Israel’s Noam Bettan is set to represent the Jewish state at the Eurovision Song Contest 2026 in Vienna with a song titled “Michelle,” the country’s Kan public broadcaster announced on Monday evening.
The song—which contains lyrics in Hebrew, English and French and will be presented on March 5—is written and composed by Nadav Aharoni, Tslil Klifi and Yuval Raphael, the country’s 2025 representative and a survivor of the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, massacre.
An expert committee tapped by Kan to select this year’s song narrowed 200 submissions down to four potentials, Kan said earlier this month. Bettan recorded all four songs and the committee picked a winner.
Kan noted that the song was in “a slightly different style” than Israel’s Eurovision entries from 2024 and 2025, which were both ballads.
The country’s submission is currently being considered by the European Broadcasting Union, which organizes the annual musical extravaganza scheduled for May.
The son of French immigrant parents, Bettan, 27, from the central city of Ra’anana, was nominated as Israel’s contestant after winning the finale of the “HaKokhav HaBa” (“The Next Star”) TV competition in January.
Bettan began his musical career during his compulsory military service and first gained national attention in 2018 after coming in third in the musical reality TV competition “Aviv or Eyal.”
In 2024, Bettan released “Pokeach Einayim,” based on lyrics by Israel Defense Forces Staff Sgt. Yaron Oree Shay, a soldier from the Nahal Brigade who was killed fighting Palestinian terrorists on Oct. 7, 2023.
Israel was cleared to compete in Eurovision after other broadcasters abandoned a proposal to bar its participation, following reforms intended to enhance the event’s “transparency and neutrality.”
The decision was made during a Dec. 4 gathering held at the European Broadcasting Union’s Geneva headquarters to consider rules aimed at reducing “influence” over voting by governments and third parties.
Broadcasters of Iceland, Ireland, the Netherlands, Slovenia and Spain have already announced that their countries would skip the musical event in protest of the EBU’s decision to allow Israel to participate.
