I’m Never Watching Eurovision Again.

My apologies to anyone who has heard me complain about not being able to watch Eurovision. My boycott this year was accompanied by a lot of self-victimization, and I made sure that anyone who I was talking to knew I absolutely hated not watching it. But no one forced me to boycott Eurovision. In fact, it was me who pushed my family to refuse to watch the show. To be honest, very naively, it felt like the European Broadcasting Union was trying to hurt me personally. Why else would they ruin something I loved so much if not with malicious intent? It awoke thoughts in me like: maybe growing up and becoming an adult is getting disappointed in all the things you once thought were flawless…

Unfortunately, the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) has lost my trust completely. After denying Russia its right to participate in 2022, the precedent seemed established. Every subsequent year after 2023 I thought: the evidence is now so overwhelming that they can’t ignore it anymore, right? They can’t keep up their excuses to keep Israel participating, right? …Right?

Especially when it caused them so much work. For example, to prevent audience members from taking the Palestinian flag with them, flag policy that had lain dormant for many years was enforced again. The flag policy states that only flags from countries that are participating are allowed into the venue. So, EU flags and pride flags are officially also prohibited, even though they had always been tolerated. In Sweden, 2024, everyone was on edge. That is why you did not see rainbow flags in the audience, and Nemo, the first non-binary winner of Eurovision ever, later explained that the non-binary flag you saw them wave in the greenroom had to be smuggled in past security.

The same year, the EBU censored countless artists who wanted to make a statement of support for the Palestinians, a people that had to endure a genocide by a state that was represented by one of artists on that stage. An example is the Irish artist Bambie Thug, who was not even allowed to write a statement calling for a ceasefire on their face or leg in Ogham, an old Irish script (something that an absolute minority of the Eurovision watchers would have been able to read). After the final, Bambie Thug stated that “[the] EBU is not what the Eurovision is – fuck the EBU”.

The circumstances around which the Dutch artist Joost Klein, who was very explicitly against Israel’s participation in the contest, was disqualified are still vague. During press conferences, he used to put the Dutch flag over his head in protest anytime Israel’s artist would speak or answer any question. Allegedly, he made a threatening movement towards a camerawoman right after his performance in the semifinal, when he was being filmed without his consent. The story goes, though it was never officially verified, that it was an Israeli journalist, one of many who had been harassing Joost Klein since the start of the week. It was the first ever disqualification of an artist in the history of Eurovision.

Additionally, in the past few years Israel has violated the Eurovision rules multiple times through their government-sponsored campaigns. They advocated for people to put all their votes for Israel, which, according to the EBU, is against the spirit of the contest. Did you know that, in 2025, Geert Wilders, Dutch prime minister at the time, asked the Dutch people to vote for Israel in Eurovision? He gave no mention of our own artist, Claude, who (coincidentally?) was an immigrant from Congo. It baffled me. In 2026, the EBU even changed the voting system, specifically trying to prevent the type of voter-buying and -advocating that Israel was doing.

To ever get me to watch Eurovision again, the EBU will have to compensate for not disqualifying Israel when it so clearly should have. Every action that followed made it clear that letting Israel participate was not a passive omission; it required the intentional silencing of countless activists and the excusing of repeated rule-violations. Carving out a space for Israel where it was unwanted by such a big part of the audience, under the guise of apoliticality, was a political statement; one of indifference – no, ruthlessness.

So, consider this my apology for complaining so much. However, it will not be the last thing I say on the subject. Eurovision has meant a lot to me in the past and, to be honest, it still does. Even though I did not watch the show, the winner of this year, Bulgarian singer DARA with her song Bangaranga, has my full support, and I am excited that this opened many doors for her, as it does for artists participating every year. (Where would MÅNESKIN be today without the Eurovision Songfestival?) It is a wonderful stage where you see performances you wouldn’t see anywhere else. Additionally, its LGBTQ+ inclusiveness always made me feel safe and the fact that that was a given was eye-opening to me.

At the same time, Nemo, the earlier mentioned winner of 2024, announced on Instagram six months ago that they sent back their trophy to the EBU because they “no longer feel this trophy belongs on [their] shelf”. This was after multiple countries, among others Spain and the Netherlands, had announced they would not participate in 2026’s contest because of Israel’s participation. Someday in the future I hope to be able to attend the Eurovision Song Contest in person. But unless major changes are implemented, and Nemo can be proud of their trophy again, I will never watch Eurovision, not even on television. Soon that choice will be out of my hands anyways, since the Eurovision Song Contest will not even be broadcast on Dutch television anymore from next year onwards. All that beauty, ruined.