The Maccabiah 2026 opened on Wednesday night at Jerusalem’s Teddy Stadium with about 5,000 athletes from roughly 35 countries marching behind their flags. Four years earlier, at the 2022 Maccabiah, the parade had drawn 10,000 athletes from about 70 countries and a sitting US president had joined the ceremony. The 2026 games, postponed from 2025 after Israel went to war with Iran, ran on a smaller field with no recent precedent for the drop except the 2001 Maccabiah during the Second Intifada, when about 2,000 athletes came.
No country banned Jewish athletes from flying to Israel. Friendly governments raised travel advisories, the advisories voided the travel insurance that lets a national federation legally send a team abroad, and the paperwork did the gatekeeping nobody had to declare out loud. The slogan this year was “More Than Ever.” The ceremonies lived up to it, with a freed hostage singing on the main stage and a US delegation close to a thousand strong. The map the parade drew, in flags and absences, was the news.
A Smaller Map of the Jewish World
The parade at Teddy Stadium drew about 5,000 athletes from roughly 35 countries, down from 10,000 and around 70 four years ago, per the column that opened with the 1930 motorcycle riders. Israel marched more than 2,200, the biggest delegation on the field by a wide gap. The United States, the largest overseas delegation, came in close to 1,000 athletes ranging in age from 14 to 87.
The Maccabiah organizers’ larger country count for the competition, 55, includes individual athletes competing on borrowed teams rather than marching as a national group. Some of the smaller delegations on the field told their own story. Taiwan and the Philippines sent athletes to a Maccabiah for the first time. Austria sent one athlete; Belgium sent barely more; South Africa, which for decades had brought big, noisy, proud delegations, was down to a handful, and Australia, usually among the largest teams at any Maccabiah, essentially wasn’t there as an official delegation.
Former hostage Daniella Gilboa sang on the main stage alongside Israeli musician Idan Raichel. Yuval Raphael, who survived Nova, opened the night. The Maccabiah banner came in accompanied by families of the 12 Druze children killed on a soccer field in Majdal Shams. One of the torchbearers was Evyatar Zeituni, a paratrooper wounded on October 7 defending Kibbutz Kissufim.
- ~5,000 athletes on parade, per reporting from the ceremony
- ~35 countries marching with their own delegations
- 10,000 athletes / ~70 countries at the 2022 Maccabiah
- 2,200+ Israeli athletes, the largest single delegation on the field
- ~900 US athletes, the largest overseas delegation
How Travel Advisories Quietly Became No-Shows
No country issued a ban and no federation was told its athletes couldn’t come. What changed, in Australia, Britain, Canada, and South Africa, was the travel advisory their governments had in place for Israel, and the fine print that advisory triggered. A do not travel or “reconsider travel” notice voids the travel insurance a national federation relies on to send minors abroad, and a board that green-lights a team without cover exposes itself to liability if anything goes wrong. The paperwork did the forbidding, quietly, and no ministry had to say the word.
This is the mechanism at the center of the 2026 pullouts. In early June, Maccabiah chief executive Roy Hessing told a newswire dispatch from the opening ceremony that “hundreds of athletes from around the world backed out in March, and some countries were unable to send official delegations because of travel warnings and insurance restrictions tied to Israel’s status as a war zone.” Some athletes from those countries decided to come anyway and compete as individuals.
No government has forbidden anyone anything. What they’ve done is raise advisories to “reconsider travel” or “do not travel,” which voids travel insurance, which makes it legally impossible for a national federation to send a team. The athletes were never banned. The paperwork did it for everyone, quietly, and nobody had to say the word out loud.
The pattern runs through the English-speaking federations with the largest Jewish populations outside Israel, and through the federations whose governments have been most cautious about the regional security picture since the October 7 attacks and the 12-day war with Iran in mid-2025. The Maccabiah’s slogan this year was “More Than Ever.”
The travel-advisory logic made the actual roster less than half of what it was four years ago, with no country issuing a formal ban.
Australia, From ‘Do Not Travel’ to 14 Athletes
Australia’s story is the most visible version of how the mechanism played out, and it nearly swung the other way. Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade raised its Israel advisory to “do not travel” on February 28, citing the volatile security situation, armed conflict, and the risk of flights and border crossings changing at short notice. By early June, Maccabi Australia had formally withdrawn its full delegation, roughly 300 athletes and 60 support staff who had trained for more than two years, according to the head of delegation’s account of the withdrawal.
Then, on the Sunday before the Wednesday ceremony, with the war on hold under peace deals announced by the United States, Maccabi Australia reversed course in part. Fourteen Australian athletes marched behind the Australian flag at Teddy Stadium, competing in six sports across the two-week run. They came as individuals, not as part of Team Australia, and Maccabi Australia is not facilitating their participation. For a community that buried four of its own after the 1997 bridge collapse at the Yarkon River and kept coming back anyway, staying home as a national federation was the louder choice. Maccabi Australia is now also looking ahead to the Maccabi Pan American Games in Punta del Este, Uruguay, in December 2027, as the next international opportunity for its athletes.
| 2022 Maccabiah | 2026 Maccabiah | |
|---|---|---|
| Athletes on parade | ~10,000 | ~5,000 |
| Countries marching | ~70 | ~35 |
| US delegation | sitting US president joined the opening | ~900 athletes, largest overseas |
| Canadian delegation | 700 athletes, 4th-largest | withdrew; 300+ did not take part |
| Australian official team | typically among the largest | withdrew ~300 athletes and 60 staff; 14 marched as individuals |
Why the Junior Teams Pulled Out First
The order in which federations made their calls tells its own story. Britain, Canada, and South Africa didn’t pull their adult teams first. They pulled the juniors first, the under-18s, the group whose safeguarding and insurance exposure sits at the strictest end of any federation’s risk register. Maccabi GB had set a 21 May deadline for a junior-team decision tied to UK Foreign Office travel advice. The withdrawal of the Maccabi GB junior delegation was confirmed on Thursday, in the formal announcement of the pullout.
Adult team decisions came next, against the same backdrop in most cases. Maccabi GB’s separate decision on adult Open and Masters teams was set for 15 June. Maccabi Australia’s adult withdrawal followed. The Maccabiah, like Birthright, is one of the pipelines that turns a 16-year-old from Melbourne or Manchester into an adult who can’t imagine living without Israel, and the same insurance logic that pulled the junior teams is now pulling Birthright cohorts and Jewish summer programs off the calendar.
With the games shifted into 2026 by a year of war, the next Maccabiah is now three years away. Hessing’s most recent precedent for a much smaller Maccabiah is 2001, during the Second Intifada, when about 2,000 athletes came while suicide bombings hit Israeli buses and cities. The first Maccabiah, in 1932, drew 390 Jewish athletes from 18 countries.
- 2025, three weeks before scheduled start: Maccabiah postponed to 2026 after Israel went to war with Iran and airlines stopped flying.
- 28 February 2026: Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade raises its Israel advisory to “do not travel.”
- 21 May 2026: Maccabi GB deadline for a junior-team decision passes without UK Foreign Office travel advice changing.
- Early June 2026: Maccabi Australia withdraws its full delegation of roughly 300 athletes and 60 staff.
- Sunday before the ceremony: Maccabi Australia partially reverses; 14 athletes commit to compete as individuals on borrowed teams.
- 1 July 2026: Opening ceremony at Teddy Stadium, Jerusalem, with about 5,000 athletes and roughly 35 countries on parade.
A History Built on Inclusion, Tested by Paperwork
The Maccabiah’s founding story is what gives the 2026 absences their sting. The first Maccabi club was set up in 1895 in Constantinople by Jewish gymnasts refused membership in a local sports club for being Jews, and they built their own. Out of that came the Maccabi movement, and out of the movement came the games. In 1930, two years before the first Maccabiah, a group of Jewish men got on motorcycles in Tel Aviv and rode to Europe, community to community, to invite a scattered people to come. A second group rode more than 9,000 kilometers to London and back in 1931. The 1930s games picked up a nickname, the Aliyah Olympics. In 1935, the Bulgarian delegation sailed into Jaffa with 350 people and an orchestra, competed, and stayed. They shipped the equipment home without them.
The precedent for a Maccabiah defined by absence is 1950, the first games in the new state, the first after the Holocaust. They opened at Ramat Gan with cannon fire and the Yizkor service. The great delegations of Polish, Hungarian, Czech, German, and Romanian Jews never came. Murdered, most of them. The survivors were behind the Iron Curtain, barred by their own governments from traveling to a Jewish state. The Jewish center of gravity physically moved that year, out of Europe, toward the English-speaking world and Israel. Who marched told you where the Jewish people now lived.
On Wednesday at Teddy Stadium the map drew itself again. In 1950 the missing were dead or caged by enemies. In 2026 they were alive, free, and desperate to come, and what stopped them was a form. A movement that began because Jews were shut out of a gym in Constantinople built games so Jews could always get in. This year, Jews who wanted in were kept out by the paperwork of friendly governments. There is no villain to argue with, just fine print.
Hessing, asked what he hears most from athletes and families landing at Ben Gurion, gave the closing line of the week: “The first thing people are saying when they land is thank you for not canceling the Games.” The torch went up at Teddy Stadium like it always does. The riders of 1930 would have understood a parade of 35 flags under a stadium light. They would have understood, too, the one thing nobody at the ceremony could quite say out loud: that the doors the games were built to open are now being closed by a clause in a policy most of the athletes’ parents have never read.
