Israeli singer Noam Bettan and his entourage received a warm welcome in Vienna, Austria, during the opening event for this week’s Eurovision Song Contest on Sunday — a radical departure from the throngs of pro-Hamas protesters wearing keffiyehs and threatening Israeli contestants that had become the norm in the past two years.
The Eurovision Song Contest is an annual continental event — also including some non-European countries such as Georgia and Australia — in which countries send an original song performed by an artist of their choice. This year will mark the 70th anniversary of the competition, which was conceived in part as a way of uniting the continent and preventing more conflict following the resolution of World War II.
This year, 35 countries have sent representatives to Eurovision, including, as usual, Israel. Israel has been part of the Eurovision contest since 1973 and has won four times, most recently in 2018. Decades of participation aside, however, anti-Israel and generally leftist movements have targeted Eurovision with an aggressive boycott campaign demanding Israel’s ouster from the contest since the massacre of over 1,200 people in Israel by the jihadist terrorist organization Hamas on October 7, 2023. The two editions following the Hamas invasion — 2024 in Malmö, Sweden, and 2025 in Basel, Switzerland — were marked by massive anti-Israel protests and fellow contestants within the competition, at best, keeping a distance from the Israeli performer and, at worst, behaving actively hostile towards them. Artists who were accidentally caught being friendly to Israelis demanded the footage be deleted and denounced the country’s presence at the show.
The shift in tone at this year’s edition — held in Vienna following Austria’s victory last year — was notable at the “Turquoise Carpet,” the first major event during Eurovision week in which artists walk the titular carpet to greet fans, often wearing extravagant outfits and performing parts of their songs. Noam Bettan and his team walked the carpet and were not received by throngs of Palestinian flags or threats. While some individuals were seen displaying a “thumbs down” gesture at the Israeli team, they appeared to do so without disturbing the event, and were outnumbered by fans reaching out to shake Bettan’s hand. The contestants appeared on the turquoise carpet by alphabetical order of the nations they represent; Bettan appeared about an hour into the broadcast, walking out to the tune of “Hava Nagila.”
Following the initial walkout, Bettan had a positive interaction with another contestant — British pop legend Boy George, who is in the competition supporting San Marino’s performer, Senhit.
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Such an exchange would have been unthinkable during the 2024 and 2025 editions of Eurovision. In 2024, singer Eden Golan was unable to walk the turquoise carpet in Malmö, a city known for becoming a hotbed of mass migration from Islamic countries, due to thousands of anti-Israel protesters surrounding the venue, causing security concerns that Swedish authorities were unable to adequately address. Among them was Swedish environmentalist Greta Thunberg, who appeared in the crowd wearing a keffiyeh. Within the Eurovision “bubble,” Golan was subjected to heckling and derision from other contestants, including one who claimed to have cried when Golan made it out of the semifinals. Golan placed fifth in the grand final.
In 2025, Israeli singer Yuval Raphael — a survivor of the October 7 massacre — did walk the carpet, but was subject to throngs of menacing pro-Hamas protesters, including a man making throat-slitting gestures at the singer. Raphael finished in second place to Austria’s JJ and won the popular vote.
Following the competition, the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), the organization that stages the event, faced tremendous pressure to expel Israel from the competition, including from competing countries. The EBU had initially scheduled a meeting in December to discuss potentially ousting Israel for its self-defense operations in Gaza, but canceled it after the Gaza war concluded, outraging the most leftist participants in the contest.
In addition to the Gaza war, competitor countries have also complained that Israel advertises and promotes its artists too aggressively. The EBU revealed this weekend that it was forced to warn the Israeli public broadcaster, KAN, to stop advertising videos in which it encouraged viewers to vote for Israel ten times, the maximum, in the semifinal, describing the advertising as “not in line with our rules nor the spirit of the competition.”
Israel is not the only country to promote its artists, however. This year, the small island nation of Malta has ruffled some feathers with a sprawling, continental billboard campaign for its singer, Aidan. The EBU has not at press time issued any public warnings to Malta over its campaigning.
I knew Malta is really aggressive with the promotion of their artists every year, but surely didn't expect to bump into Aidan billboard on a random boulevard in Sofia, Bulgaria, lol
byu/AdmirableFlow ineurovision
Five countries — Spain, Iceland, Ireland, Slovenia, and the Netherlands — withdrew from the 2026 edition to protest Israel’s presence. Three countries that had not participated in 2025 — Moldova, Bulgaria, and Romania — returned.
Bettan is competing this year with the song “Michelle” and will compete in the first semi-final on Tuesday.
The boycotts and outrage among the left, as well as the return of several Eastern European nations to the contest, appear to have changed the tenor of the song output for 2026. Prominent among the songs this year are themes of family — several songs honor motherhood in particular — traditional marriage, and patriotism. In contrast, the 2024 edition featured two “non-binary” performers, including the winner, and 2025 featured multiple songs including explicitly sexual lyrics and crude language that required modification for the ultimate broadcast.
The EBU revealed in January that tickets to the various live performances that comprise Eurovision week sold out in record time despite the anti-Israel boycott campaigns.
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