The first Israeli baby of 2026 was born to a family from the Binyamin Regional Council of southern Samaria, the council said on Thursday.
Shira Leah and Uri Rozman, residents of the village of Dolev in western Samaria, welcomed their newborn in the first minute after midnight on Thursday at Hadassah Mount Scopus Medical Center in Jerusalem.
The newly born baby boy was reportedly the couple’s fifth child.
“May many more sweet moments like these come in 2026, and may it be a year full of good news and groundbreaking breakthroughs in every field, amen,” the council wrote in a post on its Instagram account.
The Jewish state’s population reached 10,178,000 in the year 2025, an increase of some 112,000 from Dec. 31, 2024, the country’s Central Bureau of Statistics reported on Wednesday.
Of Israel’s total population, approximately 7.771 million are Jews and “others"—including non-Arab Christians and individuals not classified by national background—accounting for 76.3%, while 2.147 million are Israeli Arabs (21.1%). About 260,000 people, or 2.6%, are foreign citizens.
Approximately 182,000 babies were born in the country during 2025, with about 76% born to Jewish mothers and 24% to Arab mothers.
