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The Eurovision Song Contest heads into its 70th anniversary edition next year mired in its biggest-ever political boycott, with five countries staying away over Israel’s participation.Eurovision organisers announced Monday that 35 countries would take part in the world’s biggest live televised music event in May — the fewest since entry was expanded in 2004.The number would have been even lower, but for Bulgaria, Romania and Moldova rejoining the glitzy annual extravaganza.Once the lights go up in Vienna, Eurovision 2026 may look very much like a regular edition.However, the boycott will cast a shadow over proceedings — and may remain the biggest talking point.For William Lee Adams, founder of the independent Eurovision website Wiwibloggs, the atmosphere will be very different, with many die-hard fans sensing bad vibes and sitting this one out.”This is not going to be the festival of rainbows and kisses as it was in the past,” he told AFP. “There’s great unease colouring everything.”- ‘Serious crisis’ -Eurovision is run by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), the world’s biggest alliance of public service media.While countries have had Eurovision grievances over the years and dipped in and out — sometimes citing the voting system, their chances of winning, the quality of the show, or the standard of their own entries — this time feels different.Matters came to a head over widespread concerns about the conduct of Israel’s two-year war in Gaza.There were suspicions too that the televoting system was being manipulated to boost Israel after it comfortably topped the public voting in Basel at Eurovision 2025, with extraordinary sequences of maximum points from other countries.Some broadcasters also raised concerns about EBU values and media freedom, with Israel preventing their journalists from accessing Gaza, while targeting and killing Palestinian journalists in the territory.Public broadcasters in Iceland, Ireland, the Netherlands, Slovenia and Spain have all announced they are boycotting.Eurovision “tells us about European politics: it’s a political barometer that reflects the zeitgeist,” Dean Vuletic, the author of “Postwar Europe and the Eurovision Song Contest”, told AFP.”This is the first time we’ve seen broadcasters grouping in a political boycott over the participation of another country. So it is a serious crisis for the contest,” he said.- Risk of contagion -The boycott could potentially spread further, if performers themselves decide to pull out.”They’ve confirmed 35 countries but I’m not yet convinced we will see 35,” Adams said.”In the past, Eurovision was a great honour for so many artists,” but now, “it might feel like a poisoned chalice to some”.”Artists ultimately are thinking about their careers — and their calculus will be different.”Most of the contenders in Portugal’s domestic selection competition have vowed not to attend Eurovision if they win.”Some of these selections play a big part in national musical life. You will see artists under pressure to take positions,” Catherine Baker of the University of Hull, who has researched the cultural politics of Eurovision, told AFP.She said contenders would be figuring out how to approach their engagement with Eurovision if selected.Some would have signed up in expectation that Israel would not be taking part, she added.- A question of trust -Vuletic said the seven-decade history of Eurovision was one of ongoing adaptation: “changes to the rules, trying to address emerging problems… and not being able to anticipate future ones”.EBU members have adopted measures aimed at improving the voting system, enhancing fraud detection and curbing government-backed promotional campaigns.How those changes play out at Vienna 2026 will have an impact on the contest’s future — including whether the boycotting broadcasters come back, and if waverers who stayed on board will keep faith.”What happens over the next 12 months is going to play a big role in restoring trust on the part of those broadcasters,” said Baker. “There is a lot of regret that it’s come to the current situation.””If, after the results in 2026, broadcasters are feeling happier that these reforms have actually worked, then you might see some of them potentially returning.”Ewan Spence, the co-founder and editor of the ESC Insight online platform, said one of the first gauges of the public mood would be when tickets go on sale on January 13.”I do not think there is a way the EBU can avoid coverage around this issue,” he told AFP.”Vienna will have all the glitz, the glamour, and the heart in the middle of the Eurovision logo — but many will be asking if the heart of the show is still there.”

US President Donald Trump on Tuesday sharply expanded a travel ban by barring people from seven more countries including Syria, as well as Palestinian Authority passport holders, from entering the United States.The latest move brings to nearly 40 the number of countries whose citizens face restrictions in coming to the United States solely by virtue of nationality, with Trump also tightening rules for routine travel from Western nations.It comes as Trump, who has long made hostility to immigration a signature issue, orders mass deportations and takes an increasingly strident tone against non-white new Americans.The White House in a proclamation said it was banning foreigners who “intend to threaten” Americans.Trump also wants to prevent foreigners in the United States who would “undermine or destabilize its culture, government, institutions or founding principles,” the proclamation said.Syrians were banned days after two US troops and a civilian were killed in the war-torn country, which Trump has moved to rehabilitate internationally since the fall of longtime ruler Bashar al-Assad.Syrian authorities said the perpetrator was a member of the security forces who was due to be dismissed for “extremist Islamist ideas.”The Trump administration had already informally barred travel for Palestinian Authority passport holders as it acts in solidarity with Israel against the recognition of a Palestinian state by other leading Western countries including France and Britain.Other countries newly subjected to the full travel ban came from some of Africa’s poorest countries — Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, Sierra Leone and South Sudan — as well as Laos in southeast Asia.In a series of new actions, Trump also imposed partial travel restrictions on citizens of other African countries including the most populous, Nigeria, as well as Ivory Coast and Senegal, which qualified for the World Cup set to be played next year in the United States as well as Canada and Mexico.The Trump administration has promised to let in athletes for football’s signature competition, but has made no such promises for fans of blacklisted countries.Other countries slapped with partial restrictions were from Africa or largely Black nations in the Caribbean — Angola, Antigua and Barbuda, Benin, Dominica, Gabon, The Gambia, Malawi, Mauritania, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe — plus the Polynesian country of Tonga.Angola, Senegal and Zambia have all been prominent US partners in Africa, with former president Joe Biden hailing the three for commitment to democracy.- Ramping up anti-immigrant tone -Global Refuge, a Christian-based group that supports refugees, warned that the travel ban would push vulnerable people further into harm’s way.”The administration is once again using the language of security to justify blanket exclusions that punish entire populations, rather than utilizing individualized, evidence-based screening,” said the group’s president and CEO, Krish O’Mara Vignarajah.Trump has used increasingly loaded language, complaining at a rally last week that the United States was only taking people from “shithole countries” and instead should seek immigrants from Norway and Sweden.He also recently described Somalis as “garbage” following a scandal in which Somali Americans allegedly bilked the government out of money for fictitious contracts in Minnesota.Trump had already banned the entry of Somalis. Other countries remaining on the full travel ban are Afghanistan, Chad, Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Myanmar, Sudan, and Yemen.Trump last month made the ban even more sweeping against Afghans, severing a program that brought in Afghans who had fought alongside the United States against the Taliban, after an Afghan veteran who appeared to have post-traumatic stress shot two National Guards troops deployed by Trump in Washington.The White House acknowledged “significant progress” by one initially targeted country, Turkmenistan.The Central Asian country’s nationals will once again be able to secure US visas, but only as non-immigrants.Trump has also all but ended refugee admissions, with the United States now only accepting South Africans from the white Afrikaner minority.