Ireland, Spain, Slovenia and the Netherlands will boycott next year’s Eurovision after Israel was given the all-clear to compete in the 2026 song contest despite calls by several participating broadcasters for its exclusion over the war in Gaza.
No vote on Israel’s participation was held on Thursday at the general assembly of the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), the body that organises the hugely popular international annual singing competition.
Instead, participating broadcasters voted only to introduce new rules designed to stop governments and third parties from disproportionately promoting songs to influence voters.
Honest question from a USian: is the Eurovision competition honestly a big thing with most people or is this hyped up by the media? For example, is this basically like America’s Got Talent, about which no one I know cares, or is this actually a big deal with the common pleb?
It’s a big deal! I’m also an American but I work as a travel advisor. When I ask European colleagues, it’s about 50/50 people who love it or hate it. But everyone knows about it! I get a lot of “oh my mom still watches that” so maybe not as popular with younger people, lol.
Even for USians it’s pretty common to be flooded with Eurovision news on papers like TheGuardian. It feels like the only reason people care is because the media keeps covering it and thus people “have to see the thing everyone is talking about.”
I’m not European, but from what I’ve seen, there’s a lot of media coverage. You can’t spend 2 seconds on the mainstream music side of the internet without hearing something from the contest.