How Israel Became Eurovision’s Biggest Controversy

A protestor (L) holds a Palestinian flag as she takes part in a demonstration against Israel’s team (R) during the Eurovision Song Contest 2025 opening ceremony in Basel on May 11, 2025. (Photo by Stefan Wermuth / AFP) (Photo by STEFAN WERMUTH/AFP via Getty Images)

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On the eve of the 70th Eurovision Song Contest, the world’s biggest music competition is facing what several media outlets have described as the worst crisis in its history. Five countries have withdrawn from the 2026 contest in Vienna. Past winners have returned their trophies. A New York Times investigation published yesterday found evidence of a state-level influence operation running through the competition for years.

Here’s how we got here.

How Israel’s Participation Became Eurovision’s Central Controversy

The boycott has its roots in two consecutive years of controversy, both over the ongoing terror in Gaza as well as the issue of Israel’s televoting results.

Israel has been a member of the European Broadcasting Union since 1973 and has competed at Eurovision since 1973, winning four times. Its participation has never before generated anything approaching the current level of institutional conflict.

The shift dates to October 7, 2023, and the war in Gaza that followed.

By the 2024 contest in Malmö, protests outside the venue drew an estimated 15,000 people, per Eurovision World, and pressure on the EBU to exclude Israel intensified significantly. The EBU declined to do so, citing its own rules on political neutrality, a position that drew immediate comparisons to its decision to ban Russia from the contest in 2022 following the invasion of Ukraine.

Israel competed in Malmö, finished fifth, and the immediate controversy appeared to subside. Then came the voting problems.

The Voting Campaigns: What The Evidence Shows

After accusations of vote manipulation in 2024, the 2025 Basel edition made the situation even more acute.

That year, the Israeli Government Advertising Agency ran a campaign for Israel’s entry that received millions of impressions, per Eurovision News Spotlight, the EBU’s own fact-checking and open-source intelligence unit.

According to the BBC, “official social media accounts linked to Israel’s government, including that of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, had been asking people to vote for its representative 20 times, the maximum the contest allowed.”

Israel came first in the public televote.

A New York Times investigation published earlier today, in which reporters Mara Hvistendahl and Alex Marshall interviewed more than 50 people and reviewed internal Eurovision documents, found a “well-organized campaign by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government that embraced Eurovision as a soft power tool, and a secretive contest organizer that was ill-equipped to respond.”

The newspaper’s headline framing — “How Israel Turned Eurovision’s Stage Into a Soft Power Tool” — was the most direct articulation yet of what had been alleged for two years.

The Split Screen That Changed Everything

Israel’s first-place televote in Basel produced a moment that, more than any statistics, crystallised the stakes for broadcasters. The final result of the Eurovision Song Contest is determined by a 50-50 split between national jury votes and the public televote. Israel had topped the televote. Austria’s JJ had topped the jury vote. The outcome, as well as the location of the 2026 host, came down to a live calculation broadcast on screen, with the possibility of Eurovision 2026 taking place in Tel Aviv visible to the entire watching world for several minutes. The juries blocked it and Austria won.

What The EBU Did — And Why Broadcasters Said It Wasn’t Enough

EBU members met at their General Assembly in Geneva in December last year. The assembled broadcasters voted on a package of new rules: the maximum number of televotes per payment method was halved from 20 to 10, jury sizes were increased, and new measures were introduced to explicitly discourage promotion campaigns backed by governments or government agencies, per The Journal Ireland and Eurovision World. A large majority of approximately two thirds of members voted that these changes were sufficient and that no separate vote on Israel’s participation was needed, per Eurovision World. The 2026 contest would proceed as planned.

Five broadcasters — RTÉ (Ireland), AVROTROS (the Netherlands), RTVSLO (Slovenia), RÚV (Iceland), and RTVE (Spain) — found the package insufficient and announced their withdrawal. AVROTROS stated it could “no longer justify Israel’s participation with the continued and serious human suffering in Gaza” and cited the Israeli government campaign as interference in the previous edition’s outcome. RTVSLO described the situation as “incompatible with the values it upholds.”

RTÉ cited the “huge loss of life” in Gaza and the targeting of journalists. RÚV’s board determined that participation was incompatible with public sentiment in Iceland. Spain’s RTVE passed a board resolution in September 2025 and confirmed its boycott after the Geneva vote, also declining to broadcast any of the three shows, per The Journal Ireland.

Spain’s withdrawal is structurally the most significant. As one of the Big Five group of countries that contribute the most to Eurovision’s finances and are automatically guaranteed a grand final place, its absence reduces the automatic qualifier group from five to four and represents a direct financial and political blow to the contest’s established framework.

The Trophy Returns

The boycott has been accompanied by a series of symbolic gestures from within the Eurovision community itself. Nemo, who won the 2024 contest for Switzerland and became the first non-binary winner in Eurovision history, returned their trophy to the EBU over the decision to allow Israel to continue competing.

Austria’s 2014 winner Conchita Wurst, also one of the contest’s most iconic figures, made a statement at the start of 2026 withdrawing from all involvement with Eurovision.

Ireland’s three-time winner Johnny Logan, known on the continent as the King of Eurovision, confirmed on Ireland AM that he had turned down multiple invitations to participate in this year’s event in solidarity with RTÉ’s boycott.

The EBU Warning — Issued This Week

The controversy has not resolved itself in the run-up to the contest. On Friday May 8, promotional videos in 13 languages were released featuring Israel’s 2026 representative Noam Bettan, explicitly urging viewers to use all ten of their votes for Israel (10 is the maximum now allowed under the new rules).

Eurovision director Martin Green confirmed in a public statement that the EBU had contacted Israeli broadcaster KAN within 20 minutes of becoming aware of the videos, and had issued a formal warning. The campaign was subsequently removed from relevant platforms.

In a statement quoted by Eurovision Universe, Green said: “Employing a direct call to action to vote 10 times for one artist or song is also not in line with our rules nor the spirit of the competition.” KAN’s response attributed the campaign solely to Bettan rather than the broadcaster, and disputed that any unlawful funding had been involved.

A faction of Eurovision fans responded by circulating a counter-complaint to the EBU, arguing that encouraging maximum support was not a rule violation but simply educating fans about the contest’s own official mechanics, per the Jerusalem Post.

Eurovision Universe contextualised the warning as especially pointed given its timing, arriving at the first contest to operate under the tightened rules, and noted that Israeli entries have accumulated a pattern of regulatory friction, from the 2024 song rewrite forced by the EBU’s rejection of ‘October Rain’ to this year’s entry clearing approval only after the EBU conducted additional reviews and the lyrics underwent reported revisions.

What Happens In Vienna This Week

This year, thee contest therefore features 35 participating countries, which is the smallest number of participants since 2003, before the introduction of semi-finals.

A number of demonstrations have been scheduled for Vienna during contest week. They are mostly against, but also some in support of Israel competing. A pro-Palestine concert is scheduled in the city on Friday, billed as a political event featuring music and organised to coincide with Nakba Day.

Israel’s Eurovision entry Noam Bettan, performing “Michelle”, competes in semi-final one this week, running order position ten, between Estonia and Belgium.