FAJ — Fédération Algérienne de Judo

What it is

The Fédération Algérienne de Judo governs judo in Algeria, one of Africa's leading judo nations. No founding year could be verified from any primary source, and the figures circulating in secondary sources disagree, so none is given here. Its headquarters is in Dely Brahim, Algiers.^[1]

The federation's website is dead — its domain no longer resolves — but it plainly continues to operate: it appears in the current IJF member directory, entered judoka at the 2026 Mediterranean Games and the Hungary Grand Slam, and won the individual nations classification at the 2026 African Championships.^[1] [2]

Hachemi Athmane was elected president at an extraordinary elective general assembly on 12 July 2026, beating a former president 31-26 with 58 of 61 assembly members voting. The seat had fallen vacant when Yacine Sellini resigned on health grounds in April 2026, triggering Article 17 of the federation's statutes. Athmane's term runs only to the end of the current Olympic mandate in 2028.^[3]

How the national team is selected

No published selection criteria could be located. What is documented is the practice, and the state framework above it.

Algerian sport operates under executive decrees that make the national technical directorate, chaired by the technical director, responsible for advising on detection and selection criteria, and that make failure to answer a national call-up a serious disciplinary offence. A separate decree classifies athletes into high-level and elite categories, each in three performance levels, with status conferred by annual ministerial decision on a list proposed by the federation.^[4] [5]

In practice the squad is settled at a closed national training camp supervised by the technical directorate, on the basis of national-championship results and previous camps. After a ten-day camp in Oran in April 2026, fifty judoka trained under federal representatives with the express purpose of finalising the list for the African Championships — and, as reported at the time, "for the first time the federation's leaders gave the coaches total freedom to draw up the definitive list."^[6]

Olympic selection is different again, and is not federation discretion: it runs on the IJF world ranking, by direct qualification or continental quota.^[7]

So the documents that evidence an Algerian judoka's selection are the published squad list, the convocation to the camp at which it was settled, and — for the Olympics — the international ranking.