Why is Israel allowed to take part in the Eurovision song contest? 

Eurovision, the annual international music pageant watched and adored by millions of viewers around the world, begins this week despite boycotts over Israel’s participation.

The televised final round of the music contest is scheduled to take place on May 16 in Austria’s capital, Vienna, this year and will mark Eurovision’s 70th anniversary.

Israeli singer Noam Bettan will be representing the country in Vienna this year. He will perform a pop song called Michelle.

But five countries – the Republic of Ireland, the Netherlands, Slovenia, Spain and Iceland – are boycotting this year’s contest due to Israel’s participation. They have cited Israel’s genocidal war on Palestinians in Gaza – which has so far killed at least 72,740 people – as the main reason.

Besides these countries, more than 1,000 musicians and cultural workers have signed an open letter calling for others to boycott the contest. They have also criticised the contest’s organisers of hypocrisy, as Russia has been banned from participating due to its war in Ukraine.

So, why is Israel allowed to participate in Eurovision?

Here’s what we know:

What is Eurovision?

The Eurovision Song Contest, which began in 1956, is an annual event organised by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU). According to the Eurovision website, the contest is co-produced by EBU and its member broadcasters, “most notably the public broadcaster of the preceding winning country, the Host Broadcaster”. Austria won last year’s contest with the song Wasted Love, which was performed by artist JJ in Basel, Switzerland.

Despite its name, the contest is not restricted to European nations. All countries with broadcast operations located in Europe are eligible to take part. The contest organisations can also make special invitations. In 2015, for example, EBU invited the Special Broadcasting Service (SBS) of Australia to participate in the 60th edition of the contest.

Israel was the first non-European country to participate in Eurovision in 1973 and also hosted the event in Tel Aviv in 2019.

While the rules have been altered from time to time, each participating country generally submits one original song, which should be around three minutes long and can be performed by up to six musical artists on stage for the semifinals as well as the final event.

This year, artists from 35 countries, including Israel, are heading to Austria to compete in the 70th edition of the Eurovision Song Contest.

Who is boycotting Eurovision this year?

Immediately after Israel’s participation was confirmed by EBU in December last year, some countries, politicians and musical artists began calling for a boycott of the contest.

On December 4, the Netherlands, Slovenia, Spain, Iceland and Ireland said they would boycott the contest if Israel took part.

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.

Slovenia’s national broadcaster said it would boycott participation “on behalf of the 20,000 children who died in Gaza”, while Spain’s public broadcaster RTVE also announced that it would not participate. “The situation in Gaza, despite the ceasefire and the approval of the peace process, and the use of the contest for political goals by Israel, make it increasingly difficult to keep Eurovision a neutral cultural event,” its secretary-general, Alfonso Morales, said in a statement.

On December 10, Iceland’s broadcaster RUV said that the Nordic nation would also not participate in the 2026 competition. “It is clear from the public debate in this country and the reaction to the EBU’s decision last week that there will be neither joy nor peace regarding RUV’s participation,” the broadcaster’s director-general Stefan Eiriksson said in a statement.

Who else objects to Israel’s participation?

Ahead of the 2026 Eurovision Song Contest semifinals, in which Israel will participate, Amnesty International’s Secretary-General Agnes Callamard said: “The failure of the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) to suspend Israel from Eurovision, as it did with Russia, is an act of cowardice and an illustration of blatant double standards when it comes to Israel.”

“Instead of sending a clear message that there is a cost for Israel’s atrocity crimes against the Palestinian people, the EBU has given Israel this international stage even as it continues to commit genocide in Gaza, unlawful occupation and apartheid,” she said.

“Israeli participation in the Eurovision Song Contest offers the country a platform to try to deflect attention from and normalise its ongoing genocide in the occupied Gaza Strip, and its moves towards further annexation of Gaza and the West Bank including East Jerusalem, as well as its system of apartheid against Palestinians.”

Sven Kuhn von Burgsdorff, former European Union representative to the occupied West Bank and Gaza, said the actions of both Russia and Israel against Ukraine and the Palestinian people, respectively, have been found to be in violation of international law and human rights.

“It would be only consequential to also suspend Israel’s participation in the Eurovision song contest as long as the country maintains its illegal occupation of Palestinian land, thereby not only suppressing Palestinian rights but also entrenching a regime with characteristics of segregation or apartheid, as ruled by the International Court of Justice (ICJ),” he told Al Jazeera.

In April, more than 1,000 musicians and people working in the cultural sector signed a letter calling on nations to boycott the contest and accused EBU of hypocrisy over its refusal to allow Russia to take part because of its invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

“The EBU’s hypocritical responses to Russia’s and Israel’s crimes have removed any illusion of Eurovision’s claimed ‘neutrality.’ In 2022, the EBU said that Russia’s presence would ‘bring the competition into disrepute’,” the letter stated.

“Yet more than 30 months of genocide in Gaza – alongside ethnic cleansing and land theft in the besieged West Bank – aren’t considered sufficient to apply the same policy to Israel,” it added.

The letter was organised by the campaign group No Music for Genocide and was signed by famous bands like Kneecap and musicians including Roger Waters, Paul Weller, Paloma Faith, Macklemore and former Eurovision winners such as Emmelie de Forest and Charlie McGettigan.

In 2024, some European Parliament members and politicians from Spain’s left-wing Podemos party had also signed a letter seen by Al Jazeera that noted that in 2022, the Eurovision Song Contest suspended Russia in response to its invasion of Ukraine, but fined Iceland because the Icelandic contestant displayed a Palestinian flag at the Eurovision Song Contest in Tel Aviv in 2019.

“Israel’s participation is in clear conflict with what the EBU claims to stand for, as it misinforms about Israel and conceals its genocidal behaviour,” the letter said.

The winner of 2024’s contest, Switzerland’s Nemo, pledged to return the trophy in protest over Israel’s continued participation in the event.

“I no longer feel like this trophy belongs on my shelf,” Nemo said on Instagram last December.

In solidarity, Irish artist Charlie McGettigan, who won the 1994 Eurovision contest, said he also plans to return his winning trophy.

“Following on from 2024 winner Nemo doing the same yesterday, this is great solidarity with the Palestinian people,” the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign wrote on December 12 on social media in response to McGettigan’s announcement.

During the past two editions of the contest, pro-Palestinian activists have protested over Israel’s participation in the host cities Malmo, Sweden, in 2024 and in Basel, Switzerland in May 2025.

Does anyone support Israel’s inclusion in the contest?

Yes, last December, Germany, a major Eurovision backer, said it would not take part if Israel was barred. “Israel belongs in the Eurovision Song Contest,” said German Commissioner for Culture and the Media Wolfram Weimer.

Then, on April 15 this year, a pro-Israel, non-profit initiative called “Creative Community for Peace” published an open letter supporting Israel’s participation. The letter was signed by more than 1,000 members of the global entertainment industry, including actors Amy Schumer, Mila Kunis and Jerry O’Connell.

“We have been shocked and disappointed to see some members of the entertainment community calling for Israel to be banished from the Contest for responding to the greatest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust,” the letter read.

“We believe that unifying events such as singing competitions are crucial to help bridge our cultural divides and unite people of all backgrounds through their shared love of music,” it added.

“Those who are calling for Israel’s exclusion are subverting the spirit of the Contest and turning it from a celebration of unity into a tool of politics.”

However, former EU representative von Burgsdorff said calling for Israel to be banned from the competition “is not at all about sanctioning Israeli artists, but about ensuring that a government cannot instrumentalise the Eurovision song contest platform for its own propaganda and reputational benefit while it continues to commit egregious violations of human rights and humanitarian law in Gaza and the West Bank”.

Sanjeev Kumar, a pro-Palestinian activist based in Belgium, said Israel has been allowed to participate in the contest because European governments, in collaboration with their national broadcasting associations and the EBU, support Israel’s genocide in Gaza and its ongoing attacks in the occupied West Bank and now Lebanon.

“The evidence for this can be seen in the position of Germany, which threatened to pull out of the contest altogether if Israel were banned. Moreover, the EBU is morally bankrupt and institutionally incompetent. Russia was outlawed because governments and broadcasters threatened to boycott the EBU, effectively making a decision for them,” he said.

“The response to Ukraine and Palestine highlights the bitter and twisted hollowness of European values that have plagued humanity for the last 400 years,” Kumar added.

How has EBU handled the pressure to bar Israel from the contest?

The European Broadcasting Union, the organiser of the Eurovision Song Contest, has come under increasing pressure to exclude Israel from the competition since Israel’s genocide in Gaza began.

The contest’s voting system also came under scrutiny when Yuval Raphael, who represented Israel at the competition last year, jumped to second place in the contest’s public vote despite lower jury scores.

Last November, EBU sent a letter to its members indicating that an extra vote would take place at an extraordinary general meeting held online in early November to decide on Israel’s participation.

The vote would be on whether KAN, the Israeli public broadcaster and member of the EBU, should take part, a spokesperson told the media. An “absolute majority” would be required for an exclusion to pass, he added.

The director of the contest, Martin Green, also said in a statement in November 2025 that “the neutrality and integrity of the Eurovision Song Contest is of paramount importance to the EBU, its Members, and all our audiences” and highlighted that “the fairness of the Contest is always protected”.

“We are taking clear and decisive steps to ensure the contest remains a celebration of music and unity. The Contest should remain a neutral space and must not be instrumentalised,” he added.

Then on December 4, after its annual meeting, EBU gave Israel the green light to participate and said: “A large majority of members agreed that there was no need for a further vote on participation and that the Eurovision Song Contest 2026 should proceed as planned, with the additional safeguards in place.”

Israeli President Isaac Herzog welcomed the news in a post on X on December 4 and said: “Israel deserves to be represented on every stage around the world, a cause to which I am fully and actively committed.”

Chris West, the author of Eurovision: A History of Modern Europe Through the World’s Greatest Song Contest, told Al Jazeera that EBU may be keen to protect KAN because “ultimately the EBU is about supporting public service broadcasters”.

“The EBU is also keen to protect itself from being cast as a judge of geopolitical rights and wrongs. If more broadcasters had threatened a boycott, then they might have had to change their view, but the contest can easily go ahead missing five participants,” he said.

He also noted that there has long been a debate about whether the contest should be political.

In September, EBU members held a discussion on “the increasingly complex global context” in which Eurovision takes place and said in a statement that “the Eurovision Song Contest, like many other events, is not immune to the pressures of global politics”.

“In reality, it always has had a political aspect. It was founded in 1956 as a part of the movement to bring European countries together to avoid a repeat of the two wars that had devastated the continent,” West said.

Al Jazeera reached out to EBU for comment, but did not receive a response.

What happens next?

Brian Donnelly, a human rights activist in Ireland and former Eurovision fan, welcomed countries boycotting the contest this year and told Al Jazeera that while it is too late, it is a move in the right direction.

He noted that many European countries have adopted what he called “Israeli exceptionalism” and seem “very comfortable” turning a blind eye to the genocide being carried out in Palestine. “I think the Eurovision is just another extension of that,” he said.

“I’m excited to go to a United for Palestine event, an alternative to Eurovision, in Brussels next week. This will feature many former Eurovision participants and feels much more aligned with my values,” he added.

Ciara Greene, who also calls herself a former Eurovision fan, said she has been boycotting Eurovision since 2024.

“Instead, I’m looking forward to alternative Eurovision celebrations,” Greene said. “Here in Belgium, while Eurovision will still be broadcast, there is an alternative song contest in solidarity with the people of Palestine featuring Gustaph and Geike Arnaert, who represented Belgium in the past. This is much more aligned with my personal beliefs.”