Eurovision to keep the vote to decide whether Israel can participate in the 2026 competition

The organizers of the Eurovision Song competition said on Friday that members members would vote in November to find out if Israel could participate in musical extravagance next year, while calls have mounted so that the country is excluded from the war in Gaza.

According to the spokesman Dave Goodman, the Board of Directors of the European Union of Radio, which brings together public broadcasters and directs the event, sent a letter to the members indicating that the vote will take place during an extraordinary general meeting held online in early November.

The vote will be on the question of whether Kan, the Israeli public broadcaster and a member of the UBU, will participate, said Goodman in an email. An “absolute majority” in the vote would be necessary for exclusion to pass, he said.

Countries including Ireland, the Netherlands, Slovenia and Spain have threatened not to participate in the Eurovision song competition unless Israel is excluded from competition during the war in Gaza.

Germany and Austria have argued the participation of Israel. Other national radiudiffusers, including the BBC, have not yet made a decision.

Kan, the Israeli broadcaster, wrote on Thursday on X that she hoped that the competition “will continue to maintain her cultural and non -political identity”.

Regional and political rivalries

Eurovision is a competition in which artists from countries across Europe, and a few beyond, contribute under their national flags to be crowned continental champion-a sort of Pop Music Olympic Games.

It is also a place where regional policy and rivalries take place.

In 2024, the organizers told Israel to change the words and the name of its entry, originally entitled October rainBy apparent reference to the cross -border attack of Hamas on October 7, 2023, which killed some 1,200 Israeli and triggered the war. The song was renowned Hurricane And Israeli singer Eden Golan was allowed to stay in the competition.

Pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli demonstrations have also taken place at Eurovision in the last two years of the competition.

The vote on Israel’s participation “is one of the greatest crises with which Eurovision has ever been confronted, because it has the potential to realize a really division within the organization,” said Dean Virtic, an expert in the history of Eurovision.

Valetia noted the past exclusions of the former Yugoslavia in the early 1990s (due to the UN sanctions as war in the Balkans raged) and more recently those of the Belarus in 2021 (after the country submitted two songs which violated the rules of competition on political themes) and Russia in 2022 (during its war on a complete scale). For its part, Russia has since restored its own international song competition entitled Intervision, and the final took place last weekend.

Last week, Austrian Minister of Foreign Affairs Beate Meinl-Reisinger expressed his concern that some countries envisaged a boycott of the event in 2026 in his country, insisting that the competition was “not an instrument of sanctions”.

She wrote on X that she had written to European colleagues with a call to find ways to “improve the situation in Israel and Gaza” together.

The Eurovision Song 2026 competition will take place in May in Vienna. The honor of accommodation is granted to the winner of the previous year.

The winner of this year in Basel, Switzerland, was the JJ of Austria for the song Love wasted.