Dutch public broadcaster AVROTROS said Monday that it will not take part in the 2027 Eurovision Song Contest, extending a boycott it first launched this year over Israel’s continued participation in the competition. In a statement, the broadcaster said the contest can no longer be considered neutral while a participating country remains involved in a large-scale military conflict, and while it stopped short of naming Israel outright, the reference was unmistakable. AVROTROS pointed to the severe humanitarian suffering in Gaza and ongoing restrictions on press freedom as forces that have deepened divisions around the contest in recent years.

The broadcaster also took aim at reforms the European Broadcasting Union, which organizes Eurovision, introduced ahead of this year’s contest in Vienna. It said the changes announced by the EBU do not provide sufficient confidence that the contest’s independent and neutral character has been restored. Rather than making a unilateral final call, AVROTROS said it would leave the decision on Dutch participation to NPO, the umbrella association of Dutch public broadcasters.

The Netherlands boycotted the 2026 Eurovision Song Contest over Israel’s participation, and Monday’s announcement confirms the country will remain absent for a second straight year rather than returning for the 2027 edition. The 2026 contest itself proceeded amid a wider crisis for the competition. Israel was cleared to compete despite calls for its exclusion over the war in Gaza and allegations that voting in the previous year’s contest had been manipulated in the country’s favour, with EBU members agreeing at their general assembly that no further vote on participation was needed given additional safeguards that had been put in place. Members from the EBU associations had voted on whether they were satisfied with a package of new rules, with roughly two-thirds in favour, about a quarter against and the remainder abstaining. Because that reform package passed by a large majority, no separate vote on participation was held, and Israel remained in the contest.

The rules themselves targeted concerns about vote manipulation and government-backed promotional campaigns that had surrounded Israel’s entries in prior years. Among the changes: acts and broadcasters were barred from actively engaging in or facilitating promotional campaigns run by third parties, the number of votes an individual device could cast was cut from 20 to 10, and juries returned to the semi-final rounds for the first time since 2022, expanded to seven members with at least two required to be between 18 and 25 years old. The EBU also capped the maximum number of televotes permitted per payment method at 10, down from 20, and introduced measures meant to curb excessive promotional activity.

Those safeguards were not enough to keep several broadcasters in the fold for 2026. Once the EBU confirmed that all members willing to comply with the new rules could take part, the public broadcasters of Spain, the Netherlands, Ireland and Slovenia said they would follow through on threats to quit the competition. Iceland’s national broadcaster joined them shortly afterward, becoming the fifth to boycott the 2026 contest over Israel’s participation.

AVROTROS’s break with Eurovision did not begin this week. The broadcaster first signalled its intentions last September, well before the EBU’s rule package was finalized, saying at the time that it would not take part in the 2026 contest in Vienna if Israel participated, citing the ongoing and severe human suffering in Gaza. It also expressed concern over what it described as a serious erosion of press freedom, including the exclusion of independent international reporting and the deaths of journalists covering the conflict. By the time the EBU’s general assembly convened in Geneva in December, AVROTROS had sharpened its case, saying it could no longer justify Israel’s participation and, echoing concerns raised separately by Irish broadcaster RTÉ, alleging there was evidence of interference by the Israeli government during the 2025 contest and that Israel had used the event as a political instrument. Human suffering, the suppression of press freedom and political interference, the broadcaster argued, all ran counter to the values public broadcasting is meant to uphold. The Netherlands was not alone in raising those objections at the time; Spain’s culture minister, Ernest Urtasun, said around the same period that his country could not normalize Israel’s participation in international events as though nothing were happening, and Spanish officials had separately threatened to withdraw if Israel remained on the line-up.

This year’s contest went ahead despite the walkouts, with a winner already crowned. Eurovision, founded in 1956 partly to help unite a Europe shattered by World War II, once again pitted acts from dozens of countries against one another for the continent’s musical crown; Bulgarian singer Dara won this year’s edition with her song “Bangaranga.”

For 2027, the picture remains unsettled. AVROTROS has stated its position, but by handing the final call to NPO, the broadcaster has left the door open to further internal deliberation among Dutch public broadcasters before any decision is locked in. It is also unclear how many of the other broadcasters that sat out 2026, Ireland, Spain, Slovenia and Iceland, will follow AVROTROS’s lead in confirming an early boycott of the following year’s contest, or whether the EBU will introduce further reforms in response. The organization has said it plans to evaluate the impact of this year’s rule changes before deciding on any additional adjustments for future contests, leaving open the possibility that further concessions, or even a formal vote on participation, could still be added to the table before broadcasters must confirm their plans for 2027.

What is clear is that the dispute over Israel’s place in Eurovision, which has simmered since at least 2023, shows no sign of resolving on its own. Each contest cycle has brought a similar pattern: new safeguards from the EBU, partial reassurance for some broadcasters, and firm rejection from others who argue the changes do not address the underlying question of whether a country involved in an active military conflict belongs in a contest built around the idea of cultural unity. AVROTROS’s announcement suggests that, for the Netherlands at least, that question has already been answered.