{"id":246689,"date":"2026-08-12T20:40:15","date_gmt":"2026-08-12T20:40:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/246689\/"},"modified":"2026-08-12T20:40:15","modified_gmt":"2026-08-12T20:40:15","slug":"eurovision-to-bar-countries-at-war-from-hosting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/246689\/","title":{"rendered":"Eurovision to bar countries at war from hosting"},"content":{"rendered":"<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">Eurovision Song Contest organisers announced rule changes on Wednesday excluding any country in an armed conflict from hosting the competition and increasing the minimum age of competitors.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">While they did not mention any country by name, Israel, which has been at war in Gaza since 2023, came close to winning the competition in both 2025 and 2026, ultimately finishing second on each occasion.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">Under the old rules, the winning country normally hosts the following year\u2019s competition.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">Under the new rules, \u201cthe winning broadcaster will automatically be ineligible to host the contest if an armed conflict, a sensitive geopolitical situation, or any other situation materially affects the security, safety or stability of their state or immediate region\u201d, they said in a statement.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">In a first, five countries \u2013 Spain, Ireland, the Netherlands, Slovenia and Iceland \u2013 boycotted the 2026 edition in Vienna over Israel\u2019s participation.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">They said they could not take part alongside Israel because of its war in Gaza.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Eurovision Song Contest organisers announced rule changes on Wednesday excluding any country in an armed conflict from hosting&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":246690,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[33],"tags":[3743,3741,496,1411,33211,18124,37,19279,37314,7411,55,12494,1218,56,691],"class_list":["post-246689","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-israel","tag-european-broadcasting-union","tag-eurovision-song-contest","tag-gaza","tag-hamas","tag-iceland","tag-ireland","tag-israel","tag-liverpool","tag-martin-green","tag-netherlands","tag-russia","tag-slovenia","tag-spain","tag-ukraine","tag-united-kingdom"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/117084476483008414","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246689","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=246689"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246689\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/246690"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=246689"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=246689"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=246689"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}