Eurovision Song Contest Winner JJ Wants Israel Banned From 2026 Competition
The winner of the 2025 Eurovision Song Contest is speaking out against the war in Gaza and Israel's inclusion in the global music event. JJ, who won the competition May 17, said in an interview published Thursday (May 22) that he would like to see Israel banned from next year's contest.
'It is very disappointing to see Israel still participating in the contest,' the singer told Spanish publication El Pais, according to Reuters. 'I would like the next Eurovision to be held in Vienna and without Israel.'
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Billboard has reached out to Eurovision Song Contest for comment.
The global songwriting competition bills itself as 'a non-political event,' with its rules noting that participating broadcasters are expected to take any necessary steps to ensure that their delegations and teams 'safeguard the interests and the integrity of the ESC and to make sure that the ESC shall in no case be politicized and/or instrumentalized and/or otherwise brought into disrepute in any way.'
JJ — a classically trained countertenor — won this year's event with his song 'Wasted Love,' which combines opera with techno. The artist born Johannes Pietsch is Austria's first winner since drag queen Conchita Wurst won in 2014.
Snagging second place was Yuval Raphael of Israel, who earned the runner-up position with her 'New Day Will Rise' anthem and also won the viewers' votes in the finale. (When jury votes were taken into consideration, they put JJ in the No. 1 spot.) According to the Associated Press, while Raphael had much public support in the form of voting, she faced pro-Palestinian protests that called for Israel's ouster from the competition over the Israel-Hamas war. The current war started on Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas attacked several locations in Israel, including the Nova Music Festival near Gaza — which Raphael survived — killing about 1,200 people and taking more than 250 hostage. Since then, the Israeli government's military campaign has killed more than 53,000 Palestinians in Gaza, Reuters reports.
Raphael coming in second prompted some countries — including Spain, Ireland, Belgium and Iceland — to question the voting, with some requesting an audit, the BBC reported on Wednesday (May 21). Organizers have since said that the votes were independently verified.
In his El Pais interview, JJ also said that the vote-counting system needs to change to better improve transparency, Reuters reported.
'It is important to emphasize that the voting operation for the Eurovision Song Contest is the most advanced in the world and each country's result is checked and verified by a huge team of people to exclude any suspicious or irregular voting patterns,' ESC's director Martin Green said in response to the questioning of the vote counts, according to the BBC. 'An independent compliance monitor reviews both jury and public vote data to ensure we have a valid result. … Our voting partner Once has confirmed that a valid vote was recorded in all countries participating in this year's Grand Final and in the Rest of the World.'
The Eurovision Song Contest 2026 is set to be held in Vienna, Austria.
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