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Ireland among countries boycotting Eurovision after Israel allowed to compete
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- Title
- Israel to remain in Eurovision Song Contest
- Published
- Dec 4 2025
- Word count
- 105 words
There's been a long saga leading to this point, beginning in 2022 with Ukraine:
*After Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 22, the EBU was going to permit Russia to remain in the contest until multiple (I've read 9) countries threatened to withdraw, leading to Russia's removal from the contest. Many contestants openly supported Ukraine in 22, Ukraine nearly swept the public vote, and a lot of fans were upset because they felt they won based on politics, not the song. (Ukraine is a powerhouse and generally beloved in Eurovision, but it certainly wouldn't have gotten as many points in a normal year.)
*Citing safety reasons, Eurovision 23 was not held in Ukraine, but instead in the UK (runner up in 22). This year marked the beginning of mass jury votes, which typically could be fairly mixed, instead coalescing around one candidate (returning 2012 winner Loreen from Sweden), leading to a lead that was nearly insurmountable for the public vote (which is tallied afterwards and makes up the other half of the total score). This pattern has continued ever since, and seems to be a soft response to prevent a repeat of Ukraine's win (they have performed very well in the public vote every year, but typically get many fewer jury votes lately).
*The invasion of Gaza began in October 23. Israel wanted to submit a song directly referencing the events, which was in violation of EBU's rules to keep songs "apolitical" (which is selectively enforced). They changed the lyrics, but many artists and fans were upset that Israel was allowed to participate. There were large protests at the venue, the Israeli delegation was harassed and booed, and they reportedly were rude to contestants from other delegations, EBU employed "anti-boo" technology during broadcasts, and imagery supporting Palestine was banned (although several contestants still snuck images in, notably Portugal and Ireland, as well as one Swedish interval performer). There was a major vote campaign on behalf of Israel, so they did very well in the public vote and poorly with the juries, but they still finished fifth overall. Many contestants of the 24 contest reported it being a stressful and unpleasant experience. Switzerland won, receiving huge support from the juries, to the point where the second-place finisher thought "well, there's no way I'm going to win" even before the public votes were reported. This may have been spurred on by Italy releasing their voting results from the semifinals immediately after the broadcast, which is a huge no-no, but which showed massive support for the Israeli entry, causing much consternation and confusion (given its winning odds were low and it was considered a mediocre ballad).
*In 2025, the government of Israel expanded their ad campaigns supporting their contestant. While there was less outright hostility toward the Israeli delegation, there was still extensive booing during performances. The song was again a generic ballad, but seemed to be referencing resilience after tragedy, and the contestant was a survivor of attacks on October 7. The juries once again coalesced around a single contestant (Austria), but Israel won the public vote and nearly won Eurovision, finishing in second. In response, multiple countries requested more transparency in the public voting process and concerns that the Israeli government was manipulating public behaviour to garner political support.
*A meeting was held on 4 December to discuss, primarily, Israel's participation for 2026 and onwards. The EBU was concerned that Israeli broadcaster KAN, which is currently independent of the government, could be dismantled by the Israeli government and made more political if the EBU banned them. Generally, most EBU nations wanted to implement better controls over public vote manipulation to permit Israel to participate but to not threaten the integrity of the contest. They went with a moderate option, limiting the number of public votes and returning juries to semifinals (they had been previously removed following vote corruption scandals), which most countries believed would protect KAN while reducing some of the political bs. They did not directly hold a vote on whether to permit Israel to participate. Host Austria and major funding nation Germany threatened to withdraw from the contest if Israel was banned.
*Immediately following the meeting, four countries (including two of the major funding nations, Spain and the Netherlands) withdrew from Eurovision, and one more may next week. EBU appears to be trying to get other nations to participate to make up the funding difference, but there are concerns that smaller nations may need to withdraw if participation costs increase as a result of the withdrawals. If that happens, more countries may withdraw, eventually cancelling the contest. It's a situation in flux and it feels very tumultuous and overshadows the fun of Eurovision.
Generally: Eurovision has felt very not fun to watch the last few years. It's frustrating knowing that the juries band together to pick a winner, and there's a lot of anger and bad vibes around the contest. If Israel wins this year I think it could genuinely kill Eurovision. I personally think they should put countries in "political situations" - including Ukraine - into an exhibition status, so that they can participate but don't affect the vote. I just want to watch sparkles and butter churning and Latvian forest nymphs, I'm genuinely sad how this is working out.
Tldr: politics.
Really proud of Spain and the Netherlands. It's really depressing to see a country, and a non-European one at that, manipulating and potentially ruining Eurovision.
People interested in the topic of Israel and Eurovision might find this to be an article with a perspective they may not have seen or considered:
https://www.timesofisrael.com/the-next-threat-to-israel-at-eurovision-is-coming-from-inside-the-house/
Staying in the European Broadcast Union is presently incentive for the Israeli government not to gut the "neutrality"(it is much further left than the current government) of their public broadcasting service.
I imagine many of you here in the comments have come to your conclusion and don't consider that "enough" of a reason, but given the otherwise near unamimity of what's posted, I figured I would drop in some information for anyone lurking in the background.
Actually, I first learned of that perspective from cheep_cheep's comment and found that an interesting and valid reason for keeping Israel in.
What I don't like about Israel's participation is how they use underhanded tactics (ie aggressive ad campaigns) to make up for their (currently) poor international reputation. They are undermining the contest for everyone. So the question is - what exactly do we want the ESC to be about? We've spent years clamoring for it to be less political, but if it's merely a political tool we might as well go back to everyone just voting for their neighboring country. If it's an actual song contest, then Israel is acting in bad faith - and so are countries like Germany by making this a political issue in the first place.
My bad -- I had originally read this thread, and then several hours later seen that article; rereading now there are two sentences in the cheep_cheep's comment that mention this as a motivation. That said, I still think there is a benefit to highlighting that point in an individual comment for folks.
So I'm not actually super familiar with Eurovision. I've never watched more than a couple of songs. Being a US-American person not super into music, I really only started hearing about it when it became very political amid Russia's aggression against Ukraine. And reading online, I also see that there was a relatively recent change to allow people to pay for up to 20 votes, which is perceived to have made the contest more political. I wonder if the early increase publicity from political involvement was seen as a positive by the EBU, since it increased the people who knew what Eurovision was.
It seems to me like Eurovision was already political and Israeli organizations, knowing that they could not naturally compete in the number of voices speaking up based on its size, ended up with an organized effort to counter grassroots folks in other nations. So I think you're right that this is just an escalation of Eurovision always having been somewhat political, with Israel just moving from a (minor, before October 2023) victim to a beneficiary.
As for a solution, I don't know. I do think that removing Israel would only encourage the use of Eurovision as a political cudgel. Likely, the best solutions to a less political Eurovision are changes to how Eurovision is run. I've been poking around trying to come up with ideas,, and I saw a paper here that noted
It was focused on positive bias, but if the a similar principle applies to negative bias, perhaps a first step would be to look carefully at the juries and select them with an eye for people uninterested in politics -- and beyond avoiding negative bias, I think the EBU would end up with fewer political songs they needed to reject in the first place. Reducing the number of votes per person would likely also improve things, since it would make organized campaigns less powerful. I imagine someone more familiar with how the actual contest works than me could have better ideas on how to do that.
Of course, all of this assumes the EBU wants the contest to be less political. More controversy is more eyes, more eyes is more advertising revenue. And I believe votes are paid as well?
Perhaps out of context but political stunts like this just annoy me. It won't change anything, its not like all of a sudden a lot more people or countries are going to all of a sudden do something that is meaningful about it because a member of this group is walking out. A bigger impact, IMO, would be when people, or in this case an artist make a statement to all in a large stage like this one; be it good or bad that has an impact. This stunt and other similar stunts are childish.
It's not childish at all when you consider Israel has been insturmentlaly using and abusing Eurovision to whitewash its reputation for years, though especially in the last couple of years with its rampant Eurovision ad campaigns.
And let's not forget how the EBU constantly suppresses dissent from fans and spectators regarding this.
Eurovision should not be a stage for genocidal countries to proudly parade themselves and pretend they're awesome, and any country (yes I know it's actually national broadcasters and not countries, but they still represent the country) that's okay with Israel's participation is openly stating that they either do not see the genocide for what it is or are okay with it.
These messages are important because they move the discourse surrounding the subject, and I personally am not okay with the discourse being that genocidal countries can just waltz in unsactioned.
...i disagree; bold statements (and public boycott absolutely is a bold statement) foment public discourse about issues which are otherwise conveniently ignored...
...the volume of that discourse, and the international pressure which musters in its wake, comprise the best tools short of violence to force a regime to confront its atrocities...
I have to disagree. The opinions of musicians are ignored frequently, but the breaking of a decades-long low-stakes international event over Israeli involvement will have a greater impact.
I'm certainly glad there is some push back when it comes to collaboration with Israel. I hope this might help establish precedent for cutting ties with Israel in more impactful fields too.
...the fact that zionists successfully campaigned my state to pre-emptively outlaw israel boycotts is a pox (among many) against the legitimacy of my state government...
...didn't citizens united determine that money ≈ free speech in the united states?..that one breath legitimises foreign-nation lobbyists while the other prohibits private sanction is farce...
Citizens United held that you couldn’t prohibit electioneering communications by independent entities (corporations, unions, non-profits) between 30 to 60 days prior to an election. An opposite decision would’ve meant that the FEC could, for example, ban a movie paid for by a union about U.S. Senators supporting Israel if it directly or indirectly advocated for or against a candidate.
I'm sympathetic to your position, but I I'm not sure I agree this is a stunt. A stunt would imply this is only done to push an agenenda, or even cynically, to draw attention to the countries in question.
I think there's a space where these countries can stand up for their ideals by just not going along to get along. This would gain attention as a byproduct naturally.
I don't see how making a fuss on-stage is more impactful or less "childish" than withdrawing from the competition.
What's your opinion on countries and athletes boycotting the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin? Was that a useless, childish political stunt too? Should they all have just sucked it up and went and performed in Nazi Germany because, y'know, it's not like their boycott killed Hitler or anything so it was basically pointless, right?
...i did a good bit of reading on the 1936 olympic boycotts while composing my reply above, as the parallels are certainly topical, but ultimately decided that they weren't strong-enough to evoke godwin's law...
(the contemporary debate surrounding that boycott was extraordinarily-similar, though)
My reading of the above comment was that they think people boycotting (debatably) non-political events for political reasons is childish, and that it's better for people to participate and use the platform to make a statement. In which case I absolutely think the 1936 Olympics is worth mentioning.
People discuss "Godwin's Law" like it's a bad thing to compare anything to the Nazis just because, and I get its purpose in that 90% of the time if you're comparing something to the Nazis you're probably picking a far too extreme example, and in the process are trivialising the actual atrocities the Nazis committed. But in this case where it's a matter of a country committing (at the very least) a mass ethnic cleanse of a region, if not a full-scale genocide... I do think it is an apt comparison, certainly as it pertains to reactions from other countries who are strongly against the actions of the offending country. The specificities of the exact human rights violations in the two situations here aren't identical of course, but at the end of the day it's all just people treating humans like things.
I think anyone who considers events like Eurovision and the Olympics to be non-political to be incredibly naive at best, but it's a shockingly common thing; a lot of people don't give a shit about what horrible human rights violations a country is doing as long as they can watch a bunch of millionaires kick a ball around every now and then. But I think that's a different discussion.
...ah, our readings of godwin's law differ: it's not that nazi comparisons are inherently fallacious, it's that the tenor of discourse rapidly devolves to noise after they're introduced to a discussion...
...in this instance, while the bad-actions present strikingly similar form, the nature of each event and the bad-actors' position as host versus participant are fundamentally dissimilar, enough to pose each boycott as a substantially-different beast...
The law itself is just that inevitably someone will make the comparison should the conversation go on. The creator says that this usually results in trivializing the holocaust. That's not always a thing. His intent was mostly to make people try harder than comparing it to Hitler, but this seems like a relevant comparison even if the situation isn't identical
As someone who's never watched EuroVision, a question: is there any way that the contestants and their countries could be anonymized somehow, a la The Masked Singer? Because that seems like it could remove at least some of the political aspects.
That’s like anonymizing the athletes in the Olympics lol. Not to mention all the performances are tied with the local culture of the country, so it wouldn’t exactly be hard to guess who’s who.
Fundamentally, Eurovision is political. What people don’t want it to be is “negative/sad” political. But it was explicitly intended to be for a stronger European identity.
Yes, the identity of performing countries is quite relevant, and many would be very obvious (France singing in French, Serbia singing in Serbian, Italy singing in Italian, Cyprus and Greece giving each other 12 points). The selection process also varies by country, with many holding public contests just to select their entrants - there's no way the public could vote for them and still keep the identities of those performers a secret, and there are many public events before the show, including concerts and media events.
Perhaps more importantly, the whole point of the contest is to celebrate unity. The identification and celebration of current and former participant nations is a major part of the show, and making one contestant the secret boogeyman is likely to make people feel more suspicious and unhappy. It's this environment, too - where the point is a fairly silly celebration of culture - where the Israeli government's politicization of the contest feels especially inappropriate, especially because Palestinian symbols are banned at Eurovision. It feels increasingly farcial every year.
Not sure why BBC are leading with Ireland in the headline when Spain is one of the "big five". Why single us out?
I suppose that Ireland is much closer and more tied to the U.K., so more likely to be of more immediate relevance to BBC readers?
That, and there’s also strong historic links between Irish Republicans and Palestinian nationalists (partly due to common anti-British sentiment).
To be fair Ireland has won Eurovision 7 times, tied for the most wins ever. Spain has only won twice.
Iceland has officially pulled out of Eurovision 2026, but is likely the last country to do so. The new issue is selected artists potentially boycotting the contest - Portugal currently has an issue where most its internal contestants, if selected as the winner, will not participate in the contest in Austria. It will be interesting to see how that proceeds, given there is such strong backlash from a lot of the public and from artists themselves.