Eurovision has long claimed to be apolitical. This year, that claim may be its most contested performance yet.
Eurovision has long claimed to be apolitical. This year, that claim may be its most contested performance yet.
Spectators wave flags of Israel and Palestine during the first semifinal of the Eurovision Song Contest 2026 at Wiener Stadthalle on May 12, 2026 in Vienna, Austria [Christian Bruna/Getty]
Spectators wave flags of Israel and Palestine during the first semifinal of the Eurovision Song Contest 2026 at Wiener Stadthalle on May 12, 2026 in Vienna, Austria [Christian Bruna/Getty]
Published On 16 May 2026
On Saturday, millions of viewers will tune in to the Eurovision Song Contest final, a veritable feast of sequins, smoke machines, and unabashedly kitsch, formulaic Europop.
At its heart, the contest has always had a tongue-in-cheek quality, with commentators often adopting dry, sardonic tones, while artists lean into the spectacle with flamboyant costumes and performances that revel in not taking themselves too seriously.
Its organiser, the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), describes the contest as a celebration of music and unity and insists it remains above politics.
But in recent years, Israel’s participation has placed that claim under unprecedented strain.
The controversy over its inclusion has prompted boycotts by artists and broadcasters, as well as accusations that the EBU, which has banned Russia after its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, is guilty of double standards.
For critics, the issue is not only whether Israel should compete while its attack on Gaza and Lebanon continues, but it is also whether it can still be considered a neutral cultural event when participation itself has become a geopolitical battleground.
Eden Golan from Israel during The Eurovision Song Contest 2024 Grand Final at Malmo Arena on May 11, 2024 [Martin Sylvest Andersen/Getty]
Eden Golan from Israel during The Eurovision Song Contest 2024 Grand Final at Malmo Arena on May 11, 2024 [Martin Sylvest Andersen/Getty]
Eurovision is far more than a televised music competition.
Watched by more than 160 million people each year, it is one of the world’s largest live entertainment events and a powerful platform for countries to exert soft power and geopolitical messaging.
That is why Israel’s President Isaac Herzog reportedly spent months engaging European broadcasters and political leaders to support Israel’s inclusion.
It is also why, Israel, less than a year into its genocidal war on Gaza, forked out $800,000 on advertising around the 2024 Eurovision contest in Malmo, Sweden, as a recent New York Times investigation revealed.
The final placement in the contest is decided by a 50/50 split between a public televote and a panel.
Despite receiving a subpar jury vote, Israel secured the highest public vote, propelling them into second place.
It was a geopolitical win for Israel, but the skewed results led to a volley of accusations that voting had been manipulated.
Although the EBU said it found no evidence of systemic fraud, it has now reduced the maximum number of votes per person to 10.
Palestinian singer-songwriter and video artis Nai Barghouti sings during a United for Palestine anti-Eurovision concert in Brussels, Tuesday, May 12, 2026 [Geert Vanden Wijngaert/AP]
Palestinian singer-songwriter and video artis Nai Barghouti sings during a United for Palestine anti-Eurovision concert in Brussels, Tuesday, May 12, 2026 [Geert Vanden Wijngaert/AP]
Israel knows the value of influencing such an event, which is why it spends so much time and money trying to win it, Molly Nilsson, a Berlin-based musician, told Al Jazeera, describing it as a form of “cultural whitewashing”.
She is one of more than a thousand artists who signed an open letter, No Music for Genocide, calling on public broadcasters, fans, performers, and production crews to withhold all support and boycott Eurovision until Israel is removed.
Nilsson, like many musicians, opposes the idea pushed by the event organisers that music can be apolitical.
“If art just becomes entertainment, where we don't talk about what's happening in the world, then I don't even know what the point is,” she said.
With Israel’s actions in Gaza, the occupied West Bank, Lebanon and other countries, its participation has forced every participating country to take a position, Nilsson said, adding that even those that choose not to boycott are making a political statement, whether they acknowledge it or not.
Nilsson said she sees art as the “mirror that we would like to reflect ourselves in ... who we are, what we want, our love and desires and our values and principles”.
As a society, we should be able to look at ourselves in that mirror, she said, that is why the boycott is so important.
Pro-Palestine protesters in Malmo during the 2024 Eurovision Song Contest [File: Nils Adler/Al Jazeera]
Activists hold a banner reading 'Stop Genocide-Boycott Israel' to protest against the participation of Israel before the first semifinal of the Eurovision Song Contest, Vienna, Austria, on May 12, 2026 [Radek Mica/AFP]
After Israel’s participation was confirmed by the EBU in December, broadcasters in the Netherlands, Slovenia, Spain, Iceland and Ireland said they would boycott the contest.
Eurovision is normally a major event for national broadcasters, attracting high ratings, Natalija Goracak, president of the RTV Slovenia, told Al Jazeera.
She said the broadcaster's decision meant sacrificing one of the year’s most successful entertainment events, but that it was based on calls from Slovenian artists, public opinion, and also a desire to show “human compassion” in the face of Israel’s actions in Gaza and Lebanon.
As a public broadcaster, RTV also felt a responsibility to stand with the hundreds of journalists who had been killed or prevented from doing their work by the Israeli military.
In February, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) reported that Israel was responsible for two-thirds of all killings of journalists in 2024 and 2025.
Dutch broadcaster AVROTROS, representing the Netherlands, accused Israel of “proven interference” in last year’s contest while also noting its “serious violation of press freedom” during the Gaza war. It said that “under the current circumstances, participation cannot be reconciled with the public values that are fundamental to our organisation”.
Ireland said it would not take part either, with its broadcaster RTE also citing “the appalling loss of lives in Gaza and humanitarian crisis” as the reason for its boycott.
RTV has also replaced its slot designated for the broadcast of Eurovision with a special program called "Voices of Palestine", a decision that was in line with its tradition of annual broadcasts that honour the victims of atrocities such as the Holocaust and the Srebrenica genocide, Goracak said.
People walk past an area called the 'Gaza Roundabout' in Malmo, Sweden during the 2024 Eurovision Song Contest [File: Nils Adler/Al Jazeera]
Pro-Palestine protesters in Malmo during the 2024 Eurovision Song Contest [File: Nils Adler/Al Jazeera]
Some artists supporting the boycott say they face online abuse and the possibility of being ostracised within the industry.
In 2023, British Pro-Israel groups publicly called on the BBC to remove singer Olly Alexander as the UK representative for Eurovision 2024, after he signed a statement accusing Israel of genocide and describing it as an "apartheid state".
This is even a risk for many artists in simply expressing pro-Palestinian sentiments.
In a recent Swedish documentary, pop star Zara Larsson said she had “never been cancelled in that way before” when describing how she lost gigs and had invitations withdrawn after speaking out in support of Palestinians.
The EBU has often brushed off the impact of these boycotts, but they have a clear financial impact.
Spain alone contributes more than 300,000 euros ($348,972) in participation fees. Together with larger contributors like the Netherlands, the withdrawal of five broadcasters could remove close to 1 million euros ($1.16m) from the contest’s funding pool, according to industry estimates.
The controversy has also dissuaded many top-flight artists from taking part “for fear of their participation signalling political intentions”, William Lee Adams, founder of the Eurovision news website Wiwibloggs, told Al Jazeera.
He pointed to Portugal's Festival da Cancao as an example.
In the prestigious annual televised competition, participants compete to represent Portugal, but after the EBU confirmed Israel would participate in this year’s Eurovision, 13 of 16 entrants withdrew.
A 'United by Music' flag is pictured at the entrance of the Eurovision Village in front of the Burgtheater during the 70th Eurovision Song Contest week in Vienna, Austria [Martin Meissner/AP]
A 'United by Music' flag is pictured at the entrance of the Eurovision Village in front of the Burgtheater during the 70th Eurovision Song Contest week in Vienna, Austria [Martin Meissner/AP]
On February 25, 2022, just one day after Moscow's troops launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the EBU banned Russia, stating that allowing it to be represented "would bring the competition into disrepute".
Critics have decried what they see as a double standard given Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza.
The EBU says it is a competition between broadcasters and argues that, unlike Russia’s state broadcasters, Israeli broadcaster Kan is resisting the government’s efforts to privatise or shut it down, thereby positioning it as somewhat independent of the state.
It is a position that Goracak disagrees with, pointing out that it was Netanyahu’s goverment that established Kan after shutting down its predecessor, the Israel Broadcasting Authority.
Eurovision Song Contest attendees can bring and display flags of all participating countries, including Israel, as well as rainbow and pride flags, but Palestinian flags and pro-Palestinian symbols are banned at the show.
It is these double standards that Palestinians, who have faced cultural genocide since the Nakba - the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1948 - and subsequent decades of cultural appropriation by Israel, have grown used to, Eleni Mustaklem, public relations and fundraising officer at the Edward Said National Conservatory of Music, told Al Jazeera.
“It's still OK for the state perpetrating this genocide to be represented ... interviews with the singer [Noam Bettan] where he talks about the love of his family ... while at the same time, whole families have been wiped out and the families that are still living inside Gaza with their traumatised loved ones barely making it through this catastrophe; it's enraging, unfair and so unjust,” she said.
The hypocrisy of a genocide having been broadcast live on the news and social media platforms for more than two years and a sense that so much of the world turned its back on it, only to tune in to see Israel’s performance broadcast on those same screens is “painful” to witness, Mustaklem said.
A pro-Palestine protest before the Eurovision Song Contest final in Malmo, Sweden, May 2024 [File: Nils Adler/Al Jazeera]
A pro-Palestine protest before the Eurovision Song Contest final in Malmo, Sweden, May 2024 [File: Nils Adler/Al Jazeera]
There have already been incidents during the Eurovision semifinals in Vienna.
On Tuesday, four audience members were forcibly removed from the Wiener Stadthalle by security, and a protester positioned directly next to a venue microphone screamed "Stop the genocide" and "Free Palestine" right as Bettan began his song, Michelle; the chant cut clearly through the live international television broadcast.
Despite incidents like these, Lee Adams said the atmosphere is not as fractious as the 2024 event in Malmo, Sweden’s third-largest city, where more than a third of its 362,000 residents were born outside Sweden - primarily Iraq and Syria.
The longstanding history of pro-Palestinian sentiment in Malmo and the presence of protesters from the Danish capital, Copenhagen, who had taken the short 35-minute train journey across the Oresund Bridge, created a fervent, tense atmosphere.
Norwegian and Danish police forces were brought in to support Swedish police, who clashed with protesters on several occasions through the night as they sealed off areas of the host arena in sudden, chaotic bursts.
The 2025 event in Zurich was much calmer, Lee Adams said, but this year’s in the Austrian capital still harbours an “undercurrent of unease among many fans, many artists and many delegations about Israel's participation”.
He added that this feeling has “bled into the contest”, creating a “sense of malaise” that has diluted the atmosphere.
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