Ireland will broadcast Father Ted instead of Eurovision

James CrispMon, May 11, 2026 at 4:43 PM UTC

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Credit: Youtube/Hat Trick Comedy

Ireland’s state broadcaster will show a Eurovision-themed episode of Father Ted instead of the contest’s grand final, which it is boycotting over Israel’s participation.

RTÉ is one of five public channels across Europe to have pulled out of the 70th anniversary show in Vienna because of Israel’s war in Gaza.

Ireland, Spain and Slovenia’s broadcasters said on Monday that they would not show the contest, which begins with a semi-final on Tuesday and ends on Saturday, May 16.

The Netherlands and Iceland also pulled out of the competition last year but will show it.

As 200 million viewers tune in for the contest on Saturday night, Irish viewers of RTÉ2 will be treated to one of the best-known episodes of the beloved sitcom.

In “Song for Europe”, Fathers Ted and Dougal enter the “Eurosong” competition with a minute-long song called “My Lovely Horse”.

The priests end up receiving “nul points” after getting caught up in a plot to ensure Ireland did not win and have to host the next year’s costly competition.

The episode was first aired in 1996 after Ireland had won Eurovision four times in five years. In 2014, an Irish parliamentary committee rejected a public petition to enter My Lovely Horse as Ireland’s entry in the 2015 contest.

The song’s comically bad lyrics include lines such as “I want to shower you with sugar lumps and ride you over fences, polish your hooves every single day and bring you to the horse dentist.”

It ends with the cry, “running around with a man on your back, like a train in the night, like a train in the night.”

During the second semi-final on Thursday, RTÉ will show The End of the World with Beanz.

It features 1993 Eurovision winner Niamh Kavanagh in Norway experiencing life as a reindeer herder.

The Irish website Extra.ie congratulated RTÉ on the scheduling, which it described as “genius trolling”.

Slovenia meanwhile said it would broadcast a documentary about Palestine. “Instead of the Eurovision circus, the national television programme will be coloured by the thematic program series ‘Voices of Palestine’,” Slovenian broadcaster RTV said.

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’Genius trolling’: In ‘Song for Europe’, Father Ted and Father Dougal enter the ‘Eurosong’ competition

Spain’s RTVE will run its own musical special, “The House of Music.”

Ireland has won Eurovision seven times, making it the most successful country in the competition’s history with Sweden.

RTÉ cited the “appalling loss of lives in Gaza” when it said it would not compete in Eurovision for the first time in 61 years last December.

It was the culmination of one of the biggest crises in Eurovision’s history, which is the world’s biggest televised live music event.

There were building calls to kick Israel out of the contest last year but, after a ceasefire, a vote on whether or not to allow Israel to participate was postponed.

Hosts Austria and Germany had warned they would pull out of the competition if Israel was excluded.

Instead, a majority of broadcasters backed rules to guarantee political neutrality, rather than excluding Israel. This led Ireland and the other four channels to pull out.

An Israeli government agency was accused of paying for adverts and using state social media accounts to encourage people to vote for its entry in last year’s competition.

Broadcasters in Ireland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Iceland and Finland raised concerns after Israel’s entrant topped the public vote, finishing second overall.

Eurovision has issued Israel’s national broadcaster, known as Kan, a formal warning over its call for viewers “to vote 10 times”.

Kan was found to have broken the competition’s rules on Friday after it shared videos on social media encouraging viewers to support the country’s entry.

In the clips, Noam Bettan, Israel’s entrant, told his fans to use all 10 of their votes to support him in the competition’s first semi-final on May 12.

Kan was reprimanded after the organisers found its endorsement of Bettan’s videos had breached new rules designed to limit third-party campaigns.

Ireland infuriated Israel when it formally recognised Palestine in May 2024, a move that was popular domestically in a country that draws parallels between its own struggle for independence and that of the Palestinians.

In December 2024, Israel closed its embassy in Dublin after Ireland supported South Africa’s legal action against Israel in the International Court of Justice.

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