competitors of 2024 were antagonistic towards Israel, the winner of the 2025 contest, Austrian singer JJ, has explicitly called for Israel’s ouster.
“It is very disappointing to see that Israel continues to participate in the contest,” he told the Spanish newspaper El País shortly after his win. “I would like next year’s Eurovision to take place in Vienna without Israel, but the ball is in the court” of the EBU.
Another 2025 contestant, Marko Bosnjak of Croatia, similarly called for the expulsion of Israel but expanded his proposal to Ukraine, one of the most historically successful competitors in Eurovision, on the grounds that it is also currently engaged in a war.
“If any country is participating in a war, no matter if they are on the side of the aggressor or the victim, they should not be participating in Eurovision,” Bosnjak said in a video published to his Instagram account.
“As we all know Eurovision claims to be non-political and strictly neutral… We know that that’s not the case, and obviously it’s very politicized and obviously Ukraine is the winner of the first Semi Final, Israel is the winner of the second Semi Final,” he speculated.
Later in the same video sequence, Bosnjak denied that he was calling for Ukraine’s expulsion, adding, “I didn’t say anything about: ‘Oh, we have to disqualify Ukraine.’ If we have to disqualify anyone from the Eurovision Song Contest, that is Israel. That is Israel, point blank period. I never called for Ukraine to be disqualified.”
Israel has been participating in the Eurovision Song Contest since 1973 and has won four times, most recently in 2018. It is one of several countries outside of Europe to compete, including neighboring countries such as Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia, and the glaring outlier of Australia, which was invited to compete in 2015 and remained a regular member of the Eurovision family in recognition of the contest’s popularity in that country.
The EBU has not made any final decisions on Israel’s participation, delaying an ultimate decision until December to give participating nations time to debate. Reports over the weekend in Israel claimed, citing anonymous sources, that the EBU suggested to the Israeli delegation the option of competing under a neutral flag or simply not to compete this year voluntarily.
Follow Frances Martel on Facebook and Twitter.
Read the full article here
