Watch: Beyond Eurovision's glitter - how geopolitics became the biggest act in Vienna

Published connected 15/05/2026 - 11:06 GMT+2•Updated 11:08

Vienna is hosting its 70th anniversary, but the "United by Music" motto is nether its heaviest strain yet. Let’s look what’s down the glitter.

With lone 35 participating countries, the lowest level since 2003, the contention is struggling to past the grit of real-world geopolitics.

Europe is witnessing its largest boycott ever, with 5 nations, truthful Spain, Ireland, the Netherlands, Slovenia and Iceland, pulling retired implicit Israel's inclusion.

And successful a determination of nonstop protest, Slovenia has replaced the unrecorded broadcast with a documentary bid titled "Voices of Palestine."

Even wrong the arena, Israel’s Noam Bettan qualified amidst a partition of some cheers and protests. It seems similar this variation has go a high-stakes gross gamble for an lawsuit that organisers assertion was watched by implicit 160 cardinal radical astir the satellite past year.

Following the ballot past December to corroborate Israel’s spot successful the contest, President Isaac Herzog argued that the state "deserves to beryllium represented connected each stage." He described the determination arsenic a captious objection of "solidarity, fellowship, and cooperation."

And Israeli officials person accused their critics of wide-ranging run against Israel’s information successful Eurovision with the Israeli Ministry of Diaspora Affairs saying it had identified a crisp emergence successful antisemitic and anti-Israel tones surrounding the contest.

One happening is definite - whether done boycotts oregon ballads, Eurovision remains the lone signifier wherever continent’s tensions are performed successful 3 minutes of pyrotechnics, strobe lights and possibly adjacent immoderate euphony successful the inheritance too.

Watch the Euronews video successful the subordinate supra for the afloat story.