{"id":378898,"date":"2026-04-14T11:55:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-14T11:55:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/378898\/"},"modified":"2026-04-14T11:55:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-14T11:55:08","slug":"eurovision-song-contest-2026-to-stream-in-us-on-youtube-plus-peacock","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/378898\/","title":{"rendered":"Eurovision Song Contest 2026 to Stream in US on YouTube, Plus Peacock"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tPlanet Earth, get ready for the madness that is Eurovision! A taste of Eurovision permeated the inaugural StreamTV Europe<\/a> industry event in Lisbon, Portugal on Tuesday, courtesy of a session entitled: \u201cThe Original Song Contest: A Eurovision Case Study.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tNow, the U.S. is getting a free option to follow all the fun and the fury of the annual singing competition, courtesy of YouTube<\/a>. Jurian Van Der Meer, commercial director of the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), who oversees all business and commercial activities related to the Eurovision Song Contest<\/a>, broke the news during the panel that YouTube has struck a deal for the event, starting with this year\u2019s 70th anniversary edition<\/a>, taking place in Vienna, Austria. The deal covers the semifinals and final, which are also already available in the U.S. for Peacock<\/a> subscribers.<\/p>\n

\n\tSo far, \u201cwe didn\u2019t really have a strategy for distributing our content\u201d longer-term, including the national selection processes, Van der Meer shared on the Lisbon stage. Now, the free U.S. YouTube livestream will change that. The semifinals take place May 12 and 14, followed by the final on May 16.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe exec told THR after the session that YouTube already streamed the song contest last year, but that was not widely known yet. YouTube\u2019s deal covers the world, except for select markets where local broadcasters chose not to share the event with the streaming platform, including in the U.K. and Australia, he said.<\/p>\n

\n\tOn stage, Van der Meer on Tuesday also addressed this year\u2019s latest Eurovision conflict around a controversy surrounding last year\u2019s public vote in Israel<\/a> and the inclusion of Israel amid the Gaza war. While the debate led to rule changes, five countries decided to boycott this year\u2019s edition<\/a>. They are Iceland, Ireland, the Netherlands, Slovenia, and Spain. These five have not sent representatives to this year\u2019s Eurovision Song Contest, but two of them, namely the Netherlands and Iceland, will air the event.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cPolitics does come in once in a while, unfortunately,\u201d explained Van der Meer. \u201cThe music is what we will have [our] focus on. We welcome everybody, but we also understand and respect \u2026 that people are having certain views.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tEurovision panel at StreamTV Europe<\/a> in Lisbon, courtesy of Georg Szalai<\/p>\n

\n\tTuesday\u2019s Eurovision panel, hosted by media universe cartographer Evan Shapiro<\/a>, also featured Filipe Ligeiro, who works on the digital strategy of Festival da Can\u00e7\u00e3o, one of the longest-running television programs in Portugal and the country\u2019s national selection for the Eurovision Song Contest, who shared: \u201cEurovision for us is a really good global platform,\u201d he said, explaining that last year\u2019s Portuguese Eurovision entry, the band NAPA, is now one of the country\u2019s hottest muscial acts. <\/p>\n

\n\tYi\u011fit Do\u011fan \u00c7elik, the chair and CEO of Merzigo Global, a media technology company focusing on the distribution and monetization of premium film, TV, and digital content across open video platforms, also touted the global opportunity for the song contest.<\/p>\n

\n\tVan der Meer also highlighted the recent EBU deal with Voxovation, S2O Productions and Thailand\u2019s Channel 3 for the inaugural Eurovision Song Contest Asia in Bangkok on Nov. 14. Shouldn\u2019t that competition be called Asiavision, Shapiro asked? Acknowledged the executive: \u201cThere\u2019s a little debate.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Planet Earth, get ready for the madness that is Eurovision! A taste of Eurovision permeated the inaugural StreamTV…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":378899,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[156,32443,1019,111,139,69,411,197301,437,4139],"class_list":{"0":"post-378898","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-eurovision-song-contest","10":"tag-international","11":"tag-new-zealand","12":"tag-newzealand","13":"tag-nz","14":"tag-peacock","15":"tag-streamtv-europe","16":"tag-tv","17":"tag-youtube"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378898","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=378898"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378898\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/378899"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=378898"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=378898"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=378898"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}