Israel’s Noam Bettan finishes second at Eurovision as Bulgaria takes the win

Israel’s Noam Bettan finished in second place at Saturday night’s Eurovision Song Contest grand final in Vienna, Austria, just losing out to Bulgaria’s Dara, whose crowd-pleasing dance number “Bangaranga” took the top prize.

Ultimately, Israel came third in the televote — the public voting system that accounts for 50% of each country’s total score — and eighth in the jury rankings, with enough combined support to propel it to a second-place finish.

But it couldn’t compete with Bulgaria, whose win — the first for the country — came as a shock after bookmakers had predicted Finland, Australia or Greece as the likeliest champions. Third place was also taken by a surprise outsider, Romania’s Alexandra Căpitănescu with the provocative “Choke Me,” which was second in the televote.

Israel took home 343 points overall — 123 from the juries and 220 with the public — while Bulgaria, whose dance hit “Bangaranga” proved a crowd favorite — got 204 from the juries and 312 from the public, cementing its first place win with a whopping 516 in total.

Bettan performed his song “Michelle” in French, Hebrew and English along with five backup dancers as millions around the world tuned in. Unlike during Tuesday’s semi-final, no anti-Israel chanting or boos could be heard on the live broadcast. A number of fans could be heard chanting “Noam, Noam” just as the song began.

Loud booing could, however, be heard in the live broadcast after Israel’s high public vote was announced, sending Israel briefly into top spot.

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— כאן (@kann) May 16, 2026

Bettan received 12 jury points — the highest possible — from Poland, as well as 10 from Ukraine and Moldova, and eight from Albania, Austria and Lithuania. The full breakdown of all of the televote results — including from the semifinal rounds — will be released overnight.

Israel’s jury handed its top points to Australia, followed by 10 to Denmark, eight to Bulgaria and seven to Finland.

“Thank you Europe, toda raba,” Bettan said on stage after wrapping up the song. “I love you all — Am Yisrael Chai,” he added, Hebrew for “the people of Israel live.”

After coming off stage, Bettan said in a video message that he was “much more excited than the previous times. I felt good, I felt 100 times better than past performances… I had fun, we’re finally on the other side of it, after months of work, that all led us to this point.”

Following his second-place finish, the 28-year-old singer told Kan’s public broadcaster that “we could not have asked for a better result… I tried to stay focused. I sang with joy, with a smile on my face,” he added, saying he hoped to have given Israelis “a moment of hope.”

“There were lots of boos during the count and applause for [Bulgaria],” he noted, determinedly unfazed. “We look at the good. And we sing and give our love to those who want to accept it.”

Sending a message to watching Israelis, he added: “I know we are united today — but tomorrow, and next year, and 50 years from now… we need to be united. That’s our nature, and we need to return to it.”

At Tuesday’s semifinal, one anti-Israel activist could be heard shouting “Stop the genocide” as Bettan took the stage. He was ejected from the arena by security along with three other protesters.

Bettan told The Times of Israel in an interview last month that he had been practicing to the sounds of booing in order to be prepared.

Tensions over Israel’s participation in the Eurovision, which spiked over the past two years, came to a peak this year, when five countries backed out of the competition in protest, the largest political boycott in the contest’s history.

After leading the unsuccessful push to have Israel kicked out of the competition, Spain, Slovenia, Ireland, Iceland and the Netherlands quit the contest. The five nations announced their decisions after a vast majority of European Broadcasting Union members voted in December to accept a package of voting reforms rather than push for a direct vote on Israel’s participation.

The voting reforms include capping votes per person at 10 instead of 20, returning juries to the semifinal rounds alongside the televote, and new rules discouraging large online campaigns, as well as barring contestants from cooperating with any such paid advertising.

Israel was issued a direct warning last Saturday by the EBU over an online campaign featuring Bettan in several languages calling for fans to cast all their 10 votes for Israel, saying it was “not in line with our rules nor the spirit of the competition.”

Kan said the videos were immediately pulled down, but maintained it had not violated any contest rules.

The week of the contest in Vienna proceeded fairly smoothly for Israel, with less of the behind-the-scenes tension reported in 2024 and 2025. Bettan was seen being friendly with Moldova’s Satoshi, Denmark’s Søren Torpegaard Lund, and Albania’s Alis as well as Boy George, the British pop icon who was part of San Marino’s act.

However, the Croatian act, Lelek, reacted angrily after the Kan X account posted a joke meme about their facial tattoos, which the public broadcaster deleted and apologized for to the Croatian delegation.

Much-hyped anti-Israel protests throughout Vienna did not draw particularly large crowds. A rally Saturday afternoon near the venue drew only a few hundred people, far less than the 3,000 organizers had said they expected. A similar protest in Vienna on Tuesday drew only a couple dozen activists.

At a press conference Saturday afternoon, Eurovision director Martin Green admitted that “we’re going through some challenging times at the moment.”

But he urged viewers to tune in, to “maybe close the curtains to the outside world and dream that something else is possible.” And he appeared to dismiss the speculation, on the contest’s 70th anniversary, that it could not overcome its current controversies: “Here’s to the next 70 years.”

Agencies contributed to this report.