{"id":43780,"date":"2026-05-16T09:30:10","date_gmt":"2026-05-16T09:30:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/43780\/"},"modified":"2026-05-16T09:30:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-16T09:30:10","slug":"israel-boycott-overshadows-eurovision-final","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/43780\/","title":{"rendered":"Israel boycott overshadows Eurovision final"},"content":{"rendered":"

The UK\u2019s Eurovision entrant Look Mum No Computer is to perform in the grand final of the Eurovision Song Contest on Saturday, alongside Israel\u2019s Noam Bettan, after the country\u2019s inclusion in the competition prompted a boycott by five nations.<\/p>\n

Look Mum No Computer, whose real name is Sam Battle, will perform on Saturday at the Wiener Stadthalle in Vienna, Austria, having sung in Thursday\u2019s semi-final despite already qualifying as one of the big four alongside France, Italy and Germany, who contribute the most to Eurovision financially.<\/p>\n

Austria\u2019s entrant, Cosmo, also received automatic qualification as the host nation, after Austria\u2019s JJ won the 2025 contest with his song Wasted Love.<\/p>\n

\"Cosmo<\/p>\n

Cosmo from Austria performing the song Tanzschein during the second semi-final. Credit: Ian West\/PA<\/p>\n

Battle, who will perform 14th in the running order at the final, is best known for his YouTube career, which began in 2013.<\/p>\n

He makes his own quirky musical instruments, including an organ from Furby toys and a triple oscillator synthesiser made out of Nintendo Game Boy consoles.<\/p>\n

Israeli entrant Bettan, 28, was booed by the crowd during his performance in Tuesday\u2019s semi-final. He will perform third in Saturday\u2019s event.<\/p>\n

Bettan received a mixed reception from the crowd before his performance began, with some members of the audience shouting, and later booing, during the quiet moments of his song Michelle.<\/p>\n

\"People<\/p>\n

People take part in a No Stage For Genocide protest Credit: Ian West\/PA<\/p>\n

There were a number of protests in the Austrian capital this week over Israel\u2019s inclusion in the contest amid its actions in Gaza. Ireland, Iceland, the Netherlands, Spain and Slovenia have boycotted the event.<\/p>\n

The largest protest was the No Stage For Genocide event, organised by Palestine Solidarity Austria, which took place at Venediger Au, a playpark on the outskirts of Vienna, which was attended by hundreds of supporters.<\/p>\n

Marco Wanjura, part of the team organising the event, said: \u201cThe European Song Contest claims to stand for solidarity, love, diversity, and everything, but in reality, this year\u2019s contest is hosting Israel as a country which is right now committing a genocide in Gaza.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd that\u2019s why we wanted to show that the majority in Austria is actually against that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Antigoni,<\/p>\n

Antigoni, from Cyprus, during the second semi-final Credit: Ian West\/PA<\/p>\n

Earlier this week, human rights group Amnesty International criticised the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) for its failure to suspend Israel from the song contest, as it did with Russia after its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, calling it an act of \u201ccowardice\u201d and a \u201cblatant double standard\u201d.<\/p>\n

Israel\u2019s 2025 entrant Yuval Raphael received the largest number of votes from the public last May, ultimately finishing runner-up to JJ after the jury votes were taken into account.<\/p>\n

Two protesters unsuccessfully attempted to storm the stage and throw paint during her performance last year.<\/p>\n

Look Mum No Computer will not be the only British-born performer in the final. Former Love Island contestant Antigoni, full name Antigoni Buxton, will perform her song Jalla for Cyprus.<\/p>\n

Antigoni competed in the eighth series of the reality TV show in 2022.<\/p>\n

Veteran British pop star Boy George was also involved in the competition, but was eliminated in the first semi-final on Tuesday, having joined San Marino\u2019s entrant Senhit to perform the song Superstar, which he co-wrote.<\/p>\n

Another famous face for British audiences will be Australia\u2019s entrant, former Neighbours star Delta Goodrem, who will sing her song Eclipse. She had top 10 hits in the UK with songs including Lost Without You, Born To Try and Innocent Eyes.<\/p>\n

\"Alexandra<\/p>\n

Alexandra Capitanescu from Romania performs the song Choke Me. Credit: PA<\/p>\n

The final will open with a performance from last year\u2019s winner JJ, and there will also be a medley of classic Eurovision songs to celebrate the competition\u2019s 70th anniversary.<\/p>\n

The competing countries in the grand final will be Albania, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czechia, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Israel, Italy, Lithuania, Malta, Moldova, Norway, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Sweden, Ukraine and the UK.<\/p>\n

The Eurovision Song Contest grand final will take place on Saturday at 8pm, and will be shown live on BBC One and BBC iPlayer.<\/p>\n

Subscribe free to our weekly newsletter <\/a>for exclusive and original coverage from ITV News. Direct to your inbox every Friday morning.<\/p>\n

Reporting History sees journalists join News At Ten anchor Tom Bradby to revisit their remarkable on-the-day reports of the defining events of the modern age. Listen to the episodes below…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The UK\u2019s Eurovision entrant Look Mum No Computer is to perform in the grand final of the Eurovision…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":43781,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20858],"tags":[26742,1452,20859,20860,145,21215,15649,26273,20865],"class_list":["post-43780","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-eurovision","tag-antigoni","tag-austria","tag-eurovision","tag-eurovision-song-contest-2026","tag-israel","tag-noam-bettan","tag-performance","tag-semi-final","tag-vienna"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43780","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=43780"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43780\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/43781"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43780"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43780"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43780"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}