Eurovision Song Contest 2026

The male presenter was truly awful. And the less said about the Austria -v- Australia skit the better.

Thought the show in general was poor. It just highlights what a good job the BBC did a few years ago in Liverpool.

The brits complain nobody votes for them and then turn around and send a complete clownshow like their entry this year.

I hope Israel win the contest with maximum points in the public vote just to show up yet again what a sham the contest is and what a dirty, vile, desperate, needy fascist genocidal cesspit Israel is.

They'd probably host it next year in a newly built colony in the West Bank which is currently a Palestinian town, have the IDF dancing with machine guns as the interval act, and all the "comedy" parts in the presentation would be about raping Palestinian hostages and laughing at genocide.

Anybody else feel last night’s show was a little…flat?

Michael Ostrowski is no Hazel Brugger, and that ‘Austria vs Australia’ song was nowhere near in the same league as ‘Made In Switzerland’. And the quiz between the commentators was something that RTE would have on the Eurosong speical to kill time with a ‘bunch of bozos’. 😁

I think because last year was SO good, it was always going to pale in comparison.

RTÉ to repeat Father Ted, in other news, the Sky is Blue.

Will we be sending Dustin the Turkey to Tel Aviv in 2017?

If they threatened a marathon of killinascully it would have been far more effective.

What until you see the quiz with Rylan and Angela on Thursday :)
Will be a good test of Rylan's claimed EV knowledge.

After watching the performances last night, I think they deserved to get through. San Marino, Georgia and Estonia should have no complaints. Woeful stuff from them.

From what I'm reading on BlueSky, the show has been universally panned and I haven't read one even moderately positive review. The word "cheap" has come up quite a bit. ORF is a relatively small broadcaster, which only staged the show 11 years ago, so must be quite a drain to have to do it again so soon (we were lucky Eurovision was only a one-night show in the 90s.) Someone also mentioned how their Winter Olympics coverage is superb, and with 2026 being a Winter Olympic year, perhaps that's where all the money went.

The Austria-Australia bit was apparently booed in the arena, that's how awful it was…again, pretty much everyone seems to agree it was the worst interval act in a very long time. If the star of the show is a non-qualifier from the previous year, it's not a good start.

Someone posted this to BlueSky, apparently from the Italian postcard. Please tell me this is fake and these are not the real postcards? They look exactly like the dreadful 2022 postcards, but RAI can be slightly forgiven for those because we were still in COVID conditions. ORF have no excuses.

Finally, a few people have pointed out in the "fan videos" section that filled one of the ad breaks, one of the "fans" says word for word one of Martin Green's soundbites about “Eurovision showing the world as it could be." That's actually fairly concerning.

Yeah changed after RTÉ had caused to become the mammoth that it has become 😂

Just listened back to BBC Radio Two’s coverage of last night with Sara Cox.

A few things struck me…

The absolute lack of chemistry between Victoria and Michael - an almost eerie lack of banter, as if they’d only met for the first time about ten minutes before showtime.

The protester was more audible, shouting ‘Stop, Stop The Genocide’, ‘Free, Free Palestine’ and ‘That Austria/Australia song was sh1te’.

The postcards which made the artists look as if they were re-enacting the Jacksons video for ‘Can You Feel It’, but with less of a budget.

No presenter went from country-to-country in the Green Room for a quick chat. Needs more Erika Vikman and/or cheese fondue.

And finally, they seemed to have gotten rid of the results section from last year where they would show two or three artists at a time onscreen, then whittling them down.

"General consensus appears to be that it was the worst live show in many a year, perhaps decades." 2022 was widely considered the worst production of the decade so far…but looking at BlueSky today, it seems it's "Come back RAI, all is forgiven." I've seen a few comments that the presenters are the worst since the 2009 semi-finals presenters, and they were awful.

The boycott has impacted the 2026 contest in every way. There's not as much money so the show looks cheaper, singers and songwriters were reluctant to enter their country's national finals so most countries have sent second-rate performers and songs, and while Austria is pro-Israel, I'm sure many of its media personalities were savvy enough to know they didn't want to be the ones declaring "The winner of the Eurovision Song Contest 2026 in Israel!" and weren't interested in hosting, hence we also have second-rate presenters.

I'm tempted to have a look at it on YouTube, just to see if it was as bad as everyone is saying.