The Hague (AFP) – The Netherlands will participate in next year’s Eurovision Song Contest after all, as its public broadcaster said Wednesday it would step in to replace a company that had pulled out over the Gaza conflict.

“The Dutch public broadcaster will once again take part in the Eurovision Song Contest from 2027 onwards with a Dutch participant. An independent team of experts will carefully guide the process surrounding the act,” said the NPO (national public broadcaster).

In August, the AVROTROS broadcaster, which selected the Dutch entry and broadcast the show, had pulled out, saying the event can “no longer be considered neutral” given divisions over the Gaza war.

“The EBU (European Broadcasting Union that runs Eurovision) has since taken significant steps regarding the rules of the Eurovision Song Contest,” said the NPO.

Acknowledging the contest provokes “mixed feelings” in the Netherlands, NPO said it had “explicitly asked the EBU to once again make the unifying character of the festival an important part of the event.”

Jurre Bosman, NPO’s director of media, said in a statement: “It is important that, as a public broadcaster, we remain part of this unifying European event at this moment in particular.”

The contest has recently been hit by a wave of boycotts over Israel’s participation, in protest at the country’s deadly offensive in Gaza, [ …].

In August, organisers announced they were excluding any country involved in an armed conflict from hosting the competition.

But when it pulled out, AVROTROS had said those changes did “not provide sufficient confidence that the independent and neutral character of the Eurovision Song Contest has been restored”.

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