Eurovision is the most-watched cultural event in the world. It involves artists from 35 countries, its online clips are set to be viewed two billion times, while Saturday's grand final is expected to attract over 160 million viewers. Yet what was once a camp and glittery celebration has become the new frontline in Europe's culture wars.
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Eurovision was meant to “promote unity” and “show the world as it could be” — but it has become a culture-war zone, which reflects a surge in real-world violence both inside the EU and in its neighbourhood.
The yearly pop music contest, whose 70th edition begins in Vienna on Tuesday evening (12 May), is the most-watched cultural event in the world.
It involves artists from 35 countries, its online clips are set to be viewed 2bn times, while Saturday’s grand final is expected to attract over 160m viewers, according to the organisers, the Geneva-based European Broadcasting Union (EBU).
And the EBU bends over backwards to make it politically correct.
EBU contestants are not allowed to offend each other or display political insignia, according to its 2024 code of conduct.
“Mutual respect between artists is crucial,” said EBU head Martin Green on 11 March, in a reprimand to Swedish contest Felicia, who had said Israel should be excluded over the Gaza War.
“Participants must not instrumentalise Eurovision … by making political statements or creating controversy”, said Green.
It is meant to “show the world as it could be”, Green also told the New York Times, on Monday.
The EBU itself started in 1950 as a purely technical project.
This is why Algeria, Egypt, Israel, Lebanon, Jordan, Morocco, and Tunisia are among the EBU’s 68 members and eligible to enter Eurovision – simply because they already had EU-compatible cables to broadcast TV shows 76 years ago.
But it could never avoid politics entirely: Spain won Eurovision twice in the 1960s under the flag of Franco’s fascist dictatorship and despite boycotts by some EBU members at the time (including Austria).
It has long been a tad sexist, objectifying women in skimpy outfits.
And it became a battleground of sexual politics in 1998, when the first visibly queer artist, Israeli trans singer Dana International, won the contest.
LGBTI acts came to dominate so much that three out of the past four winners were gay or non-binary.
The bookies’ favourite this year, Greek singer Akylas, as well as the Danish, Finnish, Lithuanian, and San Marino finalists, also feature proudly gay artists, including 1980s British pop star Boy George.
This was all too woke for the far-right former Hungarian government, which pulled out in 2019, and Muslim Turkey, which quit in 2012.
Austrian artist Conchita Wurz won Eurovision in 2014 (Source: Albin Olsson)
Eurovision ‘satanism’
And it became a battlefield of sexualised geopolitics in 2022, when the EBU suspended Russia over its full invasion of Ukraine.
Russia has demonised Eurovision ever since in a propaganda campaign on the superiority of its orthodox Eurasian civilisation.
“Eurovision is based on Satanism, blood, bestiality”, said Russia’s Tsargrad TV channel in 2023, for instance.
German dancers represented “demons in hell, jumping around in high heels, shining their naked butts, spilling blood”, Tsargrad TV said.
Russia also relaunched a Soviet-era ‘Intervision Song Contest’, with the 2026 edition of Eurovision’s orthodox doppelgänger to be held in Riyadh in September.
But the political clashes got even uglier when Israel put the Gaza war centre-stage in 2023.
Iceland, Ireland, the Netherlands, Slovenia, and Spain are boycotting the 2026 edition on grounds that Israel’s participation whitewashed “genocide”, with Spain refusing to broadcast the finals and Slovenia to broadcast films about Palestine instead.
“Songs and sequins must not be allowed to drown out or distract from Israel’s atrocities or Palestinian suffering,” also said Amnesty International on Monday (11 May).
For Israeli singer Noa Kirel, who took part in 2023, the boycotts were due to “antisemitism”, she told the BBC on 11 December 2025.
And if that sounded like Israeli politicians, then the Israeli government clearly sees Eurovision as a propaganda event.
Its foreign ministry and prime minister’s “hasbara” (public diplomacy) department spent some €700,000 on a PR campaign to whip up votes for its act in the 2024 finals in Malmö, Sweden, the New York Times reported.
Israeli diplomats also phone-bombed TV broadcasters in Iceland and other Israeli-critical EBU members in a bid to stop the 2026 boycotts.
For their part, the European Commission’s coordinator for fighting antisemitism, Katerina von Schnurbein, and the European Parliament’s Israel delegation head, German conservative MEP Hildegard Bentele, also helped.
Boycotts were being fuelled by “imported antisemitism” from Muslim immigrants, they said in a parliament hearing on 29 January, for instance.
But for leftwing Israeli commentator Gideon Levy: “It’s a badge of shame for Europe that only five countries … opposed Israel’s participation”.
“Nobody whined about ‘hatred of Russians’ [in 2022]. Its [Russia’s] ban was a moral decision, not a political move,” he said in the Haaretz newspaper on 17 September 2025, as the 2026 boycotts were being announced.