The Palestinian group Shatat was founded in Vienna and bears a name that reflects Palestinian history. “Shatat” means diaspora and recalls the Palestinian experience of how citizens became refugees, far from home, yet never separated from it in their hearts. Through their singing, the band wants to show that Palestinians are a people with a rich cultural heritage, a vibrant tradition, and a strong identity – an identity they will not allow to be taken from them.

The group Shatat consists of 18 members, each of whom carries within them the memories and stories of earlier generations. Through music, Shatat preserves Palestinian heritage, continues to tell the story of Palestine, and keeps alive the love for the homeland from which they were expelled.

Anna Grob, cultural worker and bassist of “The Leftovers,” uses “Circle of Light” to make a statement of resistance. Circles of light are places of hope, places of solidarity, but above all also places of resistance. Resistance against the people who try to destroy them. Against the people who see this world as a playground for their whims, where they can do whatever they want while others suffer as a result. In times when politicians try to divide us, “Circle of Light” is a call to stand together and appreciate our differences instead of turning us against one another.

Anna Grob says: “I am taking part in the song protest because, as a cultural worker, it is my duty to be loud. While human rights are being violated in the most brutal ways every day in the Gaza Strip, polished television productions pretend that the world is fine. I am grateful that the song protest is making a statement for unity and solidarity precisely where the ESC is failing.”

Nina Maleika has shared stages with Udo Lindenberg, Jan Delay, Clueso, and Stefan Raab, lent her voice to many renowned major projects, and received commissions from pop icon Cher, Wetten Dass, and MTV Unplugged. In Taiwan, she sang with the Babelsberg Film Orchestra and presents international music festivals.

When political conditions in Germany began to change in March 2020, when the corridor of acceptable opinion narrowed in a threatening and dramatic way, and censorship and cancel culture deprived artists of their livelihoods, Nina had to experience what it means to exchange the red carpets of the country for the label “political activist.”

Since 2023, Nina has been active with all her heart and mainly for Palestine, and has made a name for herself through her powerful protest actions as an international activist and organizer of various cultural Palestine events. On the compilation album Voices for Gaza, released in 2025, she appears alongside artists such as Dieter Hallervorden and Michael Barenboim.

Maika Makovski is a multi-talented force in the music world—an electrifying singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and composer known for her raw intensity and genre-defying sound for the past twenty years. Blending indie rock, blues, and avant-garde influences, her music is both cinematic and visceral, filled with haunting melodies and bold, poetic lyricism. Whether commanding the stage with her powerful presence or crafting deeply immersive studio recordings, Maika’s artistry is fearless, innovative, and deeply authentic. Maika Makovski is celebrating twenty years of musical career exploring territories where rock, poetry, and emotion converge in a single soundscape.

Ronnie Barkan is an Israeli dissident, co-organizer of The First Jewish Anti-Zionist Congress – held in Vienna, with the next one to be held in Dublin – co-founder of Boycott from Within, and a past member of Anarchists Against the Wall and Palestine Action. On Nakba Day 2022, he took part in a direct action against the UK headquarters of Israel-based Elbit Systems. In September 2025, the site was shut down. Elbit Systems is Israel’s number one arms manufacturer and currently has boots on the ground in Gaza helping to carry out the genocide.

Barkan challenges the very nature of the Zionist race-state and the discourse of lies that exists throughout mainstream and progressive media, a discourse whose sole purpose is to create legitimacy for something that is fundamentally illegitimate.

While insisting on taking inspiration from the German dissidents of The White Rose and linking their legacy of opposition to Nazism with present-day direct action in opposition to Zionism, he is routinely silenced, harassed, and detained by German authorities.

Co-founder of the initiative ‘Not in our Name’ founded by Jews in Vienna and the jewish anti-zionist initiative.

Panafrikanist, candidate on the GAZA list, is an artist and teacher with roots in the Congo. He is committed to fighting racism, chauvinism and oppression. ‘Everyone can point out injustices and take a stand against exclusion.’ The solidarity of the Global South, especially from Africa, demonstrates the strength of resistance against genocide and apartheid.

Helga Baumgarten, a political scientist, taught until her retirement as a professor at Birzeit University, north of Ramallah in the West Bank.

Her husband Mustafa al-Kurd was an important voice of Palestine, a Palestinian singer-songwriter and chansonnier from Jerusalem, who, drawing on many musical traditions and sources, shaped “the Palestinian political song and a new musical style of contemporary chansons and music.” He took part in the Contr’Eurovision in Brussels in 1988, when Eurovision invited Israel for the first time. Helga Baumgarten will bring with her the songs of that time and the resistance.