Two of “Hurricane” songwriters, Keren Peles and Avi Ohayon, plan to submit a song for Eurovision 2025.

The winner of “HaKochav Haba 2025” will perform a song chosen by a committee. As reported earlier, Eran Swissa from “Israel Hayom” reveals that two of the creators of Eden Golan‘s “Hurricane” from Eurovision 2024, Keren Peles and Avi Ohayon, are expected to submit a song to the committee this year. However, this time they will do so without the third creator.

The reason for this split might be the disagreements that arose between the three creators over the royalty distribution for the song “October Rain” (the original version of “Hurricane”). The song was written by Peles and Ohayon, with Stav Beger joining the work on the song at a later stage at the request of the Israeli Public Broadcasting Corporation. Beger demanded to be registered as one of the song’s creators, while Ohayon argued that Beger should only be registered as an arranger. Beger’s registration as a creator or merely as an arranger affected the royalty ratio between the creators.

Song Submission Guidelines

As we’ve published, the Israeli Channels Kan 11 and Keshet 12 have begun reaching out to about 120 creators from all genres of Israeli music, selected by a professional committee, to propose songs intended to represent Israel at Eurovision in Basel. Creators can submit their proposed songs until February 2, 2025, subject to regulations.

The IPBC emphasized that while the song can be in any language, it must include at least a few sentences in Hebrew. The creators of the songs must hold Israeli citizenship, and if a group of creators is submitting a song, one foreign creator is allowed. The selection committee will comprise seven members, including representatives from radio, television, and Keshet 12.

Committee Composition:

• Chairman – Director of the Corporation’s Music Stations
• Two radio representatives – Music editors chosen by the committee chairman
• Two television representatives – Head of Entertainment and Culture at IPBC and an additional representative of her choice
• Two Keshet representatives

Each committee member will vote based on professional criteria, including quality and originality of lyrics and melody, suitability for the representing artist and the Eurovision competition, potential success in Eurovision, appropriateness for representing a public broadcasting body, overall impression, and other relevant criteria as decided by the committee. Songs will be presented anonymously to ensure unbiased evaluation.

If the committee fails to find a suitable song, they may issue a public call for additional songs, choose a song published publicly after September 1, or select from songs submitted to the corporation for Eurovision participation between 2022-2024.

The song will be revealed in a special programme in KAN in March 2025.

“HaKochav Haba” Collaboration

The IPBC continues its collaboration with Keshet 12 and “HaKochav Haba” program to select Israel’s representative for Eurovision 2025 in Basel. This partnership has resulted in six consecutive qualifications for the final, with the highlight being Netta Barzilai’s victory with “Toy” in 2018, bringing Eurovision to Israel in 2019.

Israel in Eurovision 2024

“Hurricane” is the name of the song performed by singer Eden Golan, who was chosen to represent Israel after winning the tenth season of “HaKochav Haba”. Israel advanced to the final after winning the second semi-final with 194 points, and in the grand final reached fifth place with 375 points. In the public vote, Israel came in second place, just 14 points behind the first place.

This is the second consecutive time that Israel has reached the top five, an achievement it had not attained since its streak of successes in 1998-1999.