The schedule is set. The Eurovision Song Contest's 70th edition holds its grand final at the Wiener Stadthalle on Saturday, May 16, at 21:00 CEST. Twenty-five flags walk in: the Big Four — Germany, France, Italy, Spain — plus host Austria and the twenty top entries from the May 12 and May 14 semi-finals. [1] Victoria Swarovski and Michael Ostrowski host. The interval pulls Lordi, Verka Serduchka, Il Volo, and Erika Vikman back across the runway as a curated history of the past twenty years of the contest. [2]

Around the schedule, the rulebook has not stopped moving. The paper's setup yesterday named the second boycott week — the renewed European Broadcasting Union argument over Israel's continuing participation, and the older but unresolved suspension of Russian broadcasters since 2022. The EBU governance review opened in autumn 2025 has not produced a final determination, and Israel sits in the second semi-final on the existing ruleset. The contest's own preview pages list KAN's act on the ballot. [3]

What Vienna therefore stages is not just a 70th anniversary but the EBU's annual referendum on whether the contest's neutrality myth survives a second year of war and a third year of contested membership. The interval acts will be magnificent. The vote, when it lands at 23:30 local on the 16th, will be the part of the broadcast every European foreign ministry will have read first.

-- CHARLES ASHFORD, London