{"id":185837,"date":"2025-12-11T01:56:09","date_gmt":"2025-12-11T01:56:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/185837\/"},"modified":"2025-12-11T01:56:09","modified_gmt":"2025-12-11T01:56:09","slug":"iceland-is-fifth-country-to-boycott-eurovision-2026-in-protest-of-israels-participation-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/185837\/","title":{"rendered":"Iceland is fifth country to boycott Eurovision 2026 in protest of Israel\u2019s participation \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Iceland will not take part \u200din the 2026 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/eurovision\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/eurovision\/\">Eurovision Song Contest<\/a>, the country\u2019s public broadcaster RUV said \u200don Wednesday, after organiser the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) last week cleared <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/israel\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/israel\">Israel<\/a>\u2019s participation.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">The decision to allow Israel to take part \u200cin the next Eurovision, which will be held in Vienna in \u2060May, earlier prompted Ireland, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/spain\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/spain\">Spain<\/a>, the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/netherlands\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/netherlands\/\">Netherlands<\/a> and \u200cSlovenia \u200bto withdraw \u200din protest, citing Israel\u2019s conduct in the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/israel-hamas-conflict\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/israel-hamas-conflict\/\">Gaza war<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">\u201cIt is clear from the public debate in this country and the reaction \u2060to the EBU\u2019s decision last week that \u2060there will be neither joy nor \u2060peace regarding RUV\u2019s participation,\u201d the broadcaster\u2019s director general Stefan Eiriksson said in a statement.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Iceland was \u200damong the countries that had requested a vote last week on Israel\u2019s participation. But the EBU decided not to call a vote on Israel\u2019s participation, saying it had instead passed new rules aimed at discouraging \u200cgovernments from influencing \u200cthe contest.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Iceland has never won the song contest but came second in 1999 and 2009. \u200cThe Eurovision Song Contest dates back to 1956 and reaches around \u2060160 million viewers, according to the EBU. \u2013 Reuters<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall  b-it-article-body__copyright\">(c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2025<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Iceland will not take part \u200din the 2026 Eurovision Song Contest, the country\u2019s public broadcaster RUV said \u200don&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":185838,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[93,17948,62,61,60,3411,5151,2846],"class_list":{"0":"post-185837","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-eurovision","10":"tag-iceland","11":"tag-ie","12":"tag-ireland","13":"tag-israel-hamas-conflict","14":"tag-netherlands","15":"tag-spain"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185837","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=185837"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185837\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/185838"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=185837"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=185837"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=185837"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}