Eurovision has long been read as more than a pop song contest. It is a staged arena for national branding, symbolic recognition and transnational affinity. In May 2024 the contest in Malmö exposed how a major soft power platform can be rapidly reframed as a field of contested legitimacy when a country is engaged in intense kinetic operations abroad.
The proximate trigger was straightforward and procedural. Israel’s original submission, widely referred to as “October Rain,” drew scrutiny from the European Broadcasting Union on the grounds that some verses referenced the October 7 attacks and crossed Eurovision’s prohibitions on political messaging. The Israeli delegation rewrote and retitled the entry as “Hurricane,” and the EBU accepted the revised submission. That technical fix did not neutralize the political reading of Israel’s presence; it only shifted the dispute from rule compliance to questions of symbolic legitimacy.
What followed in Malmö was predictable to anyone who studies the intersection of public diplomacy and conflict: street politics met live television. Large pro‑Palestinian demonstrations converged on the host city, producing visible tension around the arena and frequent press images of demonstrations, banners and smoke flares. Organisers and local authorities treated the event as a security operation as much as a cultural festival, deploying significant policing and crisis management resources to preserve the broadcast and protect delegations.
Inside and around the venue the contest’s neutral veneer frayed. Israel’s performer, Eden Golan, performed under a heavy security and media spotlight, largely kept to formal show duties amid reports of restricted movement for the delegation. Her performance was audibly met with both cheers and boos, and the scoreboard revealed a stark split between the professional juries and the public televote, a divergence that itself functions as a barometer of contested normative sentiment across Europe. Those voting patterns and the visible reactions from audiences and some fellow artists turned a moment of cultural diplomacy into a live indicator of reputational risk.
Several lines of strategic interpretation flow from these episodes. First, cultural diplomacy is resilient but conditional. Popular votes and social media attention can confer immediate visibility and sympathetic audiences, but visibility cuts both ways: when images of conflict are salient, cultural platforms can amplify grievances that undermine the message a state intends to transmit. Second, institutions that claim to be apolitical face hard choices about rule interpretation and consistency. Critics pointed to precedents such as Russia’s removal in 2022 to argue for consistent standards; organisers reply that rules must be applied case by case, but that claim risks appearing arbitrary in politicised moments. Third, security choices matter for soft power. Keeping a performer isolated for safety may win headlines and protect lives, but it also compromises the spontaneous interpersonal exchanges through which cultural capital is built. Those optics have lasting resonance with foreign publics and elites.
For policymakers the lessons are practical. States seeking durable influence should diversify soft power investments rather than rely on single marquee events. Cultural outreach that builds layered relationships through long‑term exchanges, diaspora ties, and institutional partnerships is more robust against episodic reputational shocks. Broadcasters and event organisers should also develop clearer, pre‑announced criteria for dealing with entries linked to ongoing conflicts so that decisions cannot be easily framed as ad hoc political endorsements. Finally, government security responses should be calibrated to protect participants while minimizing the sense that a cultural envoy is under siege; excessive securitization itself becomes a political signal.
More broadly, the Malmö episode illustrates a trend that will matter for years: cultural stages are now routine pressure points in geopolitical contests over legitimacy. As states and nonstate actors learn to use symbolic arenas, policymakers must treat cultural diplomacy as an active front in strategic competition. Managing that front requires both an understanding of domestic and transnational public opinion dynamics and investments in institutions capable of credible, consistent rule enforcement. Without that work the benefits of soft power will remain fleeting and vulnerable to the flashpoints of hard security.