Eurovision has long claimed to be apolitical. This year, that claim may be its most contested performance yet.
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.
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.
In 2025, official state channels, including accounts linked to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Foreign Ministry, launched paid digital advertisement campaigns across Europe, instructing each viewer to vote for Israel 20 times, the maximum allowed.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 Broadcastin
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