German Chancellor Friedrich Merz declared Sunday that Germany should withdraw from the 2026 Eurovision Song Contest in Vienna if Israel is excluded from participation.<\/p>\n
Speaking on public broadcaster ARD, Merz was asked whether Germany should voluntarily forgo the contest under such circumstances. \u201cI would support that,\u201d he said. \u201cI think it’s a scandal that this is even being discussed. Israel belongs there.\u201d<\/p>\n
The European Broadcasting Union (EBU) is scheduled to hold a vote in November<\/a> to decide whether Israel will be permitted to compete in Eurovision 2026, set to take place in Vienna. If a majority among active EBU members votes against Israel\u2019s inclusion, the country will be barred from competing.<\/p>\n Spain recently announced<\/a> it would boycott the world’s largest live televised music event in May if Israel takes part. Ireland, Slovenia, Iceland, and the Netherlands have made similar threats<\/a>.<\/p>\n On the other hand, Danish public broadcaster DR affirmed it will not support Israel\u2019s removal<\/a> from the competition \u201cas long as they comply with the rules and regulations.\u201d<\/p>\n Calls to exclude Israel from Eurovision intensified in recent months, following the war in Gaza triggered by Hamas’s October 7 massacre against Israel.<\/p>\n In April, shortly before the 2025 contest in Basel, formal requests to ban Israel were submitted by several countries, including Iceland and Spain<\/a>.<\/p>\n The calls grew after Israel\u2019s entry, \u201cNew Day Will Rise\u201d performed by Yuval Raphael, came in second<\/a> behind the Austrian winner, though Israel only received 60 points from the juries. The remaining 297 points came from the public, which overwhelmingly favored Israel\u2019s entry over any other country.<\/p>\n Those results led broadcasters from Spain, Iceland, Belgium, Finland, and Ireland<\/a>, to either request audits of their national televoting results or question the current methodology.<\/p>\n The Austrian winner of this year\u2019s contest, JJ, called for Israel to be suspended<\/a> from Eurovision, though he later walked back<\/a> those comments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"German Chancellor Friedrich Merz declared Sunday that Germany should withdraw from the 2026 Eurovision Song Contest in Vienna…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":477139,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5310],"tags":[2000,299,19345,13735,1945,1824],"class_list":{"0":"post-477138","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-germany","8":"tag-eu","9":"tag-europe","10":"tag-eurovision","11":"tag-eurovision-song-contest","12":"tag-friedrich-merz","13":"tag-germany"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115324747989571275","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/477138","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=477138"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/477138\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/477139"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=477138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=477138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=477138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}