{"id":792312,"date":"2026-05-13T01:17:15","date_gmt":"2026-05-13T01:17:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/792312\/"},"modified":"2026-05-13T01:17:15","modified_gmt":"2026-05-13T01:17:15","slug":"israel-and-finland-are-among-10-acts-advancing-to-eurovision-final","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/792312\/","title":{"rendered":"Israel and Finland are among 10 acts advancing to Eurovision final"},"content":{"rendered":"

VIENNA (AP) \u2014 Ten countries including favorite Finland and contentious competitor Israel won places Tuesday in the Eurovision Song Contest<\/a> final, while five nations were sent home after the first day of competition in the pop music extravaganza<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Host city Vienna<\/a> has been bedecked in hearts and the contest\u2019s \u201cUnited by Music\u201d motto for a week in which singers and bands from 35 countries will compete<\/a> onstage for the continent\u2019s musical crown. But divisions are clouding the contest\u2019s 70th anniversary edition, with five countries \u2014 Spain, Ireland, the Netherlands, Slovenia and Iceland \u2014 boycotting to protest Israel\u2019s inclusion<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Despite the absentee nations, thousands of ebullient fans from across Europe and beyond packed the Wiener Stadthalle arena for the first semifinal. Some had flags painted on their faces or clothes in national colors, others wore sequins and spangles for a contest that celebrates the kitschy, infectious power of pop.<\/p>\n

Security is tight across the city, with police from across Austria deployed in the capital, and support from forces in neighboring Germany. Awareness of risk is high after a 21-year-old Austrian man accused of pledging allegiance to the Islamic State group pleaded guilty to plotting to attack a Taylor Swift concert<\/a> in Vienna in 2024.<\/p>\n

Israel through to the Eurovision final<\/p>\n

Acts from 15 countries performed their 3-minute songs onstage \u2013 often with eye-catching choreography and pyrotechnics \u2013 in a bid for votes from juries in participating nations and viewers around the world.<\/p>\n

Israeli singer Noam Bettan was met with shouts of protests amid the cheers in the auditorium when he performed the rock ballad \u201cMichelle,\u201d but was one of 10 acts voted into Saturday\u2019s final.<\/p>\n

Finland, the favorite on betting markets, made the cut with \u201cLiekinheitin,\u201d or \u201cFlamethrower,\u201d a mashup of pop singer Pete Parkkonen\u2019s anguished vocals and violinist Linda Lampenius\u2019 fiery fiddling.<\/p>\n

Joining them in the final are Greece\u2019s Akylas with party-rap track \u201cFerto,\u201d or \u201cBring It\u201d; Serbian goth metal band Lavina with \u201cKraj Mene\u201d; Moldovan folk-rapper Satoshi with \u201cViva, Moldova!\u201d; and \u201cAndromeda\u201d by Croatian female ensemble Lelek.<\/p>\n

Soulful Polish singer Alicja, Lithuanian performer Lion Ceccah, Swedish singer Felicia and Belgium\u2019s Essyla also made the final. Estonia, Georgia, Montenegro, Portugal and San Marino were eliminated \u2014 despite a guest appearance by 1980s icon Boy George on singer Senhit\u2019s San Marino song, \u201cSuperstar.\u201d <\/p>\n

Ten more finalists will be chosen in a second semifinal Thursday. The U.K., France, Germany and Italy automatically qualify for the final because they are among the contest\u2019s biggest funders. Austria, last year\u2019s winner<\/a>, gets a place in the final as host country.<\/p>\n

Protesters urge artists to withdraw<\/p>\n

Long a forum for good-natured \u2014 and sometimes more pointed \u2014 national rivalries, Eurovision has found it hard to separate pop and politics in recent years. Russia was expelled in 2022 after its full-scale invasion of Ukraine<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The 2024 contest in Malmo, Sweden<\/a>, and last year\u2019s event in Basel, Switzerland<\/a>, saw pro-Palestinian protests<\/a> that called for Israel to be expelled over the conduct of its war against Hamas in Gaza and allegations it ran a rule-breaking marketing campaign to get votes for its contestant.<\/p>\n

The European Broadcasting Union, which runs Eurovision, has toughened voting rules in response to the vote-rigging allegations, halving the number of votes per person to 10 and tightening safeguards against \u201csuspicious or coordinated voting activity.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the EBU declined to kick Israel out, spurring five countries to announce in December that they would not participate this year.<\/p>\n

Several pro-Palestinian demonstrations are planned during Eurovision week, including a musical event dubbed No Stage for Genocide. Its backers urged Eurovision performers to pull out of the competition.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it is a moral obligation for each and every artist to take action and step away from the competition,\u201d said Congolese-Austrian activist Patrick Bongola.<\/p>\n

Israel strongly denies committing genocide in Gaza. Demonstrations in support of the country\u2019s participation are also planned this week in Vienna.<\/p>\n

The five-country boycott is a revenue and viewership blow to an event that organizers say was watched by 166 million people around the world last year. Bulgaria, Moldova and Romania have returned after skipping the event for artistic or financial reasons in recent years, but the number of participants, at 35, is still the lowest since 2003.<\/p>\n

Jonathan Hendrickx, a media researcher at the University of Copenhagen, said any more boycotts will stress the structure of the contest and raise doubts about its future.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey really are at their limits now, in terms of what they can handle with the current format,\u201d Hendrickx said.<\/p>\n

Dean Vuletic, the author of \u201cPostwar Europe and the Eurovision Song Contest,\u201d is confident Eurovision can weather the latest storms.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you look at the history of Eurovision, it\u2019s gone through so many crises, so many political challenges, so many geopolitical changes in Europe, and it\u2019s always managed to survive,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

Associated Press writer Sam McNeil in Brussels contributed to this report.<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

For more coverage of the Eurovision Song Contest, visit: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/eurovision-song-contest<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"VIENNA (AP) \u2014 Ten countries including favorite Finland and contentious competitor Israel won places Tuesday in the Eurovision…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":792313,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[110,277534,129856,171,16817,27202,116,242913,57,99,3462,373,323430,323427,323429,29065,975,321432,323428,323426,402,84768,3571,173,67,132,68,107],"class_list":{"0":"post-792312","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-austria","9":"tag-boy-george","10":"tag-dean-vuletic","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-eurocopa-2024","13":"tag-eurovision-song-contest","14":"tag-finland","15":"tag-finland-government","16":"tag-general-news","17":"tag-israel","18":"tag-israel-government","19":"tag-israel-hamas-war","20":"tag-jonathan-hendrickx","21":"tag-linda-lampenius","22":"tag-lion-ceccah","23":"tag-moldova","24":"tag-music","25":"tag-noam-bettan","26":"tag-patrick-bongola","27":"tag-pete-parkkonen","28":"tag-protests-and-demonstrations","29":"tag-san-marino","30":"tag-taylor-swift","31":"tag-tv","32":"tag-united-states","33":"tag-unitedstates","34":"tag-us","35":"tag-world-news"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116564633117508906","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/792312","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=792312"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/792312\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/792313"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=792312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=792312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=792312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}