Is Eurovision on the brink of collapse?

The twice-annual meetings of the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) do not tend to set pulses racing. Every six months or so, the continent’s public broadcasters get together to brainstorm how to tackle their shared problems and pat themselves on the back for successfully organising another Eurovision song contest. In London in July, for instance, Richard Osmaninterviewed Tim Davie, then the BBC director-general, on stage after a speech by a former EU commissioner. It is hardly stirring stuff.

This year is different. The general assembly, which starts in Geneva on Thursday, has the potential to be explosive, as Europe’s broadcasters prepare to decide whether Israel should be thrown out of Eurovision because of the way its government prosecuted the war in Gaza.

Things have become, in the words of one long-time Eurovision observer, “toxic”, as two blocs have emerged that seem intractably opposed to one another. And the outcome could lead to the end of Eurovision as we know it.

On one side, countries including Spain, Ireland, the Netherlands, Slovenia and Iceland have all threatened to boycott next year’s edition – to be held in the Austrian capital, Vienna – if Israel is allowed to take part, because of the number of civilian deaths in the conflict. Others, including Austria and Germany, have said that they may walk out if Israel is forced aside.

The UK is one of the so-called “big five” countries – along with France, Germany, Spain and Italy – that get a bye to the final because they disproportionately fund the contest. The sums may seem trifling – less than £500,000 apiece by some estimates – but if Spain or Germany pulled out over Israel, it would be an unprecedented blow not just to Eurovision’s prestige, but its finances too. (The BBC has so far declined publicly to pick a side in the row; Davie had previously said that the corporation will “need to see what the broadcast union decides”.)

To say that the situation is messy is an understatement. “It is the most severe crisis in the history of the contest,” says Dean Vuletic, a Croatian-Australian historian of contemporary Europe who specialises in Eurovision. “Never before have we seen so much division over a political issue in Eurovision. When Belarus and Russia were expelled [after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine started in 2022], there was some sort of consensus there, especially among the EU members in the EBU. But now we see even EU members divided over this issue. That’s why it’s so serious.”

EBU members were meant to hold a vote in November on whether or not to allow Israel to take part next year, but that plan was cancelled after a ceasefire was agreed in the Middle East that appears to be holding. But any hopes that the cessation of hostilities in Gaza might cool the atmosphere among Europe’s broadcasting bosses appear to be misplaced.

José Pablo López, the head of RTVE, Spain’s public broadcaster, reaffirmed his threat to boycott the next contest when quizzed by Spanish parliamentarians last week. “Israel has used the contest politically, has tried to influence the result and has not been sanctioned for this action, which has taken place in at least the last two years,” he said. “Any other country that had carried out this use of the contest, I assure you that it would have been sanctioned and temporarily suspended.”

López added: “Israel’s presence is untenable. We are talking about a genocide in Gaza. Eurovision is a competition, but human rights are not a competition.”

Meanwhile Roland Weissmann, the boss of Austrian broadcaster ORF, has been fighting a rearguard action in an effort to make sure Israel can participate in Vienna – including a visit to Jerusalem last month during which he said: “Eurovision will celebrate its 70th anniversary next year and Israel is an integral part of the contest.”

The growing disquiet is a massive departure for Eurovision, which has always billed itself as a politics-free high-camp jamboree that helped launch the likes of Abba, Bucks Fizz and Celine Dion on the international stage. However, the fact that Israel’s participation or non-participation was going to be controversial has been obvious to anybody who has been to the past two Eurovision finals, where things threatened to boil over in both Malmö and Basel.

I have covered Eurovision for years and things have never been so febrile as they have been over the question of Israel. I was in Sweden when pro-Palestine protests forced Israel’s Eden Golan to stay in her hotel when she was not performing, for security reasons. This year’s entrant, Yuval Raphael, was a survivor of the Hamas attack on the Nova music festival on October 7 2023; she had to rehearse for the contest with the sound of boos ringing in her ears, just to be prepared.

As soon as singer JJ won for Austria this May, pushing Israel into second place and thus securing hosting rights for Vienna, Graham Norton summed things up during his BBC commentary: “I think the EBU will be breathing the largest sigh of relief that they are not faced with a Tel Aviv final next year.”

Any sense of relief will have been short-lived, however. As the Israel-Hamas war dragged on, with its attendant death toll, the question of whether Israel should be allowed to take part in Eurovision increasingly became raised by other participating nations. The crunch, once delayed, is now set to come this week, in what organisers say will be an “open and in-person discussion”.

The fact that all of the countries that say they are opposed to Israel’s participation took part in the past two contests – after the start of the war in Gaza – combined with the EBU’s flip-flopping on the November vote, has made it all feel rather unseemly.

“These countries have taken part in the contest knowing that Israel was going to be there; not a single delegation apparently raised a concern. Now, it has obviously escalated,” says Paul Jordan, who previously worked for the song contest and has a PhD in the subject, earning him his “Dr Eurovision” nickname.

He adds: “It feels a little bit like virtue-signalling but, at the same time, I understand the situation where broadcasters are under a lot of pressure from the public and governments as well. It’s really complicated.”

The EBU is not generally regarded as having handled the situation well in recent months. “Saying you’re going to have a massive vote, there’s going to be a D-Day, and then turning around saying, ‘Oh, actually, we’re not having that,’ it just looks like they’re not in control of their own brand,” says Jordan. “And that’s a real problem, I think, for their image moving forward.”

It is important to point out, at this point, that the Israeli government has no part in running the nation’s Eurovision entries and that Kan, the broadcaster that does, has found itself at odds with Benjamin Netanyahu’s administration over the years.

In the face of the threat of expulsion from Eurovision, Israeli society seems united against buckling to the pressure from its international critics. “I have seen dangerous processes that begin with Eurovision and end in other places,” Isaac Herzog, Israel’s president, said in September. “The delegitimisation of Israel and the attempt to exclude us from every possible arena are moves designed to weaken us. It starts with Eurovision but reaches matters that are vital to us. Every arena is important.”

Israel also has a proud heritage at Eurovision, having won the song contest four times since its 1973 debut – most recently in 2018, which earned Tel Aviv the right to host the following year’s edition.

“It’s not commonly understood why Eurovision is so important for Israelis: for their self-definition as being a part of the West, as sharing political and social values, especially liberal values, with European countries,” says Vuletic. “This is also important to understand why the Israelis are taking this so seriously, and why they would be unlikely to consider excluding themselves from the contest.”

And the Israelis would be able to point at the hypocrisy of their detractors: many of those now calling for Israel’s exclusion will have attended – and enjoyed – being in Tel Aviv six years ago. Israel had long been held up as a tolerant, democratic beacon in the Middle East that was friendly to gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender people, groups that disproportionately make up the Eurovision fanbase. The recent war has led many in those groups to abandon support for Israel and found themselves on the same side as the terrorists of Hamas.

The whole thing has been suffused with bitterness. “Eurovision itself has become very toxic now, in a way it never used to be, to the point where I’m questioning whether I still want to be involved, even on the periphery,” says Jordan. “It’s meant to be a fun time. I’ve learnt a lot, I owe the contest a lot. But actually, I think if it’s making you unhappy, this is time to maybe move on. And the future of the event? If it continues to become this cesspit it appears to be, then I don’t know. The fandom maybe has to answer some questions and look quite hard at themselves.”

Meanwhile, the EBU is showing other signs of struggling to hold things together. It has announced tweaks to how the public vote works, after the Israeli government was accused this year of breaking the spirit of the contest’s rules by encouraging its citizens abroad to vote en masse for Raphael, which they were allowed to do up to 20 times. (In future, no viewer will be allowed to cast more than 10 votes on the night.) Organisers hope that such tweaking will be enough to placate Israel’s critics, but if it is not, then the question of participation will go to a vote.

Martin Green, the Briton who took over responsibility for running Eurovision this year, perhaps gave a hint of how he might want things to transpire at the crunch meeting towards the end of November. “The Eurovision song contest belongs to all of us, and it must remain a place where music takes centre stage,” he said when announcing the voting changes. “Governments do not participate in the Eurovision song contest, artists do. Artists backed by public service broadcasters who are not responsible for the decisions and actions of their governments.”

Eurovision organisers have said similar things for the past 70 years: that the contest is not about politics but is instead a unifying force that reminds people in Europe (and beyond) about what they have in common with one another. Its official slogan is “united by music”. But it is difficult to make such an argument convincingly today.

“One thing is for sure: I don’t know how Eurovision gets past this,” says Jordan. “It used to exist in a bubble; I don’t think it does now, and Ukraine and Israel have shown that, actually, it’s affected and very heavily influenced by global events. And I don’t see how that’s ever going to change.”

To paraphrase Eurovision’s most famous alumni, the song contest now faces its Waterloo.

The next Eurovision Song Contest takes place in Vienna from May 12-16 2026

[Source: Daily Telegraph]