The European Broadcasting Union (EBU) started with the public goal of forging a new, united Europe and a pragmatic goal of saving on the exorbitant costs of producing content for a nascent and rapidly growing television audience. As such, the EBU and its strobe-lit annual Eurovision Song Contest have intertwined extravagant outfits and international politics for over 50 years.
Eurovision itself serves as a model of all that is good, bad, and problematic in international cooperation. And despite organizers barring explicit political expression, Eurovision songs and performers have highlighted international conflicts, criticized political leaders, provided a voice to feminist and LGBTQ+ concerns, and expressed the social costs of immigration and austerity measures.
This year in Eurovision politics
Unlike last year, no countries have threatened to boycott due to Israel’s participation – and Israel did not need to adjust its 2025 presentation. “October Rain,” Israel’s 2024 original song entry, referenced the October 2023 Hamas attack, and Eurovision officials initially rejected the song as being too political. While the revised song “Hurricane” finished in fifth place, the live audience last May booed the performer Eden Golan. Controversy surrounded both the judging of the song and Israeli public broadcaster KAN’s criticism of performers who were vocal in their support for Palestinians. The EBU’s primary response to last year’s controversy was a new flag policy, barring contestants from displaying flags other than that of the country they represent.
This year, Israel is represented by Yuval Raphael, a survivor of the Hamas Oct. 7, 2023, attack on the Nova music festival. Rather than focusing on Raphael or her song, “New Day Will Rise,” protesters have instead focused on the KAN itself, and the broadcaster’s link to the Israeli government and Israel’s plans to expand military operations in Gaza.
But Israel’s broadcaster is still a target
An open letter signed by 72 former contestants, for instance, noted a double standard. The EBU holds that Eurovision is a “competition between public broadcasters, not between nations” and thus should not be in the business of sanctioning countries. Yet after Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, the EBU did bar for the foreseeable future Russian broadcasters Channel One and VGTRK. In May 2025, Ireland’s broadcaster requested that Eurovision officials bar the KAN on the same grounds.
The ECB appears to be standing Niccoló Machiavelli’s maxim to “take the world as it is, not as it ought to be” on its head. In its stated position on this latest controversy, the ECB said:
We all aspire to keep the Eurovision song contest positive and inclusive and aspire to show the world as it could be, rather than how it necessarily is.
To judge from this year’s entries, the Eurovision world is best described as overwrought, shiny, and backed by the driving beat of accordions.
