The Israeli public broadcaster, known as Kan<\/a>, was found to have broken the rules of the song contest<\/a> on Friday (8 May) when it shared videos on social media encouraging fans to support its 2026 entry, Noam Bettan. <\/p>\n In the clips, Bettan, who is competing this year with the song \u201cMichelle\u201d, told his fans to use all 10 of their allocated votes to support him in the first semi-final on Tuesday 12 May. <\/p>\n The message from Bettan, 29, was apparently recorded in several languages, including French, German, English, Greek and Italian.<\/p>\n Kan<\/a>\u2019s endorsement of the videos was found to have breached new rules designed to limit third-party campaigns<\/a>.<\/p>\n In a statement issued on Saturday (9 May), Eurovision<\/a> director Martin Green<\/a> said: \u201cWithin 20 minutes, we had contacted the Kan<\/a> delegation to ask them to immediately stop any distribution of the videos and remove them from any platforms where they had been published. They immediately acted to do this.\u201d<\/p>\n Organisers accepted that the call to viewers was not part of a \u201clarge-scale funded third-party\u201d campaign but was still \u201cnot in line with our rules nor the spirit of the competition\u201d.<\/p>\n Green said Eurovision<\/a> would continue to monitor any promotional activity and \u201ctake appropriate steps as necessary\u201d.<\/p>\n Kan said in response that the campaign was not financed by any specific group.<\/p>\n The change to Eurovision rules <\/a>was implemented in response to controversy surrounding Israel<\/a>\u2019s result at last year\u2019s contest, which was held in Switzerland.<\/p>\n Fifty per cent of all votes are now supplied through professional juries, while the number of individual votes fans can cast has been cut from 20 to 10.<\/p>\n Viewers can vote for the same act 10 times, but they are not able to vote for the country they are calling from.<\/p>\n Five countries withdrew from this year\u2019s contest<\/a> \u2013 Spain, Slovenia, Ireland, the Netherlands and Iceland \u2013 after it was confirmed that Israel<\/a> would be allowed to compete again.<\/p>\n Explaining Spain\u2019s reasons for boycotting the 2026 ceremony, Jos\u00e9 Pablo L\u00f3pez, chair of the Spanish radio and television corporation, said: \u201cAs joint organisers of the Eurovision song contest, we share a collective responsibility. While Israel has regularly participated in the competition, the current events and the genocide currently taking place make it impossible for us to look the other way.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is not accurate to claim that Eurovision is merely an apolitical music festival. We are all aware that the contest carries significant political implications. The Israeli government is equally aware of this fact and leverages the event on the international stage.\u201d<\/p>\n Eurovision 2026 kicks off this week in Vienna with the first semi-final on Tuesday 12 May, and the second semi-final on Thursday 14 May. The grand final will be held on Saturday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your support helps us to tell the story From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":578241,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[96,391,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-578240","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-entertainment","tag-tv","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/578240","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=578240"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/578240\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/578241"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=578240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=578240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=578240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Noam](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/2026-05-10T162444Z_1457160992_RC2G6LA7PIJQ_RTRMADP_3_MUSIC-EUROVISION.jpg\")
Noam Bettan, representing Israel at this year\u2019s Eurovision Song Contest, called on fans to use all of their 10 votes to support him (Reuters)<\/p>\n![\"Eurovision](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/2215006124.jpg\")
Eurovision changed its rules following controversy over voting for Israel\u2019s 2025 entry Yuval Raphael (AFP\/Getty)<\/p>\n