The 22nd Maccabiah: Jerusalem, 2026

When the flame went out at Expo Tel Aviv on July 13, 2026, it was Artem Dolgopyat — Israel's Olympic gymnastics champion — who extinguished it, closing a Maccabiah that very nearly did not happen at all. The 22nd Games had been scheduled for July 2025 and were postponed by a year when the war with Iran shut Israel's airspace and put the country under a state of emergency. The organizers answered with a theme, "More Than Ever," and an opening date that fell on the eve of the 1,000th day since October 7.

The Games that finally opened at Teddy Stadium in Jerusalem on July 1 were smaller than any edition in a generation: roughly 5,000 athletes, about half of them Israeli, from delegations spanning more than 40 countries — organizers had projected around 55. The 2022 edition had drawn 10,000. Flights costing upwards of ten thousand dollars, insurance restrictions and travel warnings kept whole federations home; Canada, which sent 700 athletes in 2022, sent none, and Great Britain canceled its youth delegation. Australia canceled too, then reversed itself and arrived with fourteen athletes. Taiwan and the Philippines came for the first time. The United States, as usual, brought the largest overseas contingent — some 900 members, aged 14 to 87 — with Mexico next at around 300. The last Maccabiah this small was 2001, in the shadow of the Second Intifada, the tournament where Eric Gingold and the U.S. basketball team took gold for the first time since 1985.

President Isaac Herzog opened the ceremony; the torch procession was led by Evyatar Zeituni, an IDF officer wounded defending Kibbutz Kissufim on October 7, and the flame was lit by Olympic judo medalist Inbar Lanir together with Paralympic taekwondo champion Asaf Yasur. Between the athletes' parades, the evening kept turning back to the war: Daniella Gilboa, freed from Hamas captivity, sang with Idan Raichel; Edan Alexander, held hostage for 584 days, appeared by video; the Maccabiah flag was carried by families of the twelve children killed in Majdal Shams in 2024. The French delegation marched in memory of Dan Elkayam, killed in the Sydney shooting.

Then, for two weeks, it was a sporting event — 45 sports on the official program, from the debut of pickleball (Steven Tenenbaum of the U.S. won the first match in Maccabiah history) to the return of handball. The American team's own tally came to 308 medals, 75 of them gold. Swimmer Isla George of Rosemount, Minnesota, won eight medals and was named the Games' female MVP. Fifteen-year-old Brendan Miller of Port Jefferson, New York, broke the junior record in the boys' under-17 200-meter individual medley at 2:10.97 — the first non-Israeli to hold it. Gavriella Smith took three tennis golds, Benjamin Barclay won the golf with a course-record 65, the U.S. men's softball team won its first gold since 2009, and the men's soccer side its third in the last four Games.

Away from the fields, about 1,200 participants marked bar and bat mitzvahs at the Western Wall during the fortnight — for roughly a thousand young athletes it was a first visit to Israel. The first Maccabiah, in 1932, had drawn 390 athletes from 18 countries; the movement has survived a Holocaust, wars and intifadas, and now a postponement more. At the closing ceremony the organizers handed the "Maccabiah Miracle Flag" to the Jewish Sports Museum for safekeeping, where it will wait, like the Games themselves, for the next edition.