{"id":178396,"date":"2025-12-10T21:04:09","date_gmt":"2025-12-10T21:04:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/178396\/"},"modified":"2025-12-10T21:04:09","modified_gmt":"2025-12-10T21:04:09","slug":"iceland-becomes-fifth-country-to-boycott-eurovision-2026-over-israel-eurovision","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/178396\/","title":{"rendered":"Iceland becomes fifth country to boycott Eurovision 2026 over Israel | Eurovision"},"content":{"rendered":"

Iceland has become the fifth country to boycott next year\u2019s Eurovision<\/a> song contest after Israel was given the go-ahead to compete, deepening the crisis facing the competition.<\/p>\n

The board of the national broadcaster, R\u00daV, voted on Wednesday not to participate, meaning Iceland will join Spain, Slovenia, the Netherlands and Ireland<\/a> in neither participating in nor broadcasting the event, which is scheduled to take place in Vienna.<\/p>\n

Last week the contest\u2019s organising body, the European Broadcasting Union, declined to expel Israel<\/a> over its conduct of the war against Hamas in Gaza.<\/p>\n

R\u00daV said in a statement that \u201cgiven the public debate in this country \u2026 it is clear that neither joy nor peace will prevail regarding the participation of R\u00daV in Eurovision. It is therefore the conclusion of R\u00daV to notify the EBU today that R\u00daV will not take part in Eurovision next year.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"EurovisionEurovision in crisis? Israel\u2019s inclusion causes rift | The Latest<\/p>\n

R\u00daV added that it had raised concerns numerous times with the EBU, which it felt had not been addressed.<\/p>\n

The war in Gaza has caused ructions at Eurovision, spurring protests outside venues and forcing organisers to clamp down on political flag-waving.<\/p>\n

The EBU held a general assembly last week, where members met to discuss concerns about Israel\u2019s participation. Members voted to adopt tougher contest voting rules in response to allegations that Israel manipulated the vote in favour of their contestants, but took no action to exclude any broadcaster from the competition.<\/p>\n

The walkouts cast a cloud over the future of what\u2019s meant to be a feelgood cultural party, dealing a blow to fans, broadcasters and the contest\u2019s finances.<\/p>\n

Before the board meeting, R\u00daV\u2019s vice-chair, Dilj\u00e1 \u00c1mundad\u00f3ttir Z\u00f6ega, gave a hint of things to come. \u201cToday is International Human Rights Day and I think the outcome will be in that spirit,\u201c she said.<\/p>\n

Earlier on Wednesday, Poland confirmed it would be participating in the contest. Its national broadcaster said: \u201cWe are aware of the scale of tension surrounding the upcoming edition. We understand the emotions and concerns. However, we believe that Eurovision still has a chance to once again become a space filled with music. And only music. We, like the overwhelming majority of EBU members, offer this opportunity.\u201d<\/p>\n

Germany and Austria have also confirmed they will be taking part, arguing that Eurovision was conceived as an apolitical song contest to unite Europe.<\/p>\n

RT\u00c9, the Irish broadcaster, said participation was \u201cunconscionable given the appalling loss of lives in Gaza and the humanitarian crisis there\u201d while RTVE in Spain said participating would engender \u201cdistrust\u201d in the organisation given the depth of feeling over Gaza.<\/p>\n

Spain\u2019s culture minister, Ernest Urtasun, backed the boycott. He said: \u201cYou can\u2019t whitewash Israel given the genocide in Gaza. Culture should be on the side of peace and justice.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Iceland has become the fifth country to boycott next year\u2019s Eurovision song contest after Israel was given the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":178397,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-178396","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178396","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=178396"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178396\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/178397"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=178396"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=178396"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=178396"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}