By Francois Murphy<\/p>\n
VIENNA, May 16 (Reuters) – Bulgaria won the Eurovision Song Contest for the first time on Saturday in a final overshadowed by five countries’ boycott over Gaza, claiming a dramatic victory despite another big public vote for Israel that again \u200csecured it second place.<\/p>\n
The garish and usually good-natured competition involving pop acts from countries across Europe and beyond, now in its \u200c70th year, was plunged into crisis by a dispute over Israel’s military offensive in Gaza, a response to the Hamas-led attack on October 7, 2023.<\/p>\n
The public broadcasters of heavyweights Spain, the \u200bNetherlands and Ireland, as well as Iceland and Slovenia, chose not to take part in protest at Israel’s participation.<\/p>\n
Israel has alleged a global smear campaign against it. Its performance at the final was not, however, marred by any obvious protests, unlike Tuesday’s semi-final.<\/p>\n
“This is unbelievable. I don’t even know what’s going on right now,” Bulgaria’s entrant Dara told a press conference after winning with her thumping, crowd-pleasing dance track “Bangaranga” that avoided politics altogether.<\/p>\n
The song touches on themes of \u200cempowerment and surrendering to the night. It also left \u2060many puzzled as to its meaning.<\/p>\n
“Bangaranga is a feeling that everybody gets in themselves. It’s the moment that you choose to be in love and not fear,” Dara said when asked to explain the song in the “green room” \u2060where artists await the results.<\/p>\n
“This is a special energy … Once you feel (at) one with nature and your universe, you feel the harmony that you can be whatever you want to be and that everything is possible,” she said.<\/p>\n
BOOS WERE HEARD AT ISRAEL’S RESULT<\/p>\n
Israel’s effort, trilingual love song “Michelle”, stirred less controversy than its entry last \u200byear, \u200bwhich was sung by a survivor of the October 7 attack.<\/p>\n
Some booing from the \u200baudience was audible when Israel’s massive points haul from \u200cthe public vote sent it surging up the table from eighth place, similarly to 2025, when it also finished second but much closer to the winner than this year.<\/p>\n
Israeli public broadcaster KAN received a formal warning from organisers a week ago over videos posted online in which Bettan courted votes too aggressively, after a similar controversy involving Israel last year.<\/p>\n
KAN said it plays by the rules and the videos were immediately taken down.<\/p>\n
Finland’s entry, “Liekinheitin,” or Flamethrower, a love song in Finnish featuring violinist Linda Lampenius and pop singer Pete Parkkonen on a burning set, was the favourite this year, \u200cfollowed by Australia’s “Eclipse”, a celestially themed love ballad sung by national pop star Delta \u200bGoodrem.<\/p>\n
In the end, Australia came fourth and Finland sixth.<\/p>\n
ONLY MINOR PROTESTS IN VIENNA<\/p>\n
At least 1,200 \u200bpeople were killed in the October 7 attack, most of \u200bthem civilians. Israel responded by launching an assault on the enclave that has killed more than 72,000 Palestinians, mostly civilians, \u200cand left much of Gaza in ruins.<\/p>\n
The boycotts cut the \u200bnumber of contest entries to 35, \u200bthe fewest since 2003, which will almost certainly have reduced the global television viewership of an event that last year was estimated at 166 million people, more than the Super Bowl’s 128 million.<\/p>\n
The mood in the Austrian capital has been subdued, with protests over Israel’s \u200bparticipation drawing only small crowds. Police anticipated “blockades and \u200cdisruption attempts” on Saturday that did not materialise.<\/p>\n
There was a brief disruption during Tuesday’s semi-final, when one protester chanted “Stop, stop the \u200bgenocide” and “Free, free Palestine” within range of a television microphone and was ejected along with three others for disrupting the show.<\/p>\n
(Reporting \u200bby Francois Murphy, Editing by Rosalba O’Brien, Rod Nickel and Cynthia Osterman)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Francois Murphy VIENNA, May 16 (Reuters) – Bulgaria won the Eurovision Song Contest for the first time…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":45272,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20858],"tags":[966,20859,20863,20860,574,145,2214,24778,25913],"class_list":{"0":"post-45271","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-eurovision","8":"tag-bulgaria","9":"tag-eurovision","10":"tag-eurovision-song-contest","11":"tag-eurovision-song-contest-2026","12":"tag-gaza","13":"tag-israel","14":"tag-public-broadcaster","15":"tag-public-broadcasters","16":"tag-public-vote"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45271","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=45271"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45271\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45272"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}