Press agencies reported on the changes in the evening. The Czech Republic remains in the competition. “Czech Television is counting on participating in the upcoming Eurovision Song Contest 2026 in Vienna,” television spokesman Radek Konečný told Seznam Zprávy.
In response to the organizers’ decision on Thursday to keep Israel in the competition, Dutch public company Avrotros said “our continued participation is incompatible with the public values that are central to our organization”.
Spanish participation was organized by RTVE television. She also announced on Thursday that she was quitting. “At the same time, we will not broadcast the semi-finals or the final of Eurovision 2026,” added the Spaniards, for whom the European Broadcasting Union‘s decision “increased our mistrust of the organizers and the related political pressures,” they said.
Slovenia has already announced in advance that it will leave if Israel stays. “We made this decision on behalf of the 20,000 children who died in the Gaza Strip,” wrote Natalija Gorščak, chairwoman of the Slovenian RTV board.
“Irish participation would be disproportionate in light of the appalling loss of life in the Gaza Strip and the humanitarian crisis that continues to threaten the lives of so many civilians,” Irish television’s RTÉ said in a statement. Neither will it send its representatives to next year, the British BBC reported.
Other countries are considering the next step. Icelandic broadcaster RÚV will vote on it next Wednesday, Belgian public broadcaster VRT will decide “in the next few days”.
On the contrary, Germany announced in advance that if the European Broadcasting Union excluded Israel, then the Germans would also leave.
Israeli President Yitzhak Herzog welcomed the European Broadcasting Union’s decision. “I am delighted that Israel will once again participate in Eurovision. I hope that this contest will continue to promote culture, music, friendship between nations and mutual cultural understanding,” said Herzog.
Israel’s participation in the Eurovision Song Contest has come under criticism from some countries because of Israel’s two-year offensive in the Gaza Strip, which was in response to an attack on Israel by the Palestinian terrorist movement Hamas.
Emphasizing its political neutrality, Eurovision is considered the most watched music competition in the world. This year’s 69th edition in Basel, Switzerland, saw over 200 million viewers.
Before this year, Spain already asked the organizers of the competition to start discussing Israel’s participation with regard to the situation in the Gaza Strip. The organizers last excluded Russia from Eurovision in 2022, due to its invasion of Ukraine.
Spain, which has participated in Eurovision since 1961 and has won it twice, is among the five countries that contribute the most to the budget of the organizing organization and whose participants thus advance automatically to the final. The others are France, Germany, Italy and Britain.
The European Broadcasting Union approved changes to the voting system on Thursday to ensure fairness and prevent the competition from being misused for political purposes. Some blamed Israel for this.
As part of the new rules, the number of votes that can be sent from one payment method will be halved next year, i.e. to ten. The semi-finals will also see the return of a professional jury for the first time since 2022, whose vote will have approximately fifty percent weight alongside the audience’s vote.
