Postponing Maccabiah due to war, organizers want 2026 games to be ‘bigger than Olympics’

The decision to postpone this summer’s Maccabiah games by a year due to Israel’s preemptive strike on Iran’s nuclear program may have been inevitable, but for 8,000 Jews from 55 countries set to compete in the “Jewish Olympics,” it was a bitter pill to swallow.

“By the time we informed the world of the decision Monday morning, it was clear that we would not be able to go ahead with the games,” said Amir Gissin, CEO of the Maccabi World Union, which organizes the games. “We are obviously very disappointed after so many people invested hundreds of thousands of man-hours in making this happen, but there was consensus from our partners around the world that this was the most responsible decision.”

Iran has launched barrages of ballistic missiles indiscriminately into Israeli population centers since Israel launched its surprise attack on Iranian nuclear and military facilities on June 13. The Islamic Republic has fired over 450 missiles and some 1,000 drones at Israel, killing 24 and wounding thousands.

A government decision to extend the nationwide state of emergency through at least June 30 made hosting the two-week competition, scheduled to begin July 8, essentially impossible, Gissin said. The opening ceremony in Jerusalem would require at least three weeks of preparation, and about 80 percent of participants from abroad arrive a week before the games to tour the country and train, he said.

With Israel’s airspace closed to all but repatriation flights and airlines wary of flying into a war zone, travel is fraught with uncertainty. In addition to that, there is no way of knowing how the country’s security situation will evolve as the war progresses.

“It became very clear that we could not guarantee participants’ security and safety, and that we would not be able to offer the Maccabiah experience that people expect,” Gissin said.

The decision to postpone the games until next summer was made jointly by Maccabiah’s leadership and Israel’s Sport and Culture Ministry, Gissin said.

A graphic shared on social media announcing the decision phrased it this way: “Same values. Same vision. Just a little more time.”

To make up for the setback at a time when Jews around the world are still reeling from the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led atrocities in southern Israel and the ongoing Israel-Hamas war, Gissin offered an audacious vision.

“Our goal is to make next year’s Maccabiah Games bigger than the Olympics,” he declared. “Holding the largest sporting event in the world in Israel, specifically at a time like this, is the proper Zionist response to everything we have gone through.”

A global institution

The idea of an international Jewish sports competition in the Land of Israel was first conceived in the 1920s by Yosef Yekutieli, a passionate Zionist and sports enthusiast. He helped spearhead the first Maccabiah in Tel Aviv in March 1932, which drew over 390 athletes from 18 countries despite opposition from the British Mandate. The third Maccabiah games, scheduled for 1938, were delayed under the shadow of the Holocaust until 1950.

Now, after 10,000 athletes competed in 3,000 events in 42 sports in 2022, Maccabiah is one of the world’s largest sporting events. (For comparison, 10,714 athletes competed in the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris.)

Since 1957, the games have been held every four years, with the exception of the 2021 games, delayed to 2022 due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Matt Malc, coach of the US U18 (under 18) basketball team, remembers how he felt when the 2021 games were pushed off.

“During COVID, there was chaos everywhere, and we already understood that the games wouldn’t happen during the winter,” said Malc, who coached his 2022 team to a gold medal.

“This time, we were just a few weeks away, and these young men already had their uniforms. It’s much more heartbreaking,” he said.

Now, Malc said, frustration isn’t the right word for the emotions he and his team are feeling, even as they and 1,300 other athletes from the US stand to miss a competition they’d trained for extensively.

“The word we used across the board was sadness,” Malc said. “It’s not even a selfish sadness. We’re just sad for Israel, sad for the situation everyone is in.”

Malc said he felt bad that some players might not get to play next year, and that he had reached out to Maccabiah’s leadership to ask for age restrictions to be loosened for the 2026 games.

“It shouldn’t be that an 18-year-old who invested all the time, energy, and money into the games can’t play next year because he aged out of the under-18 division,” Malc said.

That concern and others like it will be addressed by the Maccabiah leadership over the coming months, Gissin said. “We are listening to what the world is saying, and we will discuss these matters in our committees,” he promised.

Libby Poster, assistant coach for the U16 girls’ soccer team for the UK, said her team of 20 players was devastated by the decision.

“First and foremost, we’re praying for Israel, and we hope this will lead to a safer future for everyone,” said Poster.

“But so much work has gone into this. We’ve been training multiple times a week for the last six months, and I’ve been on calls almost every day. It’s really sad, and feels a bit anti-climactic. But the girls have responded really well.”

Just days earlier, the 400 athletes from the British delegation received their kit bags in a special send-off event. “That’s when the games started to feel real,” Poster said. “Then, after everything started, there was uncertainty for two days until we got confirmation that the event was postponed.”

In Finland, where just three delegates were preparing for Maccabiah out of the Jewish population of 1,500, the disappointment was more subdued.

“Postponing sports games is a small matter compared to the geopolitical implications of the war,” said Arje Rimón, a 54-year-old swimmer and head of the country’s delegation.

“We just hope the war is over quickly,” he said.

Rimón and another Finnish competitor, a cyclist, were planning to participate in the Masters competitions for older athletes, where they both have competed before. Rimón said he felt bad for the third delegate, a 16-year-old female judoka, who was excited to compete in her first Maccabiah.

For Gissin and Maccabiah’s organizers, the cancellation of the games is a complex process that will take months to process.

“More than 500 workers and 1,000 volunteers worked extremely hard to build this, and now we have to take it apart and then rebuild it again,” Gissin said. “We will need a lot of financial help, but we will succeed. We are going to make next year’s competition the one that everyone in the Jewish world deserves.”