VIENNA—On May 9, the day before the Eurovision Song Contest held its opening ceremony, protesters were already in the streets. Israel’s participation, a fact of Eurovision since the country joined in 1973, had become a flash point after the war in Gaza began in 2023. Ahead of this year’s contest, the 70th edition of Eurovision, the controversy reached a fever pitch.

What began as calls from artists and activists for Israel’s exclusion transformed in the months leading up to the contest into an open revolt. Five countries—Iceland, Ireland, the Netherlands, Slovenia, and Spain—announced they would not attend. Numerous former contestants boycotted, and the 2024 winner, the Swiss singer Nemo, returned their trophy to the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), which was rumored to be smashed and wrapped in toilet paper.

If all of this seems melodramatic, that is because the contest’s troubles represent not just a song competition under threat, but a global order teetering on the edge of collapse. Eurovision, long a symbol of the liberal internationalist project, finds itself in danger of being caught up in its demise.

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Eurovision is the world’s most-watched non-sports broadcast. Founded by public broadcasters after World War II, the contest aimed to stitch the continent back together under values that its rules now describe as “universality, diversity, equality, and inclusivity”: in other words, the principles that have long defined the rules-based international order. Such high-minded aspirations are achieved, of course, through choreography, pyrotechnics, and an amount of sequins that would make Liberace blush.

The tension between pan-European public square and flashy campfest is core to Eurovision’s identity. The same sparkly song competition that launched ABBA and Céline Dion has also featured a Portuguese protest song against the Estado Novo regime, a Bosnian number about European indifference to genocide, and a winning song delivered by a Ukrainian contestant about Soviet leader Joseph Stalin driving her great-grandmother from Crimea, two years after Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion did the same to her.

Those artists gained traction at Eurovision with appeals to the liberal values that the contest espouses. When the competition excluded Russia after its 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Martin Österdahl, Eurovision’s then-executive supervisor, explained, “What we always should stand up for are the basic and ultimate values of democracy. Everyone is right to be who they are.”

This is why Israel’s participation has presented the contest with such a problem. The controversy heightened after Israel came in second in last year’s show in Basel, Switzerland. Had the country won, per the rules, it would have been this year’s host—essentially getting a weeklong advertisement in part funded by the EBU, tying the Eurovision brand to a nation credibly accused of genocide. As Natalija Gorscak, head of the boycotting Slovenian broadcaster RTV, told me, “Killing 20,000 children in Gaza is the same as killing the children in Ukraine for me. No war should be tolerated.”

With growing calls for Eurovision to expel Israel, the EBU avoided an up-or-down vote at its General Assembly in November. Instead, it paired the question of Israel’s participation with a rules package designed to tamp down on some of the controversial tactics that Israel employed in its attempt to win.

Broadcasters approved rules discouraging government-backed advertising campaigns and limiting public votes to 10 per payment method—and in doing so, they implicitly agreed to keep Israel in the contest. This hedge was less than satisfying to those who wanted broadcasters’ stance on Israel’s participation on the record. “There were two questions in one, and they were quite contradictory,” Gorscak said. “This kind of vote shouldn’t happen.”

I arrived at Eurovision to find the result of that vote: a contest moving away from its values-based self-conception and prioritizing simply holding its coalition together.

Vienna, this year’s host, served as the perfect backdrop for this values-lite Eurovision. The city was the center of a very different Concert of Europe—the international system created in the 19th century to manage conflict among major powers, more focused on stability than values, where coalitions were forged through lavish parties and imperial spectacle. One Austrian official’s remark about the Congress of Vienna could just as easily apply to this year’s contest: It “dances, but it does not progress.”

Before the dancing began in earnest, I met with Eurovision’s director, Martin Green, the Klemens von Metternich of the current pop order. Green pushed back against calls for Israel to drop out, arguing that Eurovision is not a competition of countries but of public broadcasters: Russia’s broadcaster was a propaganda outlet, while Kan, the Israeli broadcaster, is independent.

This argument, while technically true, doesn’t track with Eurovision history. Nothing changed about Russia’s broadcaster in 2022, when it was kicked out. As Österdahl said at the time, the Russian delegation “had not broken any rules, but it became unsustainable because we have a rule that says you must not bring disgrace over the competition.” Green’s point is also likely lost on fans, who refer to Austria—not its broadcaster—as having won last year, and who know the show opens with a parade of contestants waving their countries’ flags.

The separation between country and broadcaster became even harder to defend when the New York Timesreported last week that Israeli embassies had been calling foreign broadcasters to advocate for Israel’s inclusion. Green might not feel Eurovision participation has anything to do with governments, but Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu seems to disagree. (Kan representatives did not respond to several requests for comment.)

As Alex Marshall, one of the reporters for the Times investigation, said, “I was surprised when we learned that embassies were … contacting people. But it is so important to Israel.”

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Inside the arena for the semifinals last week, the contest tried to forget the controversy swirling outside its doors. Audiences were awkwardly encouraged to participate in a pre-show kiss cam and clap along to a techno remix of the 1958 Eurovision classic “Volare.” No one seemed to notice that the original was ill-suited to the contemporary beat slapped underneath. Many also didn’t seem to hear when security threw out a protester for chanting “Free Palestine.”

The musical acts steered more studiously clear of politics than in recent years. One exception was Lion Ceccah, a prominent artist in Lithuania’s drag scene. He appeared onstage painted in silver, performing a dystopian number that resembled a RuPaul tribute to The Seventh Seal.

Lion Ceccah’s selection speaks to Eurovision’s ability to influence national identity. Lithuania sent its first openly LGBTQ+ representative, Silvester Belt, to the contest in 2024. Since then, it has repealed a law prohibiting LGBTQ+ “propaganda,” and its top court ruled that restricting civil partnerships to opposite-sex couples is unconstitutional. Now, Lithuania was represented by a queer artist more avant garde than the first. “When your own country’s audience sees that others appreciate this from our country, it changes something,” Lion Ceccah said.

When I brought up Silvester Belt’s comments about the difficulties of competing in a contest with Israel, Lion Ceccah hesitated. “I don’t wanna talk a lot about politics because I’m not allowed, actually,” he said, referring to Eurovision’s new rules against artists “instrumentalizing” the contest. “With all those rules, it’s hard to even talk about that. To even think about it.”

Green sees these rules differently. “We 100 percent believe in free speech. If an artist is asked a question by a journalist, answer it,” he said. But it seems this distinction wasn’t communicated to all the delegations: More than one press representative told me that discussing politics was against the rules.

As quiet as the current contestants were about politics, the absence of those from years past spoke volumes. In a change from previous years, many did not attend. For instance, Irish singer Linda Martin, a Eurovision fixture since she won in 1992, was notably absent. She said that Ireland’s past might have informed its sensitivity to Palestinians in Gaza: “When you consider what the Troubles were like in Ireland for years, that could have made people step back and just think. Because we’ve been there.”

Three of the five boycotting nations—Ireland, Slovenia, and Spain—have a history with authoritarian or colonial forces cracking down on national movements. The Catalonian case is part of Eurovision history: In 1968, Spain’s Franco regime prevented Joan Manuel Serrat from performing in Catalan at the contest. When his Spanish-singing replacement won, it ensured that Spain would host the next year, enlisting Eurovision in a project whitewashing the regime.

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At protest concerts across Europe put on to coincide with Eurovision, artists felt freer to engage with politics. Palestinian singer Bashar Murad, whose parents led a movement for Palestine’s Eurovision participation in 2007, performed in Brussels. Murad has been known widely in Eurovision circles since he competed to represent Iceland at Eurovision 2024. (Iceland doesn’t require contestants to be from the country, only that they sing at least once in Icelandic.)

“My whole participation … was a conceptual art piece, because it was about the journey of me going from Palestine and to jump through so many hoops and obstacles in order to be heard,” Murad said.

Murad came in second in Iceland’s national competition in 2024, just missing the chance to compete at Eurovision. His near-entry offered the contest an opportunity, however small, to humanize Palestinians alongside Israelis. But now, he seems to think that the moment has passed. “The competition has been hijacked and compromised. It has become a tool for Israel,” he said.

Eurovision’s retreat from its values comes at a pivotal moment for the competition. The week ended with the contest pushing the launch of Eurovision Asia, which will debut this year. The event includes South Korea, Thailand, and Vietnam, but not China or India—both of which joined Putin’s recently relaunched Intervision, a Cold War-era Eurovision competitor. Intervision, which bills itself as apolitical (read: no lectures about human rights), offers Eurovision a chance to draw a contrast.

Talking about Eurovision Asia, Green said that Eurovision “travels with its values.” When I pressed Jean Philip De Tender, the EBU’s deputy director-general, on what those values were, he could only offer: “It’s in its tagline. It’s united by music. … It’s about respect for other people.” “It’s all of this,” he added, gesturing vaguely around the press center.

Some still seem to think Eurovision can represent a vision of liberal international community. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney is working with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation to explore joining the contest. Though Hungary’s far-right government pulled out in 2019, its new prime minister, Peter Magyar, has said that he will bring the country back to the competition. Hungarian and Canadian interest is proof that Eurovision still means something beyond high notes and power ballads.

The Grand Final took place on Saturday, ending in a tense battle between Israel and Bulgaria. The arena erupted in boos when Israel’s high televote score was reported, but in the end, the Bulgarian singer Dara came out on top with a song called “Bangaranga.” That Eurovision will be hosted next year by a country that recently gained Schengen membership and adopted the euro suggests there may be some life left in the contest’s values-based approach.

Dara described her song as being about the sense that “everything is possible.” It’s a feeling that both Eurovision and the postwar project desperately need.