Eurovision Kicks Off in Vienna After Warning Over Israel’s “Vote 10 Times” Call

The 70th Eurovision Song Contest is set to take place in Vienna, with two semi-finals on 12 and 14 May and a final on 16 May, despite a boycott controversy tied to Israel’s participation.

Israel’s broadcaster was issued a formal warning after it called for viewers to “vote 10 times” for Israel, and Eurovision Song Contest director Martin Green said the delegation was contacted and “They immediately acted to do this.”

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The Independent says several countries, including Spain, withdrew from the competition in protest at Israel’s participation, while RTÉ confirmed in December that Ireland would not participate and would not broadcast after the European Broadcasting Union confirmed Israel would be allowed to take part.

RTÉ said Ireland’s participation remained “unconscionable” given the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, and the contest begins in Vienna “tonight” for the first semi-final amid heightened security and continuing controversy over Israel’s participation.

The Eurovision fallout is framed through competing accounts of Israel’s influence on the audience vote, with the BBC describing how broadcasters questioned Israel’s high placement last May after social media accounts linked to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu asked people to vote for its representative 20 times.

The BBC reports that the European Broadcasting Union confirmed the vote had been independently checked and verified, and said there was no evidence that voting up to 20 times “disproportionally affects [sic] the final result”.

Al Jazeera

In parallel, the Jerusalem Post says Israel’s Eurovision contestant Noam Bettan walked the “turquoise carpet” in Vienna as scrutiny grew over how Israelis promoted their representative, and it quotes Eurovision organizers warning that a direct call to action to vote 10 times is “not in line with our rules nor the spirit of the competition.”

POLITICO reports that Slovenia’s broadcaster president Natalija Gorščak said the decision not to participate or broadcast Eurovision is “not any message against Jewish people,” but a “message against Netanyahu’s state,” linking the boycott to Israel’s war in Gaza and the humanitarian crisis it triggered.

As the contest proceeds, the dispute is also tied to how broadcasters and institutions respond to Gaza-related allegations, with Amnesty International Secretary-General Anays Kalamar calling the EBU’s refusal to suspend Israel’s participation “a cowardly act and an example of the stark double standards”.

“Amnesty International Secretary-General Anays Kalamar said, ahead of the Eurovision Song Contest 2026 semifinals, in which Israel will participate: 'The European Broadcasting Union's (EBU) refusal to suspend Israel's participation in the Eurovision Song Contest, as it did with Russia, is a cowardly act and an example of the stark double standards when it comes to Israel”

Amnesty International

Kalamar argued that “There must be no space for Israel on the Eurovision stage as long as the genocide continues,” while the Independent notes that the EBU has faced calls to ban Israel for three years running but has each time allowed Israel to remain in the competition.

The Al Jazeera report says five countries—Ireland, Spain, Slovenia, the Netherlands, and Iceland—are boycotting due to Israel’s “genocidal war on Palestinians in Gaza,” and it adds that Israel’s participation is being debated alongside Russia’s earlier exclusion after its war in Ukraine.

Le Monde frames the stakes for the 2026 edition as the biggest boycott in Eurovision’s seventy-year history, and it says the first semi-final takes place this Tuesday evening starting at 9:00 p.m., with juries’ points combined with the results of a public vote to determine the ten songs qualified from each semi-final.