List of Football Clubs in Israel

There is no comprehensive club directory in the sources assembled here: some name teams in particular historical or cultural contexts, while others give a roster for a specified season. A list of clubs mentioned in a source should therefore not be mistaken for a complete inventory of Israeli football.[1][2]

The Israel Football Association (IFA) governs Israeli football, and the Premier League is the country’s top division.[3][4] The sources’ descriptions of the league system vary by date. Ynet describes a 14-club Premier League, with two clubs relegated to Liga Leumit and two promoted each season.[3] Older references describe 12- and 16-team versions.[5][4] The 2026–27 season preview likewise lists 14 top-flight clubs; this is a season-specific roster, not a permanent list.[6]

The 2026–27 roster in that preview comprises Hapoel Beersheba, Beitar Jerusalem, Hapoel Tel Aviv, Maccabi Tel Aviv, Maccabi Haifa, Maccabi Netanya, Hapoel Haifa, Hapoel Petah Tikva, Ironi Kiryat Shmona, Hapoel Jerusalem, Bnei Sakhnin, Ironi Tiberias, Hapoel Ramat Gan, and Maccabi Petah Tikva.[6] Sport5’s roster for the same season gives the corresponding club names, rendering Kiryat Shmona as Hapoel Kiryat Shmona and Beersheba as Hapoel Be’er Sheva.[7]

Sport5’s 2026–27 Liga Leumit standings list 16 second-tier clubs: F.C. Ashdod, Bnei Yehuda, Hapoel Rishon LeZion, Hapoel Kfar Shalem, F.C. Kiryat Yam, Hapoel Afula, Hapoel Ra’anana, Maccabi Bnei Reineh, F.C. Kafr Qasim, Ironi Modi’in, Maccabi Kiryat Gat, Maccabi Akhi Nazareth, Maccabi Herzliya, Hapoel Kfar Saba, Maccabi Jaffa, and Hapoel Acre.[8] Like the top-flight roster, this is a season-specific list rather than a permanent directory.

Maccabi Tel Aviv traces its origins to an association founded in 1906 under the name HaRishon LeZion-Yafo Association. A separate historical account describes the founding body as the Jewish Gymnasts Association—Rishon LeZion Jaffa, says it formed a football team that year, and records that Moshe Danin and Zvi Neshri organized a team at a Tel Aviv branch opened in 1911.[9][2] The National Library of Israel identifies Maccabi Tel Aviv as the country’s oldest team.[10]

Accounts differ in how they describe early competitions. The Center for Israel Education says Maccabi Tel Aviv was the first Jewish club to participate in local matches, beginning in 1922, and won the Football Association’s first two championships, in 1928 and 1929.[9] The National Library of Israel dates the founding of the first league to 1932.[10] The available accounts do not clarify whether they mean different competitions, so these dates should not be collapsed into a single chronology.

Hapoel Tel Aviv was founded in 1923, disbanded and restarted before establishing its current iteration in 1927. The club was associated in the British Mandate period with working-class, Marxist, and socialist Jews, and its logo included a hammer and sickle. It won its first league title in 1934 and the Palestine Cup four times during the 1930s.[9] Another account describes Hapoel as beginning with a General Histadrut Culture Committee group in late 1923, being re-established in July 1925, and becoming an association in 1926.[2]

Hapoel Haifa was established in 1924 at a meeting led by Yehoshua Sherpstein and Yair Aharony in Haifa’s Hadar neighborhood. Its stated aim was to create Palestine’s first labor-led soccer club. It played its first match against train workers on May Day, initially belonged to the Maccabi sports union, and left after two years to help found the national Hapoel organization.[11] Known as the Sharks, it later won a league championship in 1999. The club had spent the preceding decade in the second division and faced possible bankruptcy before Rob Shapira bought it during 1993–94.[11]

Club names and identities have reflected the organizations and political movements associated with their formation. My Jewish Learning links Hapoel to the workers’ movement and Beitar to the Revisionist Zionist movement; it also notes that many cities adopted Hapoel for soccer and basketball teams.[4] These are descriptions of historical affiliations, not a basis for assuming that every club or supporter holds the same views today.

Beitar Jerusalem was founded in 1936. My Jewish Learning places its rise to national success in the late 1970s, when Uri Malmilian led the club to its first State Cups; it also identifies Hapoel Jerusalem as a local rival whose first soccer team dates to the 1920s.[4] Maccabi Haifa, Maccabi Netanya, Hapoel Petah Tikva, Maccabi Petah Tikva, Bnei Yehuda, Hapoel Be’er Sheva, and other clubs feature in accounts of Israeli football culture, but the sources do not offer one complete historical list.[2]

For the 2026–27 season, the Premier League is described as a 14-club competition. Ynet says the season generally runs from late August to May; after two rounds, clubs are divided into a six-team upper group and an eight-team lower group, and the club with the most points at the end is crowned champion.[3] In the season preview, Hapoel Beersheba is identified as defending champion, while Beitar Jerusalem and Hapoel Tel Aviv are among the teams expected to challenge near the top. Hapoel Ramat Gan is described as newly promoted and Maccabi Petah Tikva as returning to the division.[6]

A March 2026 comparison counted 31 clubs that had played at least one Premier League season from 2000–01 through the reporting period. Its points table ranked Maccabi Tel Aviv first with 1,660, followed by Maccabi Haifa with 1,601, Beitar Jerusalem with 1,246, Hapoel Be’er Sheva with 1,190, and Hapoel Tel Aviv with 1,187. Those were the only five clubs the comparison said had passed 1,000 points; its total included points earned in the current season but excluded points deducted from clubs.[12]

The 2025–26 championship was won by Hapoel Beersheba, which defeated Maccabi Tel Aviv 4–2. The reported scorers for Beersheba were Igor Zlatanovic, Kings Kangwa, Zahi Ahmed, and captain Miguel Vitor. It was Beersheba’s sixth league title, with Beitar Jerusalem finishing as runner-up.[13]

Bnei Sakhnin is identified by a Ben-Gurion University research page as an Arab soccer club based in the Israeli city of Sakhnin.[14] A Jewish Virtual Library account describes the club’s 4–1 victory over Hapoel Haifa on May 18, 2004, as the first championship won by a “non-Jewish” club. The win also secured Bnei Sakhnin a place in European competition for 2004–05.[15] The identity wording belongs to that source’s account; the match result and reported qualification are the specific achievements it records.

Football in the British Mandate period involved teams from British, Jewish, and Arab communities. The National Library of Israel names Maccabi Tel Aviv, Maccabi Haifa, Maccabi Rehovot, Maccabi Jerusalem, Hapoel Tel Aviv, Hapoel Haifa, Beitar Tel Aviv, and Shabab al-‘Arab among the clubs and teams of the era.[16] It says the Eretz Israel Football Association was founded in 1928, with inclusion of all population groups a condition of its acceptance into FIFA.[16]

Contemporary accounts also preserve examples of friendly sporting contact across community lines. A newspaper report quoted in the National Library of Israel’s history of Mandate-era football described the Muslim Club of Jaffa’s 1941 match against Maccabi Rehovot: “The Arab team was welcomed with friendly enthusiasm by the football fans in Rehovot.”[16]

The Tel Aviv derby between Maccabi Tel Aviv and Hapoel Tel Aviv is described as the “big Tel Aviv derby,” in contrast to matches involving other local clubs such as Bnei Yehuda, Beitar Tel Aviv, Shimson Tel Aviv, and Maccabi Jaffa, which are called “mini derbies.”[9] The Center for Israel Education reports more than 160 national-league derby matches since 1931, with the two clubs almost evenly split among wins and draws. Both were in the top tier in the 2019–20 season.[9]

The National Library of Israel identifies Maccabi Tel Aviv, Hapoel Tel Aviv, and Bnei Yehuda Tel Aviv as the three Tel Aviv clubs for which Jaffa’s Bloomfield Stadium is home.[10] A 2024 Holocaust remembrance session brought players from Maccabi Tel Aviv, Maccabi Haifa, Hapoel Katamon, and Maccabi Netanya together to hear the story of Michael Smuss, whom the report described as the last remaining survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.[1]

In July 2025, the IFA approved changes to the domestic league system, including a nationwide third division called Liga Artzit, planned to begin in 2027–28 with 18 teams. Up to six clubs in the division could be designated as Premier League “B teams,” primarily composed of players under 23; the report said they would not be eligible for the State Cup or direct league funding.[17] Professional-club budget, youth-development, and infrastructure requirements were also set to apply from 2026–27, including minimum budgets of NIS 18 million for Premier League clubs and NIS 5 million for National League clubs. The report said clubs could relocate to a nearby city if their home city lacked a suitable stadium.[17]

The reform package prompted public and internal debate, and the report said there was not yet a final agreement between the IFA and the Israeli Players Union on an expanded foreign-player quota.[17] These changes describe planned and approved arrangements at the time of reporting, not a directory of clubs or a settled account of later implementation.

Club participation has also been disputed in international football. At the 2015 FIFA Congress, the Palestinian Football Association president raised whether five Israeli clubs located beyond the Green Line in the West Bank—known by its original, indigenous Jewish name of Judea and Samaria—should be allowed to play, and called for sporting activity in the territories to be banned. IFA president Ofer Eini argued that the clubs were mainly youth clubs and should not be prevented from participating. The report does not identify the five clubs; Eini said, “let’s leave politics for politicians and do the best football we can.”[18]

Mandate-era association membership was another point of conflict. The National Library of Israel recounts that Arab teams left the Eretz Israel Football Association in 1934 in protest over their treatment and formed a short-lived parallel organization. It describes a 1942 League Cup dispute in which Maccabi Tel Aviv was disqualified after fielding two players slated for conscription, but Shabab al-‘Arab’s appeal was rejected and Maccabi Haifa advanced to the final. Arab teams renounced Association membership in 1943 and established the Arab Sports Association in May 1944.[16]

Historical and season-specific accounts answer different questions: a historical points comparison, a cultural essay naming clubs, and a league roster are not equivalent to a complete list of every club in Israel. Some older descriptions report 12 teams in the top division.[4][19] Another reports 16.[5] The season-specific 14-club roster cited above is therefore used for 2026–27 rather than combining the older counts.

Some historical details are likewise unresolved in the cited material. The Center for Israel Education and National Library accounts give different dates and formulations for early competitions.[9][10] Separate accounts also differ on Hapoel’s institutional development.[9][2] The Herzl Institute source records conflicting newspaper reports about the score when the 1947 Palestine Cup final between Maccabi Tel Aviv and Beitar Tel Aviv was abandoned.[2] The available sources do not settle those differences.