MTV Europe Music Awards (EMA), which was supposed to take place last night in Paris with representatives and an Israeli winner, was canceled due to the war in Israel. Despite the cancellation of the ceremony, MTV decided to announce the winners, but the Israeli winner is notably absent from the list of winners.
The voting system, which was open until the cancellation of the ceremony, received many votes, so MTV decided to announce the winners: Taylor Swift was the big winner of the ceremony and won three awards (Best Artist, Best Live Performance, and Best Video for the song "Anti Hero"). Billie Eilish won the Best Pop award. Several Eurovision representatives were also among the winners: the band Måneskin, the 2021 Eurovision winner, won the Best Rock and Best Italian Artist awards, and the Finnish Eurovision representative from the last edition, Käärijä, won the Best Nordic Artist award.
As mentioned earlier, Noa Kirel, Anna Zak, Nono, Shira Margalit, and Liad Meir were nominated for the Best Israeli Artist category, but the Israeli winner was absent from the list.
MTV Israel stated that the reason for the absence of the Israeli winner is due to the ongoing war in the country: "Following the terrible event on October 7 and Israel's entry into the war, we decided to stop the local competition and forgo announcing a winner this year. This decision was made with the understanding that fans and the audience are not emotionally connected to a competition during such times. The artists fully understood and supported this decision."
