The Club
Hapoel Jerusalem is a Jerusalem-based football club, operated by a non-profit organization entirely owned by its fans, the club’s trustees.
The club's senior men's team was promoted to the Israeli Premier League in 2021 and has been competing there since. The women's team, founded in 2020, won promotion in its first two seasons and is also now playing in the Premier League.
Hapel Jerusalem has an explicit social agenda, aimed at both children and adults, realized through a number of influential programs. The main objectives of our social activities are promoting coexistence through football, promotimg gender equality and creating a climate for diversity and acceptance.
Our social projects include a program for at-risk youth living in special facilities away from home; a coexistence track for Arab and Jewish children who live close to one another yet have minimal exposure to each other; a unique project for adult women; and a Unified Sports program bringing together people with and without disabilities. These projects operate alongside our own boys' and girls' youth departments.
Hapoel Jerusalem uses football to instill values of tolerance, equality and coexistence.
Hapoel Jerusalem was one of Israel’s first football clubs, founded in 1926. Its current structure was established in 2007 by longstanding supporters who were disillusioned by the way the club was run by its owners. The new club was at first called “Hapoel Katamon Jerusalem”, and in 2020 it purchased the legal rights to the original club name.
Our club is unique, as it is fully owned by its fans through a registered non-profit organization. Thousands of fans throughout Israel support the club, most located in its hometown of Jerusalem.
In addition to footballing success, the club’s aim is to harness the immense popularity of football and the intense local patriotism it inspires in order to bring social change to a city often characterized by tensions between its different religious and ethnic groups.
Today, the organization has almost 1,000 registered members (trustees), who elect four representatives to the club’s board of directors (three additional members of the board represent strategic partners of the club). The elected board members are volunteers who take responsibility for managing the club’s ongoing operations, including oversight of its budget. The trustees include men and women, young and old, of all backgrounds, who pay an annual membership fee of NIS 1,500.
All of the club’s community activities are led by the fans, with over 120 volunteers on a daily basis. All activities are subsidized for those participants who, for a variety of reasons, cannot afford to pay.
Both our senior men's and women's teams play in the Israeli Premier League, the top tier of local football, aiming to battle for honours. Our journey has just begun.
