Last week saw bidding applications close for the cities hoping to host the 2019 Eurovision Song Contest, in which a total of 4 cities were invited by the Israeli national broadcaster to submit their bids. However, it seems that one city is now out of the race according to local media reports. But why?

Over the past number of weeks, cities were invited to submit their applications to host the 2019 Eurovision Song Contest, in which bids were required to reach a certain criteria in order to be taken into consideration.

In total, 4 cities were invited to submit their bids as host cities, with one further bid reportedly coming in from the ancient fortification of Masada. From 5 to 3; it now seems that 2 potential bids are out of the race for similar reasons.

No bids from Haifa and Masada

According to Walla! Culture, it seems that both Haifa and Masada have not submitted a bid to host the 2019 Eurovision Song Contest, despite earlier reports showing both municipality’s hosting interest.

The submission deadline official closed last week on the 18 July, in which media reports that Haifa failed to submit their bid on time. Walla! Culture reports that a letter was sent from the corporation to the Haifa Municipality, stating:

On July 8, we held a meeting in the mayor’s office regarding the possibility of hosting the Eurovision Song Contest in the city of Haifa.

Both before and after the meeting, letters were sent to you from the corporation detailing the data required for the presentation so that the corporation and the European Broadcasting Union could consider hosting the competition in Haifa, including clear timetables for sending the data. The last date of delivery was July 18.

Since we have not received any response from you (not orally or in writing), we assume that you are not interested in continuing to participate in the process.

We thank you for your interest and wish you great success along the way.

Walla! Culture attempted to contact the mayor of Haifa in regards to why Haifa decided to drop out of the race, to which the mayor was reluctant to answer their questions but did suggest that Haifa did not retire from the bidding process.

The latter bid from Masada has reportedly also been dropped, however no reason has been given as to why.

If both Haifa and Masada are both now out of the bidding process, it seems that a total of 3 cities are still in the bid to host the competition next year: Eilat, Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.

A final decision is expected to be made over the coming months, with a date and host city to be determined by September this year.