What it is
Judo in Egypt is governed by a federation registered internationally under its full name, the Egyptian Judo, Aikido and Sumo Federation — Egyptian media and the ministry shorten it to the judo federation, but the three-sport form is the one the International Judo Federation uses. No founding date is published on the federation's own site or by the IJF, so none is stated here.[1] [2]
Mohamed Motei Fakhr El-Din was elected president on 22 November 2024 for the 2024-2028 term, taking 17 votes in a three-way contest before a general assembly of 34 sporting bodies, with a judicial supervisor, an Olympic Committee delegate and two ministry directors present. The assembly's composition had itself been restored by court order: the Administrative Judiciary Court required the reinstatement of two clubs the federation had struck from the electoral roll.[3]
The federation organises ten regions. It publishes no membership figure — its own home-page counters render as zero — but the scale is visible in entries: the 2025 under-17 national championship drew 662 competitors from 70 sporting bodies.[4] [5]
How the national team is selected
Egypt is Africa's leading judo nation, but its selection process is not documented in a published rulebook. No written selection criteria could be located as of August 2026, and the site has no statutes page, no selection policy and no archive of call-up circulars.[1]
What can be established is the machinery. The operative body is the Supreme Technical Committee, alongside a national-teams apparatus headed by Hesham Mesbah, Egypt's 2008 Olympic bronze medallist. A national ranking platform exists — with separate cadet, junior, first-division and international rankings and a penalties register — and the senior squad page links into it, so it is plainly intended as the register underpinning selection. On the date this page was researched, however, that platform returned no ranked athletes at all; whether the database is empty or simply failed to render could not be determined.[6] [7]
What actually evidences selection is the published squad list. For the 2025 African Senior Championships the federation named all sixteen athletes by weight class together with the technical staff, and the ministry reproduced it — framed explicitly as part of the president's plan to renew the squad. That framing is itself the finding: the team is presented as a policy decision of the federation and its technical committee, not as the mechanical output of championship placings.[5]
Record
Egypt's Olympic judo medals are Mohamed Ali Rashwan's open-category silver at Los Angeles 1984 — won in a final where he declined to attack his opponent's injured leg, and for which he received an international fair-play award — and Hesham Mesbah's bronze at −90 kg in Beijing 2008. At world level Egypt holds two silvers and three bronzes; continentally, 48 golds, 35 silvers and 52 bronzes.[2]
Recent form is strong: Egypt topped the 2025 African Senior Championships with nine medals and the team cup, and retained the African title at Nairobi in April 2026. At the 2026 Mediterranean Games in Taranto, Omar Elramly took gold with bronzes for Hady Hussein and Safa Soliman.[8]
Results of domestic competitions are not published — the federation's tournament detail links resolve to unrelated registration forms.[1]
References
- Egyptian Judo, Aikido and Sumo Federation — official site. Accessed August 2026.
- International Judo Federation — Egypt. Accessed August 2026.
- Report of the 2024 Egyptian judo federation election. Accessed August 2026.
- Egyptian Judo Federation — regions and clubs. Accessed August 2026.
- Egyptian Ministry of Youth and Sports — judo national team and championships. Accessed August 2026.
- Egyptian Judo Federation — committees. Accessed August 2026.
- Egyptian Judo Federation — player ranking platform. Accessed August 2026.
- African Judo Union — 47th African Senior Championships, Nairobi 2026. Accessed August 2026.