184,200 Christians in Israel, and Nazareth Leads the List

Approximately 184,200 Christians were living in Israel on Christmas Eve 2025, around 1.9% of the population, according to data on the country's Christian communities published by the Central Bureau of Statistics ahead of the holiday. The community grew by 0.7% during 2024.

Arab Christians make up 78.7% of Christians in Israel, and 6.8% of the country's total Arab population. Most live in the north: 68.3% in the Northern District and 14.7% in the Haifa District. Non-Arab Christians are distributed differently, with 42.0% in the Tel Aviv and Central Districts and 33.9% in the Northern and Haifa Districts.

Where Israel's Christians live

The localities with the largest Arab Christian populations are Nazareth, with 18,900; Haifa, with 18,800; Jerusalem, with 13,400; and Nof HaGalil, with 10,800. Nazareth and Nof HaGalil sit in the Lower Galilee in northern Israel; Haifa is the port city on the Mediterranean coast below Mount Carmel.

The Jerusalem Post, reporting the same bureau release on 24 December 2025, gave the identical distribution and city rankings. The Times of Israel reported the same total and the 0.7% growth rate.

Small households, few children

The demographic profile the bureau published is of a community with smaller families than either of Israel's larger religious groups. Average household size in Christian-headed households was estimated at 2.89 people, below Jewish-headed households at 3.02 and Muslim-headed households at 4.35. Among families with children up to the age of 17, Christian families averaged 1.97 children, and Arab Christian families 1.98, against 2.45 in Jewish families and 2.58 in Muslim families.

In 2024, 2,134 babies were born to Christian women, about 73% of them (1,568) to Arab Christian mothers. JNS, reporting the release on 24 December 2025, added a total fertility rate of 1.61 children per woman across the community and 1.48 among Arab Christian women, figures that sit below the replacement level and explain the slow growth rate.

The community's educational record

In the 2024/25 school year, 26,240 Christian pupils were studying in elementary and secondary education, 1.3% of all pupils in Israel. Of Christian pupils in the twelfth grade in 2023/24, 87.7% were eligible for a matriculation certificate, the qualification, known in Hebrew as the bagrut, that governs entry to Israeli universities.

The gap widens at the next stage. Within eight years of finishing secondary school, 52.6% of Arab Christians and 30.3% of non-Arab Christians had gone on to undergraduate studies, compared with 34.4% of all graduates of Arab-sector schools and 47.3% of all graduates of Hebrew-sector schools. In 2024/25 there were 6,700 Christian students enrolled in higher education, 2.2% of all students in Israeli higher education institutions, with a further 500 studying at the Open University. The Jerusalem Post added that women made up 61.1% of those students.

What the release did not say

The bureau's figures do not break the community down by church or denomination, so the balance between Greek Orthodox, Catholic, Melkite and other traditions is not visible in the data. The release did not explain the composition of the non-Arab Christian population or how it arrived in Israel, and it did not give figures for Christians in East Jerusalem separately from the Jerusalem total.