Eurovision has always been one for the gays. Dubbed “the gay world cup”, the annual singing competition holds a special place in the lives of many LGBTQ+ people, who doggedly follow every aspect of its flamboyant, kitschy and camp extravaganza of self-expression. Over the years, the contest has platformed queer performers from across Europe, from Dana International and Conchita Wurst, to last year’s winner, Swiss singer Nemo, who became the first openly non-binary artist to scoop first place with their song “The Code”. The competition has celebrated marriage equality, championed inclusivity, and beamed out much-needed LGBTQ+ representation across the world. Pride be damned: Eurovision is often heralded as the true highlight of the queer calendar.
But that might be about to change. In April, the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), who owns and operates Eurovision, announced changes to their flag policy, banning contestants and their delegations from carrying Pride flags at official Eurovision venues, events or related performances. Under the new guidelines, contestants and their delegations may only carry the flag of the country they are representing, with the EBU telling Danish broadcaster DR that any rule breaking would result in undisclosed “consequences”. It seems after decades of support, Eurovision is giving up on its gays.
These rule changes likely stem from issues that arose during last year’s contest in Malmö, Sweden. The EBU was criticised for permitting Isreal to participate in the competition – despite the country’s illegal occupation of Palestine and its ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza – a move dubbed hypocritical given the organisation previously sanctioned Russia following the country’s invasion of Ukraine.
The EBU seemed to double down on their decision after it banned contestants and audience members from displaying solidarity with Palestine, with Irish entry Bambie Thug telling a press conference that the organisation forced them to remove the words “Freedom for Palestine” and “Ceasefire” from their costume.
It’s hard not to see the organisation’s decision to prevent contestants from carrying Pride flags as a sign of our current geopolitical times
Support for Palestine wasn’t the only thing being suppressed, however. According to Irish queer publication Gay Community News, audience members were prevented from bringing certain Pride flags into the arena. Even competition winner Nemo said that they were barred from carrying a non-binary flag. “I had to smuggle [it] in because Eurovision said no, but I did it anyway, so I hope some people did that too,” they said. “But I mean, come on, this is clearly a double standard.”
Under the new guidelines set by the EBU, audience members will be able to carry both Pride flags and Palestinian flags at this year’s event. But this small improvement doesn’t fix the underlying problem that Eurovision must contend with: its supposed apoliticism.
While the EBU maintains that Eurovision is a non-political event, it is, by its very nature, a political exercise. The song contest was initially conceived as an effort to forge greater postwar relations between seven western European nations. The scope of the competition obviously grew, but as Tess Megginson, an expert in central and eastern European history, wrote in the Washington Post, the nature of the EBU meant that during the Cold War, countries in the Soviet Bloc were unable to take part.
With the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, Eurovision opened up to countries in eastern Europe. This, however, resulted in so-called “bloc-voting”, where countries with strong ties engage in biased voting, which is why the event reintroduced an additional jury voting system, alongside the televote. In 1992, during the Bosnian War, Yugoslavia was excluded from the competition, and Russia was disqualified in 2022. During the half-time performance at the 2013 competition, there was a celebration of marriage equality, then a contentious issue across much of Europe. Meanwhile, in 2023, when the UK hosted the competition in lieu of the previous year’s winner Ukraine, both contestants and audience members carried Ukrainian flags, while the Eurovision logo was redesigned to represent the country’s colours. Clearly, the EBU has a selective understanding of what it deems as “non-political”.
It’s hard not to see the organisation’s decision to prevent contestants from carrying Pride flags as a sign of our current geopolitical times. In Hungary, the country’s right-wing populist government recently passed a constitutional amendment outlawing LGBTQ+ gatherings such as Pride marchs and as well as the “depiction or promotion” of homosexuality to children.
Banning Pride flags tells its queer contestants that their identities ought to be hidden. It enforces shame and marginalisation at a time when queer visibility across Europe and the rest of the world is vital
There are similar laws banning so-called “LGBTQ+ propaganda” in Russia, Bulgaria and Georgia, with others proposed in Slovakia and Luxembourg. Italy recently introduced a ban on couples seeking surrogacy abroad, a move that will likely affect queer families. And in the UK, the recent Supreme Court ruling regarding legal definition of “sex” and the subsequent transphobic guidance issued by the EHRC barring trans people from using facilities that correspond to their gender identity has been dubbed perhaps the “most severe [ban] in the Western world”.
By prohibiting contestants and their delegations from carrying Pride flags, the EBU, and by extension Eurovision, is once again confusing its apolitical stance. Banning Pride flags is a political statement. It’s one that aligns the EBU with the spread of regressive anti-LGBTQ+ laws. It tells its queer contestants that their identities ought to be hidden. It enforces shame and marginalisation at a time when queer visibility across Europe and the rest of the world is vital.
At this stage, the EBU no longer seems fit to function. Isreal is once again set to appear at Eurovision when it takes place later this month in Basel, Switzerland, with the EBU saying in a statement to the Huffington Post that it “remains aligned with other international organisations that have similarly maintained their inclusive stance towards Israeli participants in major competitions at this time”.
“We all aspire to keep the Eurovision Song Contest positive and celebratory and aspire to show the world as it could be,” they said, “rather than how it necessarily is.” Given the competition’s permissive approach to Israel’s genocide, its ongoing disregard for Palestinian lives, and its now its suppression of LGBTQ+ expression, those aspirations have already failed.