The unholy mess of Eurovision 2026
Posted: May 17, 2026 4:32 am
Eurovision is barely holding together. In fact, it is not holding together - 5 countries boycotted this year's events over Israel's participation, one of whom was Spain. And Spain are one of the Big Five who fund the event.
My memory of last year was scarring. There was so much ill-feeling over the Israel situation then and allegations of vote rigging over it, it just didn't seem fun any more.
So what to do? It has become an annual event in our house. With some of us non-drinkers and the rest only very occasional drinkers, we play a chocolate game, where various triggers mean chocolate must be consumed (eg, the appearance of lasers, someone dropping to their knees, clothing removed (double chocs if removed by somebody else)). With heavy hearts, we decided to do it one more time.
Have to say, the first couple of hours seemed rather fun. The standard seemed better than normal if anything. However cynical one becomes (and we do all become VERY cynical), the sheer technical accomplishment of the staging is something to behold. But gadzooks, there should only be 20 countries in the final at most - the last half a dozen really did begin to feel like an ordeal.
As Brits, we have a chip on our shoulder - everyone hates us, it seems. For the second year running, our entry scored zero points from the public (and 1 point from all the juries combined). It was a wild and wacky entry with a thoroughly committed performer. There's backstage footage circulating now towards end of the voting of of our guy looking very lonely - literally alone - in his seating area until Denmark came along and adopted him as their own, which was adorable. But much as we bleat "everyone hates us", Shawn Ryder in 2022 nearly won with an excellent song so... well, maybe the problem lies elsewhere. Our entries each year just appear unbidden. We used to have a Song For Europe, and the public would pick our entry - surely high time we revived it.
By the end, Israel were the ones to beat. They'd done okay with the jury, but the public vote was huge. If they were to win, God only knows what would happen to next year's contest which would theoretically be hosted in Israel itself. I don't know if the contest could survive such a thing.
Fortunately, Bulgaria came to the contest's rescue.
Their song Bangaranga had been off the bookies radar until the rehearsals and semi finals found it a crowd favourite. The Guardian described the song as "three different bangers having a fight in the nightclub toilet", which seems remarkably astute. I can't imagine it will appeal to the TSB membership, but I did call it as the winner (something I nearly always get wrong) - it is clearly a song precision engineered for people to go nuts to on a dancefloor, and most memorably contains wild tempo changes where the downtempo sections are the best, which is a pleasing inversion of the natural order of things.
So Eurovision lives to fight another day. We learned that Eurovision Asia is starting up now - the fact this is not called Asiavision (and with Australia now a regular attendee in Eurovision itself) shows at this point that Europe is a state of mind more than a state of, um, states.
And given other world events, perhaps that is not such a bad thing - fractious though it is.
My memory of last year was scarring. There was so much ill-feeling over the Israel situation then and allegations of vote rigging over it, it just didn't seem fun any more.
So what to do? It has become an annual event in our house. With some of us non-drinkers and the rest only very occasional drinkers, we play a chocolate game, where various triggers mean chocolate must be consumed (eg, the appearance of lasers, someone dropping to their knees, clothing removed (double chocs if removed by somebody else)). With heavy hearts, we decided to do it one more time.
Have to say, the first couple of hours seemed rather fun. The standard seemed better than normal if anything. However cynical one becomes (and we do all become VERY cynical), the sheer technical accomplishment of the staging is something to behold. But gadzooks, there should only be 20 countries in the final at most - the last half a dozen really did begin to feel like an ordeal.
As Brits, we have a chip on our shoulder - everyone hates us, it seems. For the second year running, our entry scored zero points from the public (and 1 point from all the juries combined). It was a wild and wacky entry with a thoroughly committed performer. There's backstage footage circulating now towards end of the voting of of our guy looking very lonely - literally alone - in his seating area until Denmark came along and adopted him as their own, which was adorable. But much as we bleat "everyone hates us", Shawn Ryder in 2022 nearly won with an excellent song so... well, maybe the problem lies elsewhere. Our entries each year just appear unbidden. We used to have a Song For Europe, and the public would pick our entry - surely high time we revived it.
By the end, Israel were the ones to beat. They'd done okay with the jury, but the public vote was huge. If they were to win, God only knows what would happen to next year's contest which would theoretically be hosted in Israel itself. I don't know if the contest could survive such a thing.
Fortunately, Bulgaria came to the contest's rescue.
Their song Bangaranga had been off the bookies radar until the rehearsals and semi finals found it a crowd favourite. The Guardian described the song as "three different bangers having a fight in the nightclub toilet", which seems remarkably astute. I can't imagine it will appeal to the TSB membership, but I did call it as the winner (something I nearly always get wrong) - it is clearly a song precision engineered for people to go nuts to on a dancefloor, and most memorably contains wild tempo changes where the downtempo sections are the best, which is a pleasing inversion of the natural order of things.
So Eurovision lives to fight another day. We learned that Eurovision Asia is starting up now - the fact this is not called Asiavision (and with Australia now a regular attendee in Eurovision itself) shows at this point that Europe is a state of mind more than a state of, um, states.
And given other world events, perhaps that is not such a bad thing - fractious though it is.