Ireland, Spain and The Netherlands will boycott next year’s Eurovision Song Contest, after Israel was allowed to compete. <\/p>\n
They were among a number of countries who had called for Israel to be excluded over the humanitarian toll of the war in Gaza, and accusations of unfair voting practices.<\/p>\n
Despite calls for a vote on Israel’s participation, members instead approved a new set of rules intended to protect the integrity of the contest. <\/p>\n
In a statement, Dutch broadcaster Avrotros said that “participation under the current circumstances is incompatible with the public values \u200b\u200bthat are essential to us”.<\/p>\n
Spanish broadcaster RTVE added: “The board of directors of RTVE agreed last September that Spain would withdraw from Eurovision if Israel was part of it.”<\/p>\n
“This withdrawal also means that RTVE will not broadcast the Eurovision 2026 final… nor the preliminary semi-finals.”<\/p>\n
RTVE had led the calls for Israel’s dismissal, and requested a secret ballot on its participation. <\/p>\n
According to the broadcaster, organisers “denied RTVE’s request”, adding: “This decision increases RTVE’s distrust of the festival’s organisation and confirms the political pressure surrounding it.”<\/p>\n
Other broadcasters, including Slovenia and Iceland are also expected to withdraw from the competition.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ireland, Spain and The Netherlands will boycott next year’s Eurovision Song Contest, after Israel was allowed to compete.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":330436,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[88,92],"class_list":{"0":"post-330435","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-tv"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330435","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=330435"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330435\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/330436"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=330435"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=330435"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=330435"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}