Massive Attack, IDLES, Kneecap and more sign No Music for Genocide open letter boycotting Eurovision

The No Music for Genocide campaign have released a new open letter signed by over 1,000 artists calling for Israel to be banned from Eurovision.

Massive Attack, IDLES, Kneecap, Brian Eno and Sigur Rós are among the huge list of names that have signed the letter, which comes after Eurovision organisers decided in December not to hold a vote about whether or not to disqualify Israel from the 2026 contest, which takes place next month in Vienna.

“A large majority of Members agreed that there was no need for a further vote on participation and that the Eurovision Song Contest 2026 should proceed as planned, with the additional safeguards in place,” the European Broadcasting Union, a group of broadcasters that air the contest in 56 countries, said in a statement.

In their own statement about the open letter, the organisers of No Music for Genocide said: “Every year, for its entire 53-year tenure as a Eurovision participant, Israel has perpetuated its terrorising systems of apartheid, torture, land theft, and military occupation against Palestinians from the river to the sea with complete impunity. While many of us in the industry make light of Eurovision or doubt our own power as cultural producers, genocidal Israel’s leaders speak openly about the contest’s geopolitical value.

“NMFG stands with and amplifies the incredible grassroots organising efforts across Europe to boycott Eurovision until Israel is banned. From PACBI to direct actionists, from Film Workers For Palestine in Hollywood to striking dockworkers in Italy and Morocco, people of conscience around the globe are fighting complicity in every industry for a free Palestine and a freer world.”

The NMFG campaign had previously signed up artists including Clairo, Lucy Dacus and more to remove their music from streaming services in Israel. Massive Attack also launched an alliance for musicians who are facing “intimidations from within” the music industry over their support of Palestine and Gaza. The band’s Robert del Naja was arrested at a Palestine Action protest in London this month.

You can sign the open letter here and read it in full below.

This May, millions of people are expected to tune in to the 70th Eurovision Song Contest. For the third consecutive year, they’ll find Israel celebrated onstage despite its ongoing genocide in Gaza, while Russia remains banned for its illegal invasion of Ukraine.

As musicians and cultural workers, many living within the reaches of the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), we reject Eurovision being used to whitewash and normalise Israel’s genocide, siege and brutal military occupation against Palestinians.

We stand in solidarity with Palestinian calls for public broadcasters, performers, screening party organisers, crew, and fans to boycott Eurovision until the EBU bans complicit Israeli broadcaster KAN.

We applaud the principled withdrawals of the Spanish, Irish, Icelandic, Slovenian, and Dutch broadcasters, and the many national selection finalists committing to refuse to go to Eurovision. Just as artists stood against oppression in South Africa, we stand together now.

Apartheid Israel’s president Isaac Herzog – named in South Africa’s submission to the International Court of Justice for inciting to genocide – has played a leading role in lobbying broadcasters not to ban Israel from the contest, the world’s most-watched live music event.

The EBU’s hypocritical responses to Russia’s and Israel’s crimes have removed any illusion of Eurovision’s claimed “neutrality”. In 2022, the EBU said that Russia’s presence would “bring the competition into disrepute”.

Yet more than 30 months of genocide in Gaza – alongside ethnic cleansing and land theft in the besieged West Bank – aren’t considered sufficient to apply the same policy to Israel.

How can any performer or Eurovision fan in good conscience participate at the contest’s next edition in Austria amidst US-Israeli plans for hyper-surveilled concentration camps in ‘New Gaza’? There are moments in time when passive silence is not an option.

We refuse to be silent when Israel’s genocidal violence soundtracks and silences Palestinian lives. When children in Israeli prisons endure beatings for humming a tune. When all that’s left of nearly every stage, studio, bookshop and university in Gaza is piles of rubble, under which slaughtered bodies still await recovery and proper burial.

As artists, we recognise our collective agency – and the power of refusal. We refuse to be silent. We refuse to be complicit. We call on others in our industry to join us. And we stand in solidarity with all principled efforts to end complicity in every industry.

No stage for genocide. #BoycottEurovision.