PRESS REVIEW – Friday, December 5: The European Broadcasting Union votes to keep Israel in the Eurovision Song Contest, sparking a boycott from Spain, the Netherlands, Slovenia and Ireland. We look at reactions from the front pages. Also: the FIFA 2026 World Cup draw will be unveiled in Washington this Friday, with US President Donald Trump receiving a special “FIFA peace prize”. Plus, Pantone unveils 2026’s colour of the year and a “kindness influencer” helps raise over $1.5 million for an 88-year-old US army veteran.
Four countries have withdrawn from Eurovision 2026 after a decision to keep Israel in the competition. The EBU (European Broadcasting Union) cleared Israel on Thursday to take part in 2026, which sparked a boycott by Ireland, Slovenia, the Netherlands and Spain. The crisis has plunged the contest into its “deepest ever crisis”, Politico says. The event is much more than just a glitzy, campy music competition; it has always been a bastion of European soft power and politics. The four countries who withdrew say their decision was based on Israel’s war in Gaza and the resulting humanitarian crisis. We look at the reaction from the Irish dailies. The Irish broadcaster RTE will not ever air the contest as Ireland shuns Eurovision over “GAZA horrors”, the Irish Daily Mirror and Irish Daily Star say. There is also anger over allegations that the Israeli government intervened in voting this year, after the Israeli candidate received the largest number of public votes during the final. The Jerusalem Post relays the controversy of the boycott on its factual front-page story.
The competition’s crisis will also be financial. Spain’s exit represents the loss of a major source of funding. As the Spanish daily El Pais notes, five countries provide the most funding to Eurovision – France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK – and they contribute €350,000 each. It means they automatically qualify for the grand final each year. Spain’s absence means a large chunk of funding will be absent. As the paper explains in its article, the EBU has tried to compensate for the planned absences by extending the deadline for registration and encouraging other countries like Romania and Bulgaria to participate.
Elsewhere, there’s anticipation in the sports papers as the 2026 FIFA World Cup draw will be announced in Washington. We will finally know the groups of each of the 48 competing nations in the 2026 World Cup, which is taking place across the US, Canada and Mexico. French sports paper L’Equipe provides us with a guide to the announcement of the draw – and their predictions about the ideal draw for France. L’Equipe notes that the draw will be “highly political” too. It was initially meant to be held in Las Vegas, but FIFA pandered to Donald Trump, who wanted it in Washington. FIFA President Gianni Infantino will also be bestowing upon the US president FIFA’s inaugural peace prize – in the absence of another peace prize that Trump has desperately sought. For an obscure prize, an obscure prize-giver: The Guardian reports that a close ally of the Myanmar junta will be handing this prize to Trump. Zaw Zaw is head of the Myanmar football association. The US described him in 2009 as a “crony of the Myanmar junta”. A shadow of corruption looms over this inaugural FIFA peace prize.
Pantone is the world’s colour authority and announces a colour that will dominate art, architecture and fashion for the year to come. Next year will be all about Cloud Dancer, the first ever white shade. It is a bland, boring shade, but that is exactly the point! It is a “whisper of calm in a noisy world”, according to The Washington Post. This does not bode well for some, who see it reflecting a year dominated by rising White nationalism. Pantone assures us, however, that politics and skin tones do not factor in at all.
We end with a wonderful story about the online community rallying behind an 88-year-old military veteran in the US. Ed Bambas has not had a restful retirement. He lost his pension and health insurance in 2012 and then sold his house to pay for his sick wife’s health care. For the past seven years, he has been working eight hours, five days a week at a store in Detroit. An Australian kindness influencer shared a video of Bambas’s story and set up a GoFundMe. Total strangers donated, raising more than $1.5 million in three days to help Bambas finally retire. The story is proof that social media can bring out the best in people sometimes!
You can catch our press review every morning on France 24 at 7:20am and 9:20am (Paris time), from Monday to Friday.
