The 70th Eurovision Song Contest opens its final two-week rehearsal arc Friday in Vienna with five fewer national broadcasters on the call sheet than the European Broadcasting Union expected when it set the lineup last year. Iceland, Ireland, the Netherlands, Slovenia, and Spain have all confirmed they will not air or compete in the contest, citing Israel's inclusion during the Gaza war. [1][2] Thirty-five countries remain. The last time the field was this small was 2003, when 26 took the stage in Riga.

The boycott is the largest in Eurovision's history. The Eurovision Song Contest 2026 page records the five withdrawals as a coordinated protest after the EBU declined to vote on excluding Israel's broadcaster, KAN. [3] Slovenia's RTV will air Palestinian films during the broadcast windows; Spain's RTVE has not aired the contest for the first time since 1961. The Grand Final is scheduled for May 16 at the Wiener Stadthalle.

The arithmetic carries. A 35-country field replaces a 40-country field; the two semi-finals on May 12 and May 14 lose roughly a quarter of their advancement math. Voting blocs that long produced the contest's predictable geography — Nordic, Iberian, Benelux — have a hole in each. The boycotting broadcasters retain EBU membership and have not signaled withdrawal from future editions; the question Vienna leaves unanswered is whether the 2027 host produces a field that returns or one that stays where 2026 set it.

Eurovision's organizers will say the show goes on. It does. But the smallest field in 23 years is now an operating fact about a contest the EBU has spent a decade insisting is not political.

-- CAMILLE BEAUMONT, Los Angeles