Eurovision 2026: Where and when is this year's contest?

The 70th Eurovision Song Contest will take place in Vienna in May 2026, after the Austrian singer JJ won the 2025 competition with his operatic ballad, Wasted Love.

The UK will be represented by electronic music artist and tech creator Look Mum No Computer, who will perform the song Eins, Zwei, Drei.

A number of countries are boycotting the 2026 contest over Israel's participation.

The Eurovision Song Contest is an annual televised competition which is organised by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU).

Songs must be original and no more than three minutes long. They cannot have been released or publicly performed before 1 September 2025.

Lead vocals must be performed live, with no lip-syncing or auto-tuning allowed and a maximum of six singers and dancers on stage.

Eurovision 2026 will feature 35 entrants.

Five countries - Iceland, Ireland, the Netherlands, Slovenia and Spain - are boycotting the contest over the EBU's decision to let Israel take part.

As one of the "big five" nations which provide extra financial support for Eurovision, Spain would normally automatically qualify for the final, along with the UK, Italy, France and Germany and the 2025 winner Austria.

Most Eurovision participants are European, but Australia takes part every year, after being invited to join Eurovision's 60th anniversary celebrations in 2015. However, Australia cannot host the contest should it win.

Israel has taken part in Eurovision since 1973 because its public broadcaster KAN is a member of the EBU.

Russia has been banned since 2022, following its invasion of Ukraine.

The grand final of the contest will take place in the Wiener Stadthalle in the Austrian capital Vienna on Saturday 16 May.

TV presenter Victoria Swarovski and actor Michael Ostrowski will host inside the auditorium.

The first semi-final on Tuesday 12 May will feature Croatia, Finland, Georgia, Greece, Portugal, Moldova, Sweden, Belgium, Estonia, Israel, Lithuania, Montenegro, Poland, San Marino and Serbia.

The second semi-final on Thursday 14 May will see performances from Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Luxembourg, Romania, Switzerland, Albania, Australia, Cyprus, Denmark, Latvia, Malta, Norway and Ukraine.

The top ten performers from each semi-final will join the five pre-qualified acts in the final.

Austria, France, Germany, Italy and the UK still have to broadcast and vote in one of the semi-finals. Germany and Italy will perform and vote in the first, while Austria, France and the UK will perform and vote in the second.

The semi-finals and grand final will be broadcast live on TV on BBC One and BBC iPlayer and will also be available on BBC Radio 2 and BBC Sounds.

Look Mum No Computer is a solo artist, songwriter and YouTuber, who is also described as "an inventor of unique musical machines".

He previously performed as Sam Battle, frontman of the indie rock band Zibra which appeared at Glastonbury 2015 as part of BBC Introducing.

"I find it completely bonkers to be jumping on this wonderful and wild journey," he said.

"I have always been a massive Eurovision fan, and I love the magical joy it brings to millions of people every year, so getting to join that legacy and fly the flag for the UK is an absolute honour that I am taking very seriously."

His song, Eins, Zwei, Drei, will be released on Friday 6 March, when it receives its first radio play on the The Scott Mills Breakfast Show on BBC Radio 2 and BBC Sounds.

The singer-songwriter has his own museum in Ramsgate called This Museum is (Not) Obsolete. It includes a vintage Game Boy which he has programmed to play a 100-year-old church organ.

Tensions have grown over Israel's participation in Eurovision in recent years because of the country's conduct during the war in Gaza.

During the 2025 final in Switzerland, two people attempted to storm the stage and throw paint over Israel's contestant, Yuval Raphael. They were stopped by crew members and later arrested.

Ahead of the the final, more than 70 former Eurovision contestants - including Britain's Mae Muller - signed an open letter demanding that Israel's public broadcaster KAN be banned, alleging that it was "complicit in Israel's genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza".

A number of countries also raised concerns after Raphael came top of the public vote in 2025 - finishing second overall after jury votes were taken into consideration.

Eurovision - which has always billed itself as non-political - has consistently resisted calls for Israel to be excluded. But it has changed the voting rules for the 2026 contest to limit the influence of governments on the results.

Israel said the decision to let it take part was a "victory" over critics who had tried to silence it and spread hatred.

The country's 2024 entrant, singer Eden Golan, was booed during rehearsals and thousands of pro-Palestinian protesters gathered outside the venue in Malmo, Sweden, where the finals took place.

Golan had been forced to change the lyrics of her entry, titled Hurricane, to remove references to the deadly attacks by Hamas on Israel, on 7 October 2023.

In the final, every participating country is awarded two sets of scores: one from a jury of music experts and one from fans watching outside the hall.

For the 2026 contest, fans have a maximum of 10 votes - down from 20 - which they can cast by phone, SMS or via the official Eurovision app. They can vote for as many different acts as they like, but cannot back their home country.

Each country awards 12 points to its most popular song while the second choice gets 10, and the rest are scored from eight to one.

Votes from viewers in non-participating countries are combined into a single bloc known as the "rest of the world" vote.

Jury votes will be added to the public vote to decide which countries qualify for the final. Previously, jury votes were only used in the grand final itself.

The contest organisers also said that better technical monitoring would help "detect and prevent fraudulent or coordinated voting activity, and strengthen monitoring of suspicious patterns".