What to know about the Eurovision Song Contest as it turns 70 with a Vienna extravaganza

LONDON (AP) — The Eurovision Song Contest is turning 70, with a few political clouds hanging over its glitter-drenched party.

The annual musical extravaganza that has been likened to a pop music Olympics takes place in Vienna, Austria, May 12-16. It will see singers and bands from 35 countries compete onstage for the continent’s musical crown — but with some high-profile absentees who are boycotting to protest Israel’s participation.

Here’s a guide to all things Eurovision: What it is, who to watch for and how to take part.

Eurovision is an international pop music competition founded in 1956 to test new live-broadcasting technology and foster unity after the trauma of World War II. From an initial seven contestants, it grew to include dozens of nations from across Europe, as well as farther-flung Israel and Australia.

The contest is a campy yet heartfelt celebration of diversity, national pride and the joyous power of pop with a global fanbase. Organizers say last year’s competition was watched by 166 million people around the world, and fans from 75 countries have bought tickets for the live shows in Vienna.

The contest has displayed moments of supreme silliness — winning songs “La, La, La” and “Boom Bang-a-Bang,” anyone? — as well as pieces of pop perfection like ABBA ’s 1974 winner “Waterloo."

Other memorable winners include Canadian chanteuse Celine Dion — who competed for Switzerland in 1988 — Austrian drag diva Conchita Wurst in 2014, Italian rock band Måneskin in 2021 and Ukrainian folk-rap group Kalush Orchestra in 2022.

Eurovision’s motto is “United by Music,” but it has repeatedly been embroiled in world events. Russia was expelled in 2022 after its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

The 2024 contest in Malmo, Sweden, and last year’s event in Basel, Switzerland, saw pro-Palestinian protests that called for Israel to be expelled over its conduct of its war against Hamas in Gaza and allegations it tried to manipulate voting in favor of its contestant.

Tensions came to a head in December when five countries — Iceland, Ireland, the Netherlands, Slovenia and Spain — pulled out of the contest after organizers decided to allow Israel to compete.

Bulgaria, Moldova and Romania have returned after skipping the event for artistic or financial reasons in recent years, meaning 35 countries will compete in Vienna, down from 37 in 2025. Several pro-Palestinian protests are planned during Eurovision week.

Eurovision historian Dean Vuletic said “Eurovision is Europe’s biggest election,” with winners decided by a mix of national juries and viewers' votes.

Finland is the oddsmakers’ favorite with “Liekinheitin” (“Flamethrower”), a high-intensity mashup featuring violinist Linda Lampenius and pop singer Pete Parkkonen.

Also highly rated are 17-year-old French singer Monroe with pop-operatic love ballad “Regarde!” and Denmark’s Søren Torpegaard Lund with the sultry “Før Vi Går Hjem” (“Before We Go Home”).

Australia, a keen Eurovision participant despite being thousands of miles from Europe, has sent established star Delta Goodrem with “Eclipse,” a slick midtempo ballad. Greece’s Akylas is becoming a fan favorite with party-rap track “Ferto” (“Bring It”).

Vuletic also tipped Cyprus' entry, the folk-influenced dance-pop song “Jalla” by Antigoni. It's already a hit on YouTube and “could be the up-tempo feelgood song that people vote for,” he said.

Israel, which has won Eurovision four times and came second in 2025, has sent crooner Noam Bettan with the ballad “Michelle.” Singer Senhit, representing tiny San Marino, has enlisted 1980s icon Boy George to make a guest appearance on party anthem “Superstar.”

Paul Jordan, an expert known as Dr. Eurovision, said the contest has moved beyond its reputation for “sugary pop.” This year's entries range from classically influenced “popera” to electro-pop, power ballads and folk-influenced songs.

“There’s not a lot of cheesy pop numbers,” Jordan said. “There’s such diversity that I don’t think there is such a thing as a ‘Eurovision sound’ anymore.”

Traditionally the competition is hosted by the previous year’s winner, and last year’s victor was Austrian singer JJ with pop-opera song “Wasted Love.” The 2026 contest is being held at the Wiener Stadthalle in Vienna, the third time Austria’s capital has hosted Eurovision.

The competition will be aired by national broadcasters in participating nations, on streaming service Peacock in the United States and on the Eurovision YouTube channel in some countries.

Participating countries each enter a singer or band with an original song that can be no more than three minutes long and is performed live, often with spectacular staging.

Two semifinals, on May 12 and 14, will winnow the field of competitors down to 25 who will compete in the grand final on May 16, hosted by Austrian singer/crystal heiress Victoria Swarovski and actor Michael Ostrowski.

Viewers in participating countries can vote during the live final by phone or text message, but aren’t allowed to vote for their own country’s act. Viewers in the U.S. and other nonparticipating countries can vote online at www.esc.vote.

Each country's public vote is translated into points, on a scale of one to 12, for the highest-ranked acts.

The European Broadcasting Union, which runs Eurovision, has toughened voting rules in response to vote-rigging allegations, halving the number of votes per payment to 10 and tightening safeguards against “suspicious or coordinated voting activity.”

After a voting interval, each country in turn announces its jury and public voting results, with the points tallied on-screen until a winner emerges. The fast-changing rankings and suspense about whether any country gets the dreaded “nul (zero) points” are all part of the excitement.

The withdrawal of countries including seven-time winner Ireland and Spain — one of the “big five” nations that pay the most to the contest — is a major blow at a time when many public broadcasters face funding pressures and social media has lured away some eyeballs.

Eurovision is looking to the future, and to other continents, with the first Eurovision Song Contest Asia due to take place in Bangkok in November.

Jordan said that, at 70, Eurovision is “part of our European culture” and can weather the latest storm.

“It still gets people talking. It still brings us all together. It still gets huge viewing figures, it’s still creating hits,” he said. “At a time when broadcasting is changing, people still make a date with their television set on that Saturday night.”

For more coverage of the Eurovision Song Contest, visit: https://apnews.com/hub/eurovision-song-contest

People attend a rally against Israel's participation in the Eurovision Song Contest in front of the state-run TV headquarters in Belgrade, Serbia, Tuesday, April 28, 2026. (AP Photo/Darko Vojinovic)

3000 drones depicts the logo sign in preparation for the upcoming Eurovision Song Contest in front of castle Schonbrunn in Vienna, Austria, Monday, April 27, 2026. (AP Photo/Matthias Schrader)

3000 drones depicts a picture of Austrian super star Concita Wurst in preparation for the upcoming Eurovision Song Contest in front of castle Schonbrunn in Vienna, Austria, Monday, April 27, 2026. (AP Photo/Matthias Schrader)

FILE - JJ from Austria stands on the stage with the trophy after winning the Grand Final of the 69th Eurovision Song Contest, in Basel, Switzerland, May 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Martin Meissner, File)

WASHINGTON (AP) — When Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin was questioned by senators during his confirmation hearing about his vision for implementing President Donald Trump's mass deportation agenda, he said his goal was to keep his department off the front pages of the news.

To some degree, he has. Gone are the social media video clips of now-retired Border Patrol commander Greg Bovino clashing with protesters. Mullin's predecessor, Kristi Noem, made her first trip as secretary to New York City to make arrests with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. In contrast, Mullin went to North Carolina to review hurricane recovery efforts.

The Republican administration appears to be recalibrating its approach to a centerpiece policy that helped bring Trump back to the White House, moving in many ways away from aggressive, public-facing tactics toward a quieter approach to enforcement. Despite that shift, the administration insists it is not backing down from its lofty deportation goals.

“Clearly they’ve stepped back from the, for want of a better word, the Bovinoist tactics of before," said Mark Krikorian, the president of the Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates for immigration restrictions. "But it’s not clear this means they’re actually stepping back from immigration.”

The Trump administration launched a series of immigration enforcement operations last year in mostly Democratic-led cities, which drove up arrests in large-scale sweeps. The crackdown sparked clashes between protesters and enforcement officers and led to the shooting deaths in Minneapolis of two U.S. citizens.

Since then, the president’s hard-line anti-immigration agenda has lost popularity with voters and there have been no new high-profile city-based operations launched, raising questions about the administration's strategy.

“We’re still enforcing immigration laws. We’re still deporting illegals that shouldn’t be here. We’re still going after the worst of the worst — but we’re doing it in a more quiet way,” Mullin said in an interview April 16 with CNBC.

ICE arrests have fallen in recent months, and the number of people in immigration detention has dropped from a high of roughly 72,000 in January to 58,000 this week, according to data obtained by The Associated Press.

But in a sign of its continued determination, ICE in budget documents says it plans to remove 1 million people this fiscal year and the next compared with roughly 442,000 people last year. The agency also has plenty of money to carry out its mission, with Congress granting the Department of Homeland Security more than $170 billion for Trump's immigration agenda last year.

The administration aims to have enough space to detain roughly 100,000 people this fiscal year, which would more than double the average daily number held in ICE detention last year. The administration has already expanded its detention capacity with the purchase of 11 warehouses across the country.

“They are working really on building a juggernaut of a system,” said Doris Meissner, who headed the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, a predecessor to ICE, during President Bill Clinton's Democratic administration and is now a senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute.

White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said there had been no change to Trump's strategy.

"President Trump’s highest priority has always been the deportation of illegal alien criminals who endanger American communities,” Jackson said.

ICE did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

Advocates for immigrants are bracing for the Trump administration to turn its attention more intently to stripping away protections for migrants with temporary legal status to remain in the U.S. while their cases are being adjudicated.

In one example of this, the number of green cards approved by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services dropped by half over the course of a year under the Trump administration, according to an analysis by the Cato Institute, which supports immigration into the U.S. Humanitarian visas for refugees or people who qualified for asylum saw the biggest declines.

USCIS spokesman Zach Kahler said the drop was due to increased vetting of applicants by the administration.

The Trump administration has also pushed to strip Temporary Protected Status from hundreds of thousands of people, with a key case weighing whether it's overstepped its power to do so being heard at the Supreme Court this week.

Advocates see it as a way to send a chilling message to immigrant communities and make more people vulnerable to deportation. It also enables the department to operate without the public spectacle of workplace raids or home arrests.

ICE has also focused over the past year on creating agreements with jurisdictions around the country that allow local and state law enforcement to carry out an expanding array of immigration enforcement tasks, ranging from checking the immigration status of people in their jails to incorporating immigration checks during routine traffic stops.

These agreements, known as 287g, have grown from 135 in 20 states before Trump took office to more than 1,400 in 41 states and territories now.

Some states, most noticeably Florida and Texas, have mandated various forms of cooperation between local law enforcement and ICE.

Meissner, from MPI, said Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, is likely to prioritize further discussions about how cities and states can cooperate with ICE.

“At the end of the day, some of this may very well succeed in increasing the numbers,” Meissner said.

Conservatives who want more deportations say the only way to truly crack down on illegal immigration is to make it so difficult for the migrants to work that they’ll leave on their own.

The Trump administration has already taken steps to make life harder for people in the country illegally including limiting who can live in public housing by immigration status, sharing Medicaid information with ICE and requiring people in the country illegally to register with the federal government.

Krikorian, of the Center for Immigration Studies, said the Social Security Administration could send out letters alerting employers when an employee's name doesn't match their Social Security number. Authorities could repeatedly and consistently carry out audits of I-9 forms, which companies are supposed to fill out and submit to the federal government showing that new hires are legally able to work. And they could require banks to collect citizenship information on customers.

Whatever the strategy going forward, the administration is facing heavy pressure not to back away from its goals.

“The numbers are too low," said Mike Howell, part of the Mass Deportation Coalition, which launched a playbook for how the administration can actually get to a million deportations a year by using tactics such as worksite enforcement.

“The deportation numbers are just too low," Howell said, "and they need to be much higher, and they can be much higher.”

Associated Press writers Lisa Mascaro and Will Weissert contributed to this report.

FILE - A federal agent approaches a vehicle on Jan. 29, 2026, in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/Adam Gray, File)

Federal agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Customs and Border Protection walk along West Wacker Drive in the Loop, Sunday, Sept. 28, 2025, in Chicago. (Ashlee Rezin/Chicago Sun-Times via AP)

FILE - Demonstrators rally before marching to the White House in Washington, Jan. 8, 2026, as they protest against the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent who fatally shot Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana, File)

FILE - Demonstrators march down Fifth Avenue during a protest against war in Venezuela and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Jan. 11, 2026, in New York. (AP Photo/Heather Khalifa, File)

FILE - Federal officers stand guard after detaining people outside of Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building, Jan. 13, 2026, in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/Adam Gray, File)