{"id":33653,"date":"2026-05-06T20:14:10","date_gmt":"2026-05-06T20:14:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/33653\/"},"modified":"2026-05-06T20:14:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-06T20:14:10","slug":"slovenia-tv-says-it-wont-air-eurovision-song-contest-after-pulling-out-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/33653\/","title":{"rendered":"Slovenia TV says it won&#8217;t air Eurovision song contest after pulling out"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>LJUBLJANA, Slovenia (AP) \u2014 Slovenia\u2019s national broadcaster RTV Slovenia said on Thursday it won&#8217;t air the <a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/eurovision-song-contest\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Eurovision Song Contest<\/a> this year after the small European country previously pulled out of the event over Israel&#8217;s participation.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/eurovision-song-contest-boycott-israel-gaza-vienna-f6f7f0c8d97339665383f480dcdac583\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">This year\u2019s main competition<\/a> with 35 competing countries is scheduled to be held May 12-16 in Vienna.<\/p>\n<p>Slovenia along with a handful of other countries \u2014 Iceland, Ireland, the Netherlands and Spain \u2014 are boycotting because Israel was allowed to take part.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe will not be broadcasting the Eurovision Song Contest,&#8221; Ksenija Horvat, RTV Slovenia director told The Associated Press. &#8220;We will be airing the film series \u2018Voices of Palestine,\u2019 featuring Palestinian documentaries and feature films.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Organizers of the song competition decided in December to allow Israel to compete, which prompted the walkout of Slovenia and other countries. Slovenia has been a vocal critic of Israel over its conduct of the <a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/israel-hamas-war\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Israel-Hamas war in Gaza<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The Eurovision contest strives to put pop music before politics but has repeatedly been embroiled in world events. Russia was expelled in 2022 after its <a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/russia-ukraine\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">full-scale invasion of Ukraine<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>It also has been roiled by the <a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/israel-hamas-war\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Israel-Hamas war in Gaza<\/a>, stirring <a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/video\/pro-palestinian-protesters-march-in-basel-against-israels-participation-in-eurovision-song-contest-7b233b5219334a3c84708f054bf5fbe2\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">protests<\/a> outside <a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/eurovision-song-contest-israel-gaza-protests-21348ffc91292f33d07ee792af183eb8\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">the venues<\/a> and forcing organizers to clamp down on <a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/eurovision-song-contest-malmo-sweden-palestinian-israel-gaza-war-8e0ca2f7aef9239393eb63ade6199d66\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">political flag-waving<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LJUBLJANA, Slovenia (AP) \u2014 Slovenia\u2019s national broadcaster RTV Slovenia said on Thursday it won&#8217;t air the Eurovision Song&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":32856,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20858],"tags":[15354,231,20859,20863,20860,309,630,13227,21233,314],"class_list":{"0":"post-33653","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-eurovision","8":"tag-e","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-eurovision","11":"tag-eurovision-song-contest","12":"tag-eurovision-song-contest-2026","13":"tag-general-news","14":"tag-i","15":"tag-israel-hamas-war","16":"tag-media-and-entertainment-industry","17":"tag-world-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33653","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33653"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33653\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32856"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33653"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33653"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33653"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}