{"id":644816,"date":"2026-05-15T14:14:10","date_gmt":"2026-05-15T14:14:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/644816\/"},"modified":"2026-05-15T14:14:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-15T14:14:10","slug":"how-to-watch-the-eurovision-song-contest-final","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/644816\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Watch the Eurovision Song Contest Final"},"content":{"rendered":"

Watching the Eurovision Song Contest final used to be a challenge for people in the United States, but things have gotten a lot easier in the last decade. After some fluctuations, Eurovision seems to have found a stable home with the streaming platform Peacock. Even better, this year viewers can also watch the live proceedings, starting Saturday at 3 p.m. Eastern, on the contest\u2019s official YouTube channel<\/a>, which carries the international feed.<\/p>\n

Hardcore fans know to turn to the BBC broadcast, because the comedian and broadcaster Graham Norton commentates during the final, and his often withering bon mots have acquired a following of their own.<\/p>\n

Paradoxically, it will be much harder for some steadfast Eurovision countries to watch the 2026 edition. Ireland, Slovenia and Spain withdrew from the contest<\/a> in protest over the inclusion of Israel despite its military campaign in Gaza, and the public broadcasters from those countries have said that they will not air the competition either. (Iceland and the Netherlands also withdrew from the contest but are still airing it.)<\/p>\n

This is quite a move from two stalwart participants: Ireland has won Eurovision seven times, and Spain is a member of the so-called Big Five \u2014 the countries that are automatically in the final because they are major financial contributors to the contest\u2019s organizing entity, the European Broadcasting Union.<\/p>\n

Instead of showing the final, during that spot, Ireland\u2019s national broadcaster, RTE, will show \u201cA Song of Europe,\u201d an episode of the classic sitcom \u201cFather Ted\u201d in which the title character and fellow priest Father Dougal McGuire try to enter a Eurovision-like competition with a song titled \u201cMy Lovely Horse.\u201d<\/a> Although support for Palestinians is widespread in Ireland<\/a>, the \u201cFather Ted\u201d co-creator Graham Linehan has denounced the airing of the show during Eurovision as \u201ca tool of antisemitic harassment.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

The Slovenian broadcaster RTV will show the thematic series \u201cVoices of Palestine\u201d at the time of the final.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Watching the Eurovision Song Contest final used to be a challenge for people in the United States, but…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":644817,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[89840,88,97869,1923,803,263538,80026,3662,1505],"class_list":["post-644816","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-boycotts","tag-entertainment","tag-eurovision-song-contest","tag-ireland","tag-israel","tag-pop-and-rock-music","tag-slovenia","tag-spain","tag-television"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/644816","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=644816"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/644816\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/644817"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=644816"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=644816"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=644816"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}