The New York Times published two major investigative pieces on Monday examining Israel’s involvement in the Eurovision Song Contest – one revealing a coordinated, multi-year government campaign to influence the popular vote, and a second breaking down the actual numbers behind it. Together, they make for uncomfortable reading for the EBU. We have put both reports together here.
Eurovision director Martin Green’s response, captured in a video circulating on social media, was brief: “I don’t really have much to say. I briefly read it – it’s a rehash of what we’ve been seeing the last few years. It seems to be a whole article about who did not win the Eurovision Song Contest. So, just because I enjoy saying this every time: J.J. won the Eurovision Song Contest last year, fairly and squarely. I don’t really have much to say about it.”
A Campaign That Started Years Ago
The Times investigation – based on previously undisclosed voting data, internal Eurovision documents, and interviews with more than 50 people – traces the Israeli government’s Eurovision involvement back to at least 2018, when it spent over $100,000 on social media promotion for its entry. Israel won that year, and according to former Eurovision songwriter Doron Medalie, that victory convinced Israeli leaders the contest was worth investing in.
Spending grew steadily. By the 2024 contest in Malmö, the Israeli government had poured more than $800,000 into Eurovision-related advertising, according to data from the Israeli Government Advertising Agency obtained by media watchdog The Seventh Eye. The bulk came from the foreign ministry, with a separate allocation from Prime Minister Netanyahu’s “hasbara” office – Israel’s overseas propaganda unit – specifically for “vote promotion.”
At the 2025 contest in Basel, the campaign expanded further. Finnish broadcaster Yle used Google’s ad library to reveal that the Israeli government had purchased online ads in multiple languages urging European viewers to vote for contestant Yuval Raphael the maximum 20 times. Netanyahu himself posted the same call to action on Instagram. Pro-Israel groups across Europe echoed the message. Israel’s deputy ambassador to Austria confirmed to the Times that he had personally contacted a diaspora group to mobilise support for Raphael.
Israel’s public broadcaster Kan said it had no prior knowledge of the government campaigns and believed the competition rules had not been violated. There is no evidence of bots or any covert technical manipulation – the campaign was entirely legal. But Martin Green himself acknowledged to the Times that it was “excessive.”
The Numbers That Tell the Real Story
The Times’ second report puts hard figures to what had previously been suspicion. Using vote percentages obtained independently, and cross-referencing them with the total vote count published by Spanish broadcaster RTVE, the Times was able to calculate approximately how many votes each act received in Spain’s popular vote at the 2025 Grand Final.
Israel received 33.34% of the Spanish public vote – around 47,570 votes. Ukraine finished a distant second with roughly 9,620. Every other country trailed well behind.
At first glance, that looks like a genuine landslide. But Eurovision allowed viewers to vote up to 20 times each. The Times calculates that just 2,379 people voting the maximum 20 times could have generated Israel’s entire Spanish vote total. And to simply beat Ukraine into second place – which is all that was needed to claim the 12 points – only around 482 people voting 20 times would have been required.
482 people. In a country of 47 million.
Spain was not an isolated case. The investigation found that Israel won the popular vote in multiple countries where polls showed deep public opposition to Israeli government policies – a pattern that, the Times argues, is statistically very difficult to explain without some form of coordinated voting.
How Eurovision Voting Works – and Why It Is Vulnerable
For context: Eurovision results combine two separate scores. A jury of music industry professionals from each country ranks the acts and awards points from 12 down to 1. The public televote works on the same scale – whichever act gets the most votes in a country receives 12 points from that country’s public, second place gets 10, and so on.
Last year, Austria’s JJ topped the jury vote with 258 points. Raphael received just 60 jury points. But her public vote total of 297 points pushed her to second place overall. JJ won the contest. Green points to the jury vote as a safeguard against public vote manipulation – but as the numbers show, the public vote still determines up to 12 points per country, and those points matter.
The multi-vote system exists partly because Eurovision is a paid-vote contest – viewers pay per vote. Former voting monitor Stephan Teiwes told the Times the model persists because “it’s about money.” Eurovision disputes that, saying it simply wants to give fans the chance to support more than one act.
Conrad Myrland, director of pro-Israel group With Israel for Peace in Norway, told the Times he encouraged his 15,000 members to vote for Israel via social media, email and text – and noted that when they did, Eurovision’s own automated system encouraged them to vote up to 20 times. “So the encouragement to vote several times for the same song came from Eurovision itself,” he said.
The EBU’s Response: Sidestepping at Every Turn
What makes the Times investigation particularly pointed is not just the Israeli campaign – it is the picture it paints of an EBU that consistently avoided a transparent reckoning with the issue.
Slovenia’s broadcaster asked for full voting data after both Malmö and Basel, and received no response. Spain called for a formal debate on Israel’s participation and a review of the voting system. By September 2025, five broadcasters – Iceland, Ireland, the Netherlands, Spain and Slovenia – were openly discussing a boycott.
Rather than commission an independent investigation, the EBU hired Czech broadcasting veteran Petr Dvorak to interview members about their views on Israel’s participation. Broadcasters later received only a summary of his findings, not the full report.
In December, broadcasters gathered in Geneva expecting a direct vote on Israel’s continued participation. Instead, the EBU put forward a vote on rule changes – reducing the viewer cap from 20 to 10, and adding language discouraging “disproportionate” promotion campaigns. Approving those changes implicitly meant keeping Israel in the contest, without anyone having to vote on it directly. EBU president Delphine Ernotte Cunci acknowledged the arrangement “might appear to be rather bizarre” but called it “the most democratic solution possible.”
The five dissenters promptly announced their boycott. Iceland, Ireland, the Netherlands, Spain and Slovenia will not compete in Vienna this week.
What Has Changed for 2026 – and Is It Enough?
The new 10-vote cap and the ban on “disproportionate” third-party promotion campaigns are the EBU’s direct response to last year’s controversy. Under the new rules, the Times calculates that Israel would have needed around 963 voters in Spain to claim the popular vote win – still a remarkably low number.
Israel’s entry at this year’s contest in Vienna, Noam Bettan, has already triggered a formal EBU warning after his team circulated posts urging voters to vote for him 10 times. Green confirmed the warning and asked that the posts be removed, stating that a direct call to vote the maximum for one artist is “not in line with our rules, nor the spirit of the competition.” He again insisted such campaigns cannot affect results.
Meanwhile, other countries – having observed Israel’s diaspora mobilisation strategy go largely unchallenged for years – are now running similar campaigns of their own ahead of this weekend’s final.
Green’s dismissal of the Times investigation as a “rehash” and a story about “who did not win” sidesteps the central question both reports raise: not whether JJ’s victory was legitimate, but whether Eurovision’s voting system – combined with the EBU’s unwillingness to release full data or commission an independent audit – makes it structurally impossible to know either way.
That question will not go away on Saturday night.
