{"id":445643,"date":"2026-05-17T03:02:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-17T03:02:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/445643\/"},"modified":"2026-05-17T03:02:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-17T03:02:09","slug":"great-achievement-israel-finishes-second-in-eurovision","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/445643\/","title":{"rendered":"Great achievement: Israel finishes second in Eurovision"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bulgaria is the winner of the Eurovision Song Contest 2026, which took place on Saturday night in Vienna, the capital of Austria. Israel and Noam Bettan clinched second place – marking the second year in a row that the country has secured the runner-up spot.<\/p>\n

Bulgaria\u2019s representative, Dara, and her song “Bangaranga” received 516 points from the combined public and jury vote. Israel\u2019s representative received 123 points from the juries for his song “Michelle,”<\/a> while the televote at home added another 220 points to his tally.<\/p>\n

These are the countries whose juries awarded points to Israel – Switzerland: 2, Malta: 4, Ukraine: 10, Bulgaria: 7, Azerbaijan: 4, San Marino: 4, Germany: 3, Belgium: 1, Albania: 8, Georgia: 6, Armenia: 7, Poland: 12, Czechia: 2, Denmark: 7, France: 4, Norway: 1, Serbia: 4, Moldova: 10, Croatia: 5, Romania: 6, Austria: 8.<\/p>\n

Culture and Sports Minister Miki Zohar reacted to the Israeli achievement at Eurovision: “Standing proud before the entire world – this is an immense achievement for Israel. Am Yisrael Chai! We are so proud of our Noam and the entire Israeli delegation.”<\/p>\n

President Isaac Herzog spoke with Noam to congratulate him on the milestone: “Noam, you are a source of pride for Israel. I just spoke with Noam Bettan and congratulated him on his impressive achievement at Eurovision. Coming in second place for the second consecutive year is a source of immense pride, but beyond the ranking – Noam brought talent, emotion, and an admirable Israeli representation to the stage. I am incredibly proud of him, and he is a great pride to Israel.”<\/p>\n

Israeli mentalist Lior Suchard announced the points on behalf of Israel, which awarded its “douze points” (12 points) to Australia, 10 points to Denmark, 8 points to Bulgaria, 7 to Finland, 6 to Moldova, 5 to Greece, 4 to Romania, 3 to Italy, 2 points to Belgium, and 1 point to Albania.<\/p>\n

Following his Grand Final performance of “Michelle,” Noam Bettan said: “It was insane, honestly I was more emotional tonight than during any of the recent performances.” Noam added, “Months of hard work culminated in this exact moment. I need you guys behind me now with all your strength.”<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Spanish broadcaster RTVE, which boycotted the Eurovision<\/a> because of Israel’s participation, displayed a message on screen: “The Eurovision Song Contest is a competition, but human rights are not. There is no room for indifference. Peace and justice for Palestine.”<\/p>\n

\"The\"enlarge\"The point distribution at EurovisionScreenshot<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Bulgaria is the winner of the Eurovision Song Contest 2026, which took place on Saturday night in Vienna,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":445644,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[10495,10570,42,43,133006,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-445643","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-eurovision","tag-eurovision-song-contest","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-noam-bettan","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/445643","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=445643"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/445643\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/445644"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=445643"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=445643"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=445643"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}