The 2026 Aliyah Moment: What a Paris Conference Tells Us About Coming Home This Year

Earlier this month in Paris, around 350 French Jewish doctors, nurses and paramedics sat in a hotel conference hall and did something that, even three years ago, would have been hard to imagine on this scale: they began, in earnest, to plan their move to Israel. The MEDEX conference, run by Israel's Aliyah and Integration Ministry together with Nefesh B'Nefesh, the Jewish Agency and several Israeli hospitals, was designed to compress months of bureaucracy into a single day — licences, employment contracts, language exams, rental support, all in one place. For the families involved, it was the most concrete step they had taken since 7 October. For the rest of us, it was a snapshot of a shift that is now firmly under way. 

A wave that began in the suburbs of Paris 

The numbers behind that conference room are worth pausing on. According to the Aliyah and Integration Ministry, 18,696 olim arrived in Israel between Yom Ha'atzmaut 2025 and Yom Ha'atzmaut 2026, with France contributing roughly 3,277 of them, and another 350 medical professionals now in the pipeline from this single Paris event. France posted a 45% jump in aliyah in 2025, and the UK rose 19% for the second year running. The drivers, by all accounts, are not abstract. As one French family physician told Israel Hayom at the conference: “I am afraid my children will grow up in France, not only because they are Jewish, but also because of the economic impact. They have no future here.” That kind of testimony — pragmatic, family-led, financial as much as emotional — is increasingly what we hear from our own clients in Paris, Marseille, Manchester and Golders Green. 

The 2026 tax break, in plain English 

The other reason this year feels different is policy. In March, the Knesset's Finance Committee advanced what Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich called “the year of revolution in aliyah” — a five-year tax package for olim and veteran returning residents who arrive in 2026. Under the proposal, new arrivals (and Israelis returning after at least ten years abroad) would pay 0% Israeli income tax on qualifying earned income in 2026 and 2027, rising gradually to 10%, 20% and 30% in 2028 through 2030. Ceilings apply — NIS 600,000 in 2026, rising to NIS 1 million in the two following years — and the benefit covers Israeli-source earned income only, not dividends, interest or rental income from abroad. It sits on top of the existing ten-year exemption on foreign-source income and the recently approved five-year Bituach Leumi exemption for American olim. Taken together, this is the most generous absorption package Israel has offered in a generation. Depending on individual circumstances, for a young French doctor moving to Ashdod this could translate into meaningful additional take-home pay...", that can translate into tens of thousands of shekels in additional take-home pay during years one and two — exactly the period when most olim are buying a flat, paying mortgage deposits, kitting out a new home and covering tuition. 

What we are seeing on our desk 

The shape of an aliyah year, financially, tends to look similar regardless of country of origin. There is a large one-off transfer for the deposit on a flat, often in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Ra'anana, Modi'in or Netanya; a series of medium-sized transfers covering school fees, furniture, a first car and a few months' rent; and then, for many families, an ongoing flow of pension or salary income from abroad that needs to land in shekels every month for years afterwards. Each of those stages carries currency risk. With the shekel at multi-decade highs against the dollar in May 2026, and the pound and euro both softer than they were a year ago, the question of when to convert — and at what rate — has rarely been more consequential. A small move in USD/ILS on a property deposit can quietly cost a family a year's worth of nursery fees. For our aliyah clients, this is the part where we typically come in: helping clients access tools such as forward contracts where a completion date is known, smoothing out monthly pension flows from the UK, US and France, and providing currency execution around the tax windows. 

A gentle note on timing 

None of this needs to be rushed. The 2026 tax window is open all year, and the families we work with tend to plan the financial side of an aliyah over six to nine months rather than six to nine days. If you are thinking about a move this year — or you are a returning Israeli weighing whether to start the clock — there is no harm in a quiet conversation now. We will not push you to transfer; we will simply help you understand the moving parts. 

For French, British and North American families taking that first concrete step, this feels like a meaningful moment. As Aliyah and Integration Minister Ofir Sofer put it after meeting families at the Paris conference: “In Israel, we need to build communities for them. We help them with study programmes in French, with rent, with tuition, and with providing a response wherever they choose to live, including community support.” The financial scaffolding is our small part of that. If we can make it one less thing to worry about, the rest of the move tends to look a great deal more possible. 

— Avi Ben Ami, Transaction Specialist, IsraTransfer 

Disclaimer: General information only — not financial, tax or legal advice. The tax measures described remain subject to final legislation and individual circumstances. IsraTransfer is regulated as a currency exchange and international payments specialist and does not provide tax, legal or financial planning advice. Please consult a qualified tax adviser or lawyer before making decisions relating to aliyah, taxation or the transfer of assets.