For three years, the final minutes of the Eurovision Song Contest have been nail-biting moments. Dedicated fans of the contest sat with their hearts in their stomachs in 2025 and 2026 as they watched a split screen with the Israeli contestant and another country’s contestant to find out who won, and who would therefor be hosting the contest the following year. The anxiety was palpable because there is a feeling that the contest would not survive Israel hosting during the conflict in Gaza. It’s one thing for countries to compete alongside Israel, it’s another thing for them to travel to Tel Aviv for a contest Israel is hosting – just a few kilometres away from the horrors taking place in Gaza. BBC commentator Graham Norton spoke for all Eurovision fans in 2025 after Austria was announced as the winner when he said organisers "will be breathing the largest sigh of relief that they're not faced with a Tel Aviv final next year".
Now, because of a rule change enacted by the European Broadcasting Union last week, that possibility has been taken off the table. New rules adopted for 2027 by the EBU, the association of public broadcasters which stages the contest, say that a country involved in an “armed conflict” or a “sensitive geopolitical situation” will “automatically be ineligible to host” should they win the contest. The change is important, because up till now the winner of each year’s contest automatically had the right to host the following year, and there was no formal mechanism for the EBU to overrule that. In 2022, when Ukraine won the contest, the Ukrainian broadcaster mutually agreed with the EBU that conditions were not safe to host the contest in Kyiv in 2023 and so they were jointly hosted with the BBC in Liverpool instead. But Israelis have made it clear that if they had won any of the past three years they would have insisted that Eurovision be hosted in Israel no matter what. The new rules allow the EBU to select another broadcaster to host the contest if the winning country is deemed ineligible, even over the winning country’s objections.
Five countries (Spain, Ireland, Slovenia, Iceland and the Netherlands) pulled out of Eurovision this year in protest of Israel’s behaviour both in and outside the contest (more on that here). As a result, Eurovision’s viewership fell by 30 million compared to 2025. There were 131 million viewers this year, down from 204 million ten years ago (Russia’s exclusion in 2022 also caused a big drop). The addition of Canada to the contest next year (more on that below) is unlikely to make up for those lost viewers. According to reports, Belgium may become the 6th country boycotting next year. The EBU said the hosting restriction decision is the result of consultations with participating broadcasters. The next day, the EBU announced that the long-running main sponsor of Eurovision, an Israeli company, has pulled out (more on that below).
But that wasn’t the only step the EBU is taking to address the concerns. Also last week, they reportedly sent a letter to participating broadcasters suggested moving the vote entirely online and banning people from voting for a single country more than once. The leaked EBU letter says, “it has become clear that today's geopolitical climate is driving votes for certain artists for reasons that have very little to do with their performances.” It is clear who they were talking about. Starting in 2024, the Israeli government has been