A senior Austrian official has denounced cultural boycotts as “dumb and pointless” after several countries said they would shun next year’s Eurovision song contest in Vienna if Israel participates.
Spain said this week it would boycott the world’s largest live televised music event if Israel took part, and Ireland, Slovenia, Iceland and the Netherlands have made similar threats.
Austrian singer JJ won the competition’s 2025 edition in May in Switzerland, securing Vienna the right to host next year’s show.
“Cultural boycotts are dumb and pointless, they don’t get us anywhere,” Sepp Schellhorn, a senior foreign ministry official, told Austria’s Kurier daily in an interview published Thursday.
The foreign ministry confirmed his comments on Friday.
Schellhorn said that he and the foreign minister would send a letter to European counterparts to discourage any such moves.
“First and foremost, the song contest is a meeting or competition of musicians and artists. I consider it highly problematic to mix their role with the politics of a country,” Schellhorn said.
Spanish public broadcaster RTVE said Tuesday that Spain would boycott next year’s Eurovision Song Contest if Israel takes part.
It is the first of the so-called “Big Five” nations that provides the most funding for the event to do so.
The European Broadcasting Union (EBU), the organizer of Eurovision, is set to decide whether Israel will take part in the 2026 edition at its general assembly in December.
The director of Israel’s public broadcaster on Monday rejected calls for it to drop out of the contest.
According to a report from the Ynet news site on Sunday, Eurovision organizers hinted to Kan — Israel’s representative to the European Broadcasting Union, which organizes the annual contest — that Israel should either temporarily drop out of the contest or perform under a neutral flag to avoid being barred entirely.
Neither Kan nor the EBU confirmed the report.
In 2024, Israel’s Eden Golan finished 5th overall in the competition, and second in the popular vote, and in 2025 Yuval Raphael ended up in second place overall after winning the popular vote — sparking allegations of voter fraud, which the EBU dismissed.
Anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian activists protested in Malmo, Sweden in 2024 and in Basel in May over Israel’s participation.
As of now, Israel is among 22 countries that have expressed their interest in participating in the 2026 contest in Austria, but several countries have said they would not make a final decision on their participation until after the assembly in December.
International pressure continues to mount on the Israeli government to end the nearly two-year war that was sparked by Hamas’s invasion and massacre in Israel on October 7, 2023, and to urgently address the humanitarian crisis there.
The pressure has recently increased in the entertainment industry, with several open letters signed by prominent figures from the worlds of cinema, music and literature calling for an end to the war and a boycott of Israeli organizations.