December 11Dec 11 All this pressure and the EBU just does not care, continuing with its weak warnings of slaps on the wrists...
December 11Dec 11 Great for Iceland and a wonderful gesture from Nemo too, I highly doubt we'll see any other withdrawals but I'm hoping this isn't the end of issues they are having to face.
December 11Dec 11 Just now, Chez Wombat said:Great for Iceland and a wonderful gesture from Nemo too, I highly doubt we'll see any other withdrawals but I'm hoping this isn't the end of issues they are having to face.Maybe Portugal!
December 12Dec 12 On 11/12/2025 at 14:09, Spiceboy said:Apparently a survey found 7/10 british people think that the UK should also pull out...Is this the average person on the street though, or only people who are genuinely invested in Eurovision for more than it just being one night of entertainment a year?I do wonder whether (as Liam said earlier) people who just casually watch Eurovision will be that bothered, if you just watch it to see people doing backflips and playing upside-down pianos, does it matter whether the people are representing Iceland or Israel?I'm on the fence myself as to whether to watch it - seeing Israel get so close last year did feel very uncomfortable so I don't think I could go through the stress of watching it live again, but if it turns out they don't win I might watch it back the week after. If I'm being really blunt, if the sort of artists that don't take part as a result of this are who I think they are, the remaining ones might even be more to my taste.
December 12Dec 12 Eurovision 1994 winner Charlie McGettigan is handing back his trophy in protest of Israel's participation in the 2026 Eurovision competition.
December 12Dec 12 AN MESST.But if UK ever leaves over this, BBTory will never rejoin... that's the probkem, even if Israel then gets expelled the next year
December 12Dec 12 6 hours ago, PeteFromLeeds said:Is this the average person on the street though, or only people who are genuinely invested in Eurovision for more than it just being one night of entertainment a year?I do wonder whether (as Liam said earlier) people who just casually watch Eurovision will be that bothered, if you just watch it to see people doing backflips and playing upside-down pianos, does it matter whether the people are representing Iceland or Israel?I'm on the fence myself as to whether to watch it - seeing Israel get so close last year did feel very uncomfortable so I don't think I could go through the stress of watching it live again, but if it turns out they don't win I might watch it back the week after. If I'm being really blunt, if the sort of artists that don't take part as a result of this are who I think they are, the remaining ones might even be more to my taste.I do wonder what "sort of artist" you are speaking off here? What criteria are we using? 😅
December 13Dec 13 17 hours ago, PeteFromLeeds said:Is this the average person on the street though, or only people who are genuinely invested in Eurovision for more than it just being one night of entertainment a year?I do wonder whether (as Liam said earlier) people who just casually watch Eurovision will be that bothered, if you just watch it to see people doing backflips and playing upside-down pianos, does it matter whether the people are representing Iceland or Israel?I'm on the fence myself as to whether to watch it - seeing Israel get so close last year did feel very uncomfortable so I don't think I could go through the stress of watching it live again, but if it turns out they don't win I might watch it back the week after. If I'm being really blunt, if the sort of artists that don't take part as a result of this are who I think they are, the remaining ones might even be more to my taste.Due to 24/7 hour news cycle, news about Eurovision spreads much further than it used to, and the BBC is incentivised to publish articles about Eurovision. Only thing is, they're all negative, because of the bad feeling and controversies. There will be precious few people who go into next year's contest not aware of the Israeli controversy and there is a decent chance that if a number of countries have trouble with their selections that the contest has to be scaled back and the chance is not zero that it doesn't happen at all.This piece from ESC Insight is a pretty useful primer for fans wondering what to do (I am fully in the partial boycott column), but I want to highlight this quote:https://escinsight.com/2025/12/12/so-what-do-eurovision-fans-do-now/Let’s assume nothing untoward follows the recent round of withdrawal contests. No more countries pull out, and any protests are manageable. An uneasy calm takes hold in the Middle East, and the political tensions don’t escalate further. Even if all that happens, and that’s a big if, it’s still going to be a very toxic atmosphere to walk into in Vienna.All of which begs the question, why would you want anything to do with that? Even in that best-case scenario, Eurovision 2026 isn’t going to be fun, and what’s the point of Eurovision if it isn’t fun?This is undoubtedly going to filter through to every part of the contest, from the artists who choose to take part, to fans encouraging people to watch. Will there be a noticeable drop in viewing figures? Too early to say. But to be quite honest too, people thinking the UK should pull out has a baseline of miserable gits who hate the idea in the first place (also a demographic interested in taking surveys), plus all the fans, and I'm not really concerned at this point about the drones who'll watch it with no critical analysis of what they're watching. At this point in time, they don't matter, and it'll be the state the contest turns up in in May that they have to contend with.11 hours ago, *Tim said:I do wonder what "sort of artist" you are speaking off here? What criteria are we using? 😅I thought that too, my fairest assumption is that alt/quirky artists are more likely to be pro-Palestine but I think that's a flawed assumption, I'd say a solid majority of musical artists below the age of 35, no matter their genre, are pro-Palestine, and genre-to-politics lines hold even less outside of Western Europe. The issue isn't that the sort of dead-eyed pop that "non-political" artists might be likely to create will now proliferate, it's if you even get enough of them at a decent enough quality for that genre who want to deal with this shit.
December 13Dec 13 12 hours ago, *Tim said:I do wonder what "sort of artist" you are speaking off here? What criteria are we using? 😅Yeah pretty much as Iz said above, in my mind the artists that are more likely to not take part because of this are the ones that are more 'boundary-pushing' in the style/content of their music (e.g. Bambie Thug, Erika Vikman, Miriana Conte - no idea what the latter two think about Palestine but they strike me as artists that might boycott). That is a completely unfounded claim though so may well be wrong.Equally I don't actively watch/read the news so I have no idea how everything is being recieved beyond the superfan dempographic that exists on this forum - maybe one for me to do a straw poll on with friends/family to see what the general thoughts are.
December 13Dec 13 To be honest even if I were actually able to ignore the whole thing about what Israel is doing in Palestine, I think the contest is compromised and beyond repair since Israel basically almost won last year by abusing the system and I find it highly unlikely that they'll just stop now.If you just look at the countries that were giving Israel top points, many of them didn't even give Israel any points when they had genuine contenders like Netta. Countries like Spain and Belgium noted that despite viewership dropping between years they were getting record amounts of televotes, and wouldn't you know both of them gave Israel 12 points in the final. (In comparison Belgium only gave Netta 3 points in the semi final). Additionally it's incredibly sus that a song - a BALLAD - that is like 19th out of all this year's entries in terms of Spotify streams somehow managed to top the televote with 12 points from thirteen countries.Now that the EBU have agreed to allow Israel to compete after all of this, and the only countries willing to put their foot down have left the competition and a lot of the core Eurovision base will likely be boycotting the show this year, it's HIGHLY likely Israel will win this year which will just further drive the stake into Eurovision's heart.
December 13Dec 13 I think it's good time to end of Eurovision.The contest became awful in 2020s decade, it's better to say R.I.P.
December 15Dec 15 I see it hasnt been posted here yet, but according to wiwiblogs a whopping ELEVEN out of sixteen entrants in Portugal's Festival da Canção have confirmed that they will not go to Vienna to represent their country if they win. That's almost 70% of the competing artists. 😶Source
December 16Dec 16 8 hours ago, diva thin muffin said:I see it hasnt been posted here yet, but according to wiwiblogs a whopping ELEVEN out of sixteen entrants in Portugal's Festival da Canção have confirmed that they will not go to Vienna to represent their country if they win. That's almost 70% of the competing artists. 😶SourceI was hoping Portugal would be another withdrawal but it could happen yet.
December 16Dec 16 On 13/12/2025 at 18:59, Last Dreamer said:I think it's good time to end of Eurovision.The contest became awful in 2020s decade, it's better to say R.I.P.You mean you're not a fan of Let 3 or Luke Black? 😲
December 16Dec 16 From 2020s contests so far I like only 4 songs.Ireland 2020United Kingdom 2025Luxembourg 2025Ireland 2025 Edited December 16Dec 16 by Last Dreamer
December 16Dec 16 Wow - I have loads of songs that I think were amazing from the last 5 yearsDenmark 2020Italy 2020Malta 2020Australia 2021Bulgaria 2021Cyprus 2021Germany 2021 (come at me for this one!)Switzerland 2021Armenia 2022Australia 2022Finland 2022Germany 2022Italy 2022UK 2022Greece 2023 (just forget how awful it was live)Ireland 2023Norway 2023Sweden 2023France 2024Switzerland 2024Ireland 2025UK 2025& loads of others I would say I liked but didn't love
Create an account or sign in to comment