Spanish viewers did not gather in front of the television this Saturday, as used to happen when Spain competed in Eurovision. RTVE’s alternative, La casa de la música presented by Jesús Vázquez, obtained only a 9.2% audience share and an average of 861,000 viewers. Last year, the contest boosted its performance on La 1 with Melody and the now permanent controversy with Israel. At that time, a total of 5,884,000 viewers on average followed the festival with a share that grew to 50.1% during the voting.
Not only did it not lead this Saturday, but the public channel, with its musical special starring Raphael, Ana Belén, and Guitarricadelafuente among others, remained in third place. Antena 3 took the lead with La voz Kids, the content most similar to Eurovision, which obtained a decent 12.6% share. Even Cuatro’s cinema surpassed La 1, with the broadcast of Jungle Cruise (10% and 931,000). These are data collected by Dos30′ based on measurements from Fifty5blue.
There is something I want to tell you, on Telecinco, delves into the channel’s crisis with 8.8%, while LaSexta Xplica (5.3%) and Malas lenguas noche on La 2 (4.2%) approach each other.
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The truth is that Eurovision 2026, which had already experienced audience drops throughout the week in its semifinals compared to last year, also did not recover the lost audience from countries like Spain and Ireland on YouTube, which dropped out of the contest as a form of protest against Israel’s presence and also decided not to broadcast it on their public channels.
The free and open global broadcast of Eurovision on YouTube reached peaks close to one million users. Although one user does not equal one viewer, the data still remain very far from even those almost 6 million people who watched the final only in Spain in 2025. To see its drawing power in streaming, the music festival attracted far fewer eyes than, for example, Ibai Llanos, with whom a direct comparison can be made. The latest edition of La velada del año, held this summer in Seville, reached a peak of 9 million connected devices.
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