Iceland joins Eurovision 2026 boycott over Israel

If you teach or follow media, here’s the clear update: on Wednesday 10 December 2025, Iceland said it will sit out Eurovision 2026. That puts it alongside Spain, Ireland, Slovenia and the Netherlands, which all announced withdrawals after Israel was confirmed for next year’s contest. Iceland’s public broadcaster RÚV said stepping back was the only responsible choice given public mood.

Let’s ground the basics. The 70th Eurovision will be hosted in Vienna after Austria’s JJ won the 2025 contest in Basel. The semi‑finals are set for 12 and 14 May 2026 and the Grand Final for 16 May at the Wiener Stadthalle, a show that typically reaches around 160 million viewers worldwide.

What changed last week was governance, not just music. EBU members meeting in Geneva chose not to hold a separate vote on Israel’s participation and instead backed new safeguards for the contest. In plain terms: if a broadcaster agrees to the updated rules, it can enter in 2026.

Those rule changes matter for how you teach voting and campaigning. The EBU has cut the maximum number of votes per payment method to 10 (down from 20), is bringing professional juries back into the semi‑finals with broader expertise and younger jurors, and is tightening guidance to discourage state‑backed or coordinated promotion that might skew results. Think of this as guardrails around fairness.

RÚV’s decision leans on that civic idea of consent. The broadcaster said there would be “neither joy nor peace” for its audience if Iceland took part while Israel’s KAN remains in the line‑up, adding that it had pressed for a vote on participation during the EBU meetings. That push was ultimately refused.

Israel’s public broadcaster takes a different view. KAN’s chief executive Golan Yochpaz told EBU members that attempts to remove Israel amount to a “cultural boycott” and warned that boycotts can spread and silence others, too. He framed participation as a matter of creative freedom and expression.

Here’s a media‑literacy checkpoint we use with students: boycotts and bans are not the same. A boycott is a choice by a national broadcaster to withdraw. A ban is an EBU decision to exclude. There is precedent for exclusion: the EBU barred Russia in 2022 after the invasion of Ukraine, saying participation would bring the contest into disrepute.

Who gets to enter Eurovision is also a useful civics lesson. Entry is based on EBU membership, not geography, which is why Israel-and invited associates like Australia-compete. It’s a club of public broadcasters, and membership comes with rules about editorial standards and public service.

Spain’s absence is significant for a practical reason: it’s one of the “Big Five”, the countries that normally qualify automatically for the final. With Spain stepping back, one automatic‑qualifier slot simply won’t be used unless policy changes; that’s a programming and audience question as much as a political one.

For context, Israel has taken part since 1973 and has four wins-the most recent in 2018-and finished second in 2025 behind Austria. Knowing this helps you test claims about ‘undue influence’ against the long record of results and reforms.

What this means for your classroom, society club or youth group: use this moment to compare public statements from broadcasters with the EBU’s new rules. Ask who speaks for the public-broadcasters, governments, artists, or voters-and how each explains their role. Keep an eye on whether more broadcasters opt out, and how organisers manage neutrality in a live, mass‑vote show. The EBU says a final list of participants is due before Christmas, so this is a live case study in media governance.