On any given week during the Israeli football season, the game can look very different depending on where you are. It may be a group of young children learning how to throw and catch a football, teenagers putting on helmets and shoulder pads for a tackle game, women competing in one of Israel’s established flag football leagues or adults meeting for a late-evening game after work.
More than 2,000 men, women, boys and girls now participate in organized American football in Israel under American Football in Israel (AFI), the country’s recognized national federation for the sport. What began decades ago as a small community of Americans and Israelis playing an unfamiliar game has developed into a broad sporting system encompassing tackle football, flag football, children’s programs, women’s leagues, youth competition and national teams representing Israel internationally.
The sport is now played in communities across the country, including Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Beit Shemesh, Modi’in, Efrat, Ra’anana, Kfar Saba, Mazkeret Batya, the Carmel region and many others.
The growth, however, has come against an extraordinary backdrop. Over the past three years, a large majority of adult players in the football community have spent significant periods serving in the IDF reserves. Coaches, players, officials and club administrators have repeatedly been called away from their families, businesses and teams, sometimes for months at a time.
Games have been postponed, practices reorganized, and rosters changed from one week to the next. Yet the leagues continued.
For many participants, football has consequently become more than a recreational activity. It has provided a community, a sense of routine and an opportunity to remain connected during one of the most difficult periods in Israel’s history.
The breadth of the sport’s structure has also been central to its growth. On the tackle side, AFI operates adult competition through the Israel Football League, together with youth and younger tackle frameworks. The Israel Bowl, the championship game of the adult tackle season, has become an established event on the Israeli sports calendar.
Flag football, however, has developed an even wider base. AFI operates national and regional adult flag competition, national and Jerusalem youth leagues, boys’ and girls’ programs, children’s leagues and women’s leagues. In some communities, the competition is intensely serious; in others, the first objective is simply to put a football into the hands of children who may never have seen the sport played before.
That accessibility has helped flag football become an important gateway into the sport. A young player does not need to be large enough to play tackle football, while girls do not have to search for boys’ teams willing to accommodate them. Adults can also continue playing flag football well beyond the age at which many people stop competing seriously in team sports.
The women’s game has been particularly important to the Israeli football story. Women and girls have played organized flag football in Israel for more than two decades, producing generations of players who have gone on to compete for Israeli national teams.
At the same time, AFI is investing heavily in younger age groups, schools, coaching development and stronger local clubs, with the goal of creating a complete pathway in which a child can begin playing football, progress through youth competition and eventually continue into an adult league, a national team, coaching or officiating.
How far has American football come in Israel?
For anyone trying to understand how far American football has come in Israel, Jerusalem is a natural place to start.
The Kraft Family Stadium in Gan Sacher was the first permanent home of Israeli football. Located in the heart of Jerusalem, the stadium became a gathering place for a community that previously had to adapt soccer fields, parks and almost any available open space for football. Although the field itself was not regulation NFL size, its importance was far greater than its dimensions: it gave Israeli football a home.
That home was transformed again in 2017 with the opening of the Kraft Family Sports Campus in Jerusalem’s Emek Arazim. Among its facilities is Israel’s first regulation-size American football field, which has become a central venue for league games, the Israel Bowl, national team training and major football events.
The two Jerusalem facilities represent different stages in the development of the sport, but they share the Kraft name for a reason.
Robert Kraft and the Kraft family have supported American football in Israel since 1999, providing sustained backing that has reached far beyond an individual team or tournament. Their support has helped build football facilities, operate and develop leagues, assist national teams representing Israel abroad and promote the growth of both tackle and flag football.
For a relatively young sport, that kind of long-term commitment has provided an important measure of stability.
The relationship is rooted in football, but also in a deep connection to Israel and the Jewish people. Robert Kraft’s commitment to Israel has been demonstrated over many years through philanthropy, public advocacy and his fight against antisemitism. For the Israeli football community, that commitment has been tangible, with generations of children playing on fields and athletes wearing Israel uniforms in international competition.
The next chapter of that development is already being built in the North.
At Kfar Galim, near Haifa, construction is underway on a new football facility developed with the support of the Kraft family and in cooperation with Kfar Galim and AFI. The project is strategically important because the future of Israeli football cannot depend exclusively on Jerusalem.
A permanent field in the North will provide clubs and players in the Carmel region and northern Israel with access to infrastructure that has historically been difficult to find, while helping AFI expand its national footprint.
Facilities, not interest, have limited the sport's growth
For years, one of the greatest limitations on the sport’s growth in Israel has not been interest but facilities. Football fields require space, tackle football requires appropriate dimensions and safety zones, and clubs need predictable access to fields if they are expected to establish sustainable youth programs. Every permanent facility therefore creates opportunities that extend far beyond the games played on it.
The Kfar Galim project continues the same philosophy that produced the Kraft Family Stadium and Kraft Family Sports Campus in Jerusalem: if a sport is going to grow, it needs a home.
That domestic development has been accompanied by increasing international ambition. Israel has fielded national teams in both flag and tackle football and has competed regularly against established football nations abroad.
Flag football, in particular, now offers Israel an unprecedented international opportunity. The men’s national team recently competed at the 2026 IFAF Flag Football World Championships in Düsseldorf, part of the global pathway toward the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles.
Flag football will make its Olympic debut at LA28, creating an opportunity that would have been almost unimaginable to the first generation of Israeli football players. Israel is developing both men’s and women’s national programs with the goal of reaching the Olympic stage.
The Olympic opportunity extends far beyond the athletes who may ultimately make an Israeli roster. An Olympic pathway raises standards throughout the system, encouraging younger athletes to view football as a serious competitive sport while demanding better coaching, conditioning and international competition. It also creates role models for children entering the game.
Israel’s youth national teams have already demonstrated what is possible, competing successfully against established European football countries and giving young Israeli athletes the experience of representing their country abroad.
For many of those players, putting on an Israel jersey carries special meaning after the events of the past three years. Some of their coaches and older teammates have moved directly between football and military reserve duty, while teams have trained as members of their football communities served in Gaza, on Israel’s northern border and elsewhere in the country.
International competition has therefore become another way for Israeli athletes to represent their country during an extraordinary period.
Perhaps the most important measure of the Kraft family’s impact on football in Israel will ultimately not be a stadium, a championship or even an Olympic appearance, but continuity.
There are now Israeli adults coaching football who first learned the game as children. Veteran players have watched younger brothers and sisters join the sport, while parents bring their children into the same football communities in which they once played.
That is how a sport takes root.
Robert Kraft and his family recognized that potential long before American football in Israel reached its current scale. Their approach has combined a love of football with a deep commitment to Israel and the Jewish people. Rather than supporting only one team or tournament, they have helped build an ecosystem encompassing leagues, national teams, facilities and opportunities for children.
For more than 2,000 Israeli athletes today, the result is visible every time they step onto a field.
American football in Israel is no longer simply an American game being played in the Jewish state. It has become an Israeli sport. Its players speak Hebrew in the huddle. Many serve together in the IDF. They play in local clubs, compete for national championships and represent the blue and white abroad.
From the Kraft Family Stadium in the center of Jerusalem, to the Kraft Family Sports Campus in Emek Arazim, to the new field taking shape at Kfar Galim, the physical footprint of that story continues to grow.
The ambition is equally clear: more children, more clubs, more facilities, stronger men’s and women’s programs and Israeli teams competing at the highest level in the world.
That journey has been built by thousands of Israeli players, coaches, parents, officials and volunteers. But for more than a quarter of a century, one family has stood beside them.
For American football in Israel, the Kraft name is not simply written on a stadium. It is part of the story of how the sport was built.