Graham was back commentating on the BBC for the 2026 Eurovision Final
22:36, 16 May 2026Updated 22:37, 16 May 2026
(Image: Ian West/PA Wire)
Graham Norton issued an apology during the Eurovision final over Poland’s performance at the annual event.
The Irish TV presenter was back on commentary duties for the singing competition, which was held at Wiener Stadthalle in Vienna, Austria, on Saturday night (May 16). Graham has worked on every iteration of the Eurovision for the BBC going back to 2009.
Early on in the evening, he proceeded with his usual tradition of paying tribute to the late Terry Wogan, who died in 2016 at the age of 77. Terry was the BBC’s Eurovision commentator from 1971 to 2008.
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“This is song nine. Song nine is the moment I’d urge you to reach forward to pick up a mug, a glass, a cup or whatever you got and raise it to toast the memory of the late, great Sir Terry Wogan, who was and always will be the voice of Eurovision. Sir Terry,” he said.
As is tradition for Graham at this point, he didn’t hold back firing his trademark witty one liners at the acts looking to win the glass microphone trophy. It was Austrian presenters Victoria Swarovski and Michael Ostrowski who faced the bulk of his critiques.
Moments after the pair walked onto the stage, Graham joked: “Obviously, presenting a television programme isn’t rocket science until you see these two do it. You’ll see various variations of it all night.”
Another hilarious moment after the hosts introduced a game where they’d try and say as many Eurovisions songs as they could, saw Graham say: “They did rehearse this, I thought they’d drop that and not play this annoying game for four hours. They didn’t.”
Alicja is hoping to take home Poland’s first win(Image: Getty Images)
However, Graham got serious for a moment after Polish act Alicja performed her song Pray in front of the tens of thousands of people gathered in the Austrian venue. Alicja rose to fame after winning The Voice of Poland.
Having missed the Eurovision back in 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic canceling the event, Alicja finally got to perform at the historic event. Pray is an empowering anthem about standing up for yourself and not taking any nonsense.
While she did skip one swear in the song, she accidentally let out the s-word, which rhymes with ‘bit’, in the middle of her performance. In spite of the moment occurring after the watershed, Graham still apologised to viewers.
He said: “Quite the vocal performance there from Alicja. The song is Pray. Sorry to any of you who might have caught a bad word from Alicja there, it is a live show.”
The moment appeared to frustrate fans watching at home, with many taking to X, previously known as Twitter, to call out the brief use of explicit language from Alicja.
@JHooksCS said: “surely poland should be disqualified for swearing in BOTH performances #eurovision.” @brettdbass added: “Surely swearing is not allowed in #Eurovisión2026 ? How were Poland allowed to do that?”
@escxtra wrote: “Bit of swearing, bit of vocal acrobatics. Yeah, that’s what we had expected from Poland at #Eurovision. It looks slick, but I’m struggling to see this on the left side of the scoreboard.”
@sharon_wisner argued: “#eurovision features a potty mouth’d Polish female singer according to Graham Norton. So far he’s bang on. This is great fun! Now it’s got fancy dancy. Yeah. Why not? Love it! Go girl!”