UK aliyah at highest level for 40 years, report shows

2025 saw the largest number of British citizens making aliyah since the 1980s, according to a new report from the Institute for Jewish Policy Research – which also found that migration to Israel has remained “strikingly stable over the last twenty years”, despite the country having come under attacks from Hezbollah, Hamas and lately the Iranian regime itself.

The data, compiled by JPR executive director Dr Jonathan Boyd, interpret recent aliyah figures to assess whether the latest figures represent a genuine shift fuelled by concerns about antisemitism in the UK.

‘Time to leave the UK? Patterns of Jewish migration to Israel post-October 7’, found that taking the past three years together, an average of 566 British Jews made aliyah per year – close to the annual average over the past two decades.

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Whilst the data demonstrates that the overwhelming majority of Jews are staying, and feel able to practise their Judaism in the UK, the “sense of conditionality surrounding that future” has increased, the report says.

The figures pre-date the Heaton Park Synagogue attack in Manchester in October 2025 and the Golders Green firebombing attack on the Hatzola ambulances in March 2026, but are measured against the backdrop of the 7 October 2023 atrocities and the deadly attacks on Jews in Sydney, Australia, Washington DC and Boulder in the USA, and countless other traumatic assaults on Jewish targets worldwide.

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The report notes that in the UK, CST registered the three highest annual totals of recorded antisemitic incidents in 2023, 2024, and 2025 since records began in the 1980s,

Despite the 2025 figure. Jonathan Boyd says “there is no Jewish exodus from the UK, at least not yet”. While the exact number of Jewish people in the UK is uncertain, fewer than 0.25 % made aliyah to Israel last year by an metric. However, Boyd added that “focusing on the numbers alone misses the deeper significance of what is happening. Since October 7, more British Jews are quietly reassessing what the future holds — not because they are rushing to leave, but because rising antisemitism, recurring shocks and a growing sense of conditional security are reshaping how people think about belonging and long-term viability.”

The new data revealed that over the past 20 years, about 2 Jews per 1,000 in the UK Jewish population make aliyah each year, somewhat higher than the equivalent figure for Canada (0.7), but considerably lower than in France (6.4) and orders of magnitude lower than the levels associated with genuine Jewish flight in 20th-century crises or periods of acute uncertainty.

Other key findings include that younger people, orthodox Jews and those most affected by antisemitism are most likely to say they are considering making aliyah in the coming five years.

The report notes Jewish community leaders face “hard questions about resilience, leadership and continuity” and for the UK government, “it is a test of whether equal citizenship and freedom to live openly as a Jew can be guaranteed in practice, not just in principle. And for the wider public, it is a reminder that when a minority’s sense of security becomes uncertain, that uncertainty ultimately reflects back on society as a whole.”

Recognising that migration is not a one-way street, the number of people living in the UK who were born in Israel rose from 12,229 in 2001 to 23,152 in 2021, a net increase of 10,923 over those twenty years.