Diva: Dana International Becomes Eurovision's First Transgender Winner

MAY 15 1998 · 12:00

Dana International · "Diva" · Israel · 1998 Placement: 1st · Score: 172 · Language: Hebrew · Composers: Svika Pick, Yoav Ginai · Venue: National Indoor Arena · Host: Birmingham, United Kingdom · Type: protest · Broadcast: satellite On May 9, 1998, at the National Indoor Arena in Birmingham, Dana International — the stage name of Israeli singer Sharon Cohen — took the Eurovision stage to represent Israel against the explicit objections of ultra-Orthodox political parties who had threatened to bring down the governing coalition over her selection. The song, 'Diva,' was a Hebrew-language paean to mythic female icons — Aphrodite, Cleopatra, Victoria — delivered with theatrical vocal runs and a Jean Paul Gaultier feather dress revealed in a mid-song costume change. The final vote was tight: Dana narrowly edged the UK's Imaani, with Malta's jury providing the deciding 12 points. When the result was announced she returned to the stage in a second Gaultier gown and performed the reprise of the song while draped in an Israeli flag — the first transgender winner in Eurovision history, elected by juries across a continent that had not, in 1998, broadly accepted transgender identity as a legal or social category. Context Israel in 1998 was governed by a Likud-led coalition under Benjamin Netanyahu that depended on ultra-Orthodox religious parties for its parliamentary majority. Dana International's selection by IBA (Israel's public broadcaster) prompted protests, parliamentary threats, and calls for her to be replaced. She required police protection during rehearsals in Birmingham. The 1998 Eurovision was broadcast globally to an estimated 100 million viewers and arrived at a transitional moment for the contest: televoting was being piloted in five countries, breaking the monopoly of national juries. Western European LGBTQ audiences had embraced Eurovision as a queer cultural touchstone through the 1990s, and Dana's victory crystallized that relationship. Legacy Dana International's win became a defining moment in Eurovision's identity as a queer cultural institution — regularly invoked in subsequent discussions of Conchita Wurst (2014), Nemo (2024), and every Eurovision-adjacent queer representation story. The victory accelerated Israel's relationship to the contest as a site of national LGBTQ visibility against domestic religious-right opposition. For Dana herself, the win launched a European career that had been previously blocked by both Israeli political forces and the transphobia of late-90s media. The Gaultier dress is permanently exhibited. The song's B-side lyrics in English were quietly phased out of the live repertoire after Birmingham. Mythology The vote is occasionally mythologized as a dramatic come-from-behind upset; in fact, Dana led much of the scoreboard and the UK's eventual close finish came primarily from the UK's own jury performance boosting Imaani. The Gaultier costume change is sometimes described as a surprise wardrobe malfunction rather than a staged reveal — it was fully choreographed. Some accounts claim Dana was the first openly trans performer at Eurovision; she was the first to win, but several trans performers had appeared earlier in lower-placed entries.