Ankur Desai

Organizers and participating countries will be debating that question at a two-day meeting starting today in Geneva.

You may remember Israel's Yuval Raphael won the public vote last year, finishing second overall with her song, New Day Will Rise.

But now critics want Israel excluded from the competition because of the way its government conducted the war in Gaza.

Germany, which is a key financial supporter, has warned it may pull out if that happens, while other countries including Ireland, Spain, the Netherlands and Slovenia have threatened to boycott the 2026 contest if Israel is allowed to compete.

Natalia Gorchak is the president of the Slovenian broadcaster RTV.

A dilemma then.

I spoke to our music correspondent, Mark Savage.

Well, it's going to be a very tense meeting.

Like you say, Eurovision's organisers have been struggling to resolve the tension over Israel's participation really since the invasion of Gaza.

There have been protests outside previous contests.

This year, there were two people tried to invade the stage and throw paint over Israel's contestant.

Feelings are running very high.

As you've said, there are some countries that really want Israel to be part of the contest and some that feel that because of the human rights issues in Gaza, they should be excluded.

The first thing that's going to be discussed, however, at this meeting today is the integrity of the voting process.

Because there were some accusations last year that Israel's government had mounted a campaign to encourage votes for Yuval Raphael.

There were lots of paid campaigns on YouTube, on social media.

The Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu even put up a post to his 1.5 million Instagram followers encouraging them to vote for Israel.

And Yuval topped the public vote.

She hadn't done so well with the juries.

And there are some people who say that that sort of government intervention in the public vote shouldn't happen.