Sport

Palestine's football federation restarts competition on 4 September

Times of Palestine8h ago

Published Saturday, August 29, 2026 · 10:00 Jerusalem time

Graphic: Times of Palestine

Original Reporting

By the Times of Palestine Newsdesk · 2 min read

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Palestinian football comes back on 4 September, after almost three years in which no official match was played on Palestinian ground.

The Palestinian Football Association has set that date for the start of a tournament it has called the Cup of the Thousand Martyrs, named for the 1,014 Palestinian athletes killed since October 2023. Its president Jibril Rajoub announced the restart in remarks reported by the Arabic service Monte Carlo Doualiya.

The competition is open to clubs of the recognised divisions in the northern governorates, Jerusalem, the southern governorates and the diaspora — the four constituencies the federation counts, and the first time since the war began that all four are being asked to field teams in the same tournament.

Registration ran through August, with sub-federations confirming entries early in the month. Squad lists allow thirty players aged nineteen and over, plus up to ten players under eighteen, of whom four may appear in any match.

An exhibition, deliberately#

Rajoub has been precise about what this is not. The September programme is activity for its own sake, with no league table, no promotion and no relegation; the eighth season of the professional league will get its own start date, to be agreed next year.

That is a realistic decision rather than a modest one. Gaza's clubs have lost grounds, changing rooms and players, and a table that ranked them against West Bank sides this autumn would be measuring damage rather than football. What the federation is restoring first is the fixture itself — a date, a kit, a referee, a crowd.

The national team's own September belongs to the same rebuilding. It travels to China for a friendly tournament, preparing for the Asian Cup that Saudi Arabia hosts in January, a competition Palestine reached on merit and will enter with a squad drawn from three continents.

The number in the tournament's name is the part no fixture list can absorb. One thousand and fourteen athletes — footballers, coaches, referees, club administrators, children in academies — are the reason the whistle has not blown here since 2023, and the reason it will blow on 4 September under their name.