“United by genocide.” A chant ringing through the streets of Malmö. A Jewish woman dons a blonde wig and eyeglasses to conceal her identity, fearful for her safety. Boos fill the Malmö Arena as the opening notes of “Hurricane” begin to play.
This was what the Eurovision Song Contest looked like in 2024, arriving just seven months after the October 7 attacks and the outbreak of war between Israel and Hamas: a tense, emotionally charged, and frankly messy pop culture moment. What had long been viewed as escapist spectacle now carried the weight of identity, nationalism, grief, and belonging. By 2026, Europe’s most glittering music competition had transformed into one of the world’s most politically combustible cultural stages.
How did we get here? How did Eurovision go from camp spectacle to geopolitical flashpoint? The shift felt inevitable. Eurovision insists it is apolitical, but the past few years have exposed just how fragile that claim has always been.
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In truth, Eurovision has never been politically neutral — quite literally since day one. The contest was created in 1956 as an effort to unify post-World War II Europe through the shared medium of broadcasting. At least in theory, it was a genuinely ambitious and even hopeful idea. World War II destroyed Europe and took the lives of millions of people, including much of Europe’s Jewish population, and for Jewish audiences especially, that history carries additional resonance. Music, at its best, is a healing force across borders in a way that politics is not. Why not make the attempt?
But Eurovision’s structure has always contained political tension beneath the glitter. Participation is tied to membership in the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), meaning countries compete through their national broadcasters, entities that are themselves inherently political. Contestants do not simply perform as artists; they perform under national flags, representing national identities before an international audience.
Add in diaspora loyalties and regional bloc voting into the mix, and the political undercurrents become harder to ignore. There’s a long-running joke, for example, that Greece and Cyprus always award each other twelve points before even hearing the songs. More overt examples have surfaced over the years as well, including Georgia’s disqualified 2009 anti-Putin entry “We Don’t Wanna Put In,” designed to protest Russia’s 2008 invasion of Georgia.
Politics, in other words, have always lingered beneath Eurovision’s surface. Political symbolism has always bled through — the contest has simply been better at containing it.
The war in Ukraine fundamentally reshaped how audiences viewed Eurovision’s supposed neutrality. Following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the EBU initially resisted calls to remove Russia from the competition. But pressure from participating broadcasters mounted quickly. Within days, the EBU reversed course, banning Russia from the contest before the country later exited the EBU altogether.
Once Eurovision expelled Russia, the contest crossed a line it could never fully uncross. Audiences now understand that geopolitical actions can affect eligibility; Eurovision’s “apolitical” and “united by music” motto has exceptions. and the EBU, whether it wanted to admit it or not, had demonstrated that it was willing to make moral and political judgments with sufficient public pressure.
Israel became the next major test case of these newly recalibrated expectations.
On October 7, 2023, Israel was attacked by Hamas. Around 1,200 people were killed in Israel during the attacks, and hundreds were taken hostage into Gaza. Israel responded with a war against Hamas, later launching a full-scale ground invasion of Gaza on October 27.
Almost immediately, calls emerged demanding Israel’s exclusion from Eurovision, but the EBU decided to go forward with Israel’s participation.
For critics of Israel’s participation, the EBU’s decision felt inconsistent after Russia’s removal just two years earlier. If Russia could be banned over the war in Ukraine, they argued, why should Israel remain in the competition during the war in Gaza? Supporters of Israel, however, argued that the situations were fundamentally different and that banning Israeli artists for the actions of their government would set a dangerous precedent.
The controversy escalated further when Israel submitted its original entry titled “October Rain. The EBU objected to the lyrics, arguing they contained political references to the October 7 attacks, violating Eurovision’s “apolitical” nature. Israel ultimately revised the lyrics and renamed the song “Hurricane,” and secured approval to compete in Eurovision.
But changing the lyrics did little to calm the surrounding tensions. The decision intensified backlash surrounding Israel’s participation. Thousands of protesters gathered outside the Malmö Arena ahead of the 2024 song contest, accusing Eurovision of bias and “supporting genocide”. These protests threatened the overall security of the contest, especially surrounding Israeli contestant Eden Golan and her delegation. In an interview following the contest, Golan revealed she disguised herself with a blonde wig and glasses to simply leave her hotel safely and avoid recognition. She later said those moments still haunt her, describing lingering anxiety and recurring nightmares two years later.
The 2025 song contest saw Nova Festival survivor Yuval Raphael place second with “New Day Will Rise.” Israel’s strong televote performance reignited broader debates about Eurovision voting, political mobilization, and audience behavior. Some broadcasters and viewers questioned whether geopolitical solidarity and online campaigning were beginning to shape the contest as much as the music itself.
Broadcasters, fans, and commentators began openly questioning whether the contest could still plausibly present itself as politically neutral in the social media era, where global conflicts now spill instantly into fandom spaces. In response to mounting criticism and concerns over voting transparency, the EBU later announced revisions to voting procedures ahead of the 2026 competition.
At that point, Eurovision no longer resembled a contest merely struggling to keep politics out. It had become a stage onto which global politics were inevitably projected, whether the organizers wanted them there or not.
For many critics, Israel’s inclusion after Russia’s exclusion felt inconsistent. For many Jewish and Israeli viewers, the comparison itself felt selective and deeply personal.
Israel has historically used Eurovision as a stage of belonging within Europe. Since debuting in the contest in 1973, Israel has participated 47 times, winning four times in 1978, 1979, 1998, and 2018.
The 1998 contest, in particular, marked a turning point when Dana International won with “Diva,” becoming the first openly transgender artist to win Eurovision. Her victory was culturally seismic — not just for Israel, but for Eurovision itself. It helped cement the contest’s reputation as a space associated with queer visibility, theatricality, and self-expression.
That legacy resurfaced decades later with Nemo, who represented Switzerland and won in 2024, becoming the first nonbinary contestant to win. Nemo publicly protested Israel’s participation in 2025 and eventually returned their trophy to the EBU. In a broader sense, Nemo’s act of protest carried a historical irony: Israel’s own Eurovision history, particularly Dana International’s groundbreaking win, helped shape the contest’s broader embrace of queer and gender-nonconforming artists that later performers like Nemo would inherit.
2018’s contest saw Neta win with the entry “Toy,” exactly 20 years after Dana International’s triumph. Historically, the Eurovision fandom did not merely tolerate Israel’s presence in the competition but embraced it.
Israel’s participation is often questioned on geographic grounds, despite Eurovision long functioning as a broader broadcasting union rather than a strictly European competition. Multiple non-European and transcontinental countries have participated in or held eligibility through the EBU, including Australia, Morocco, Armenia, and Azerbaijan.
Israel’s presence in the EBU and Eurovision is more than just geographic or musical — it’s emblematic. Eurovision was created in direct response to World War II, where millions of Jews were murdered by the Nazis. In many ways, Israel’s presence in Eurovision carries profound weight: a Jewish state participating prominently in a European institution decades after the Holocaust nearly eradicated Jewish life across the continent.
In that sense, Eurovision becomes more than entertainment; it becomes a form of cultural presence and resilience.
But ever since the escalation between Russia and Ukraine, Israel has increasingly become subject to a broader trend within Eurovision: artists have become proxies for governments, fans treat voting as activism, and the televote as a referendum rather than simply musical preferences.
The 2026 contest feels like the culmination of these tensions. Five countries — Iceland, Ireland, the Netherlands, Slovenia, and Spain — have boycotted the song contest because of Israel’s participation, marking one of the largest boycotts in Eurovision’s history. Protests are expected in Vienna ahead of the competition, and security has escalated.
All the while, the EBU is continuing to promote Eurovision under its familiar “United by Music” branding, which increasingly feels difficult to reconcile with the political realities surrounding the contest.
Semi-Final of the Eurovision Song Contest at Wiener Stadthalle, Vienna 2026 on 11 May
Eurovision is no longer just a song contest reacting to politics. Politics now actively shapes the contest itself, and the idea that Eurovision can remain fully apolitical feels increasingly unsustainable. Audiences are no longer separating culture from geopolitics, social media has intensified scrutiny, artists are expected to speak on global matters, and silence is being interpreted politically.
I have no idea what the outcome of Eurovision will be this year. Truthfully, I had no interest in Eurovision until 2023, when Noa Kirel represented Israel with “Unicorn.” As an American, Eurovision initially felt distant to me.
But over the past two and a half years, that changed.
As a Jew of Latino and Mizrahi ancestry, I have come to see Israel’s presence in Eurovision as a sign of strength and pride. Seeing Jewish and Israeli identity represented on such a massive cultural stage has felt unexpectedly meaningful to me — as a way to connect with a global music community outside of the U.S., and access a form of escapism.
Eurovision was created after World War II as a project of cultural unity, an attempt to bring countries together through music after a continent had torn itself apart. Seventy years later, it has become far more than entertainment: a moral and political Rorschach test where Europe argues publicly about nationalism, war, identity, belonging, and whether art can ever truly exist outside politics.
Sure, the sequins, colorful lighting, and extravagant staging are still there. But increasingly, so are the protests, the pressure campaigns, and the impossible questions Eurovision can no longer dance around.
