Spain has become the fifth country to confirm it will not participate in the Eurovision Song Contest next year if Israel is permitted to compete.
Spanish broadcaster RTVE said its board had approved the measure, proposed by its president Jose Pablo Lopez, with an absolute majority in a vote on Tuesday. In a statement, it said there were 10 votes in favour, four against, and one abstention.
The move follows in the wake of threatened boycotts by Netherlands, Ireland, Slovenia and Iceland amid growing international condemnation of Israel’s near-two-year military campaign in Gaza.
It also followed a recent call by Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez for Israel to be banned from the competition.
Spain is the first member of the so-called “Big Five” nations, who make the biggest financial contributions to the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) which organizes the contest, to threaten a boycott.
There has been no such move from the other big four contributors of France (France 2), Germany (ARD/NDR), Italy (RAI) and the UK (BBC) as yet.
Israel’s recent participation has been a divisive issue in Europe and its broadcasting community ever since Israel began its military campaign in Gaza Strip in late 2023, in response to the October 7 2023 Hamas terror attacks on southern Israel, which killed 1,200 people and resulted in another 251 being taken hostage.
The Israeli military operation aimed at retrieving the hostages and wiping out Hamas has killed at least 64,000 people in the Palestinian territory and left much of the rest of the two million strong population homeless and on the brink of starvation.
In 2024, Israeli entrant, Eden Golan, finished fifth in the contest but was booed on stage and even received death threats.
At the 2025 edition, thousands of pro-Palestinian demonstrators gathered outside the Eurovision venue in Malmö, Sweden, in protest over Israel’s inclusion.
The country’s entrant, Yuval Raphael, who survived the massacre at the Nova festival on October 7, said she had practiced rehearsing with booing sounds.
She finished second in the contest, which is voted on by the public via telephone or sms, even though Spotify and YouTube streaming data showed that Raphael’s song was far behind other competitors in terms of popularity.
The result prompted suggestions of “external interference’ and calls for the voting system to be overhauled.
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