Kurdistan Region hajj authority releases list of 2026 pilgrims

ERBIL — The Kurdistan Regional Government’s General Directorate of Hajj and Umrah on Sunday released the names of those selected in the 2026 Hajj lottery, identifying 3,901 individuals as eligible to participate and another 1,950 placed on the reserve list.

In total, 5,851 people were listed. Of these, 113 seats were allocated to families of martyrs, with an equal number named as backups.

Nearly 90,000 people in the Kurdistan Region registered electronically for the 2026 pilgrimage, the first year the process was fully digitized.

Hajj, the annual Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca, is one of the Five Pillars of Islam and is obligatory once in a lifetime for Muslims who are physically and financially able to undertake it.

Saudi Arabia sets annual quotas based on each country’s Muslim population, typically allocating about 1,000 pilgrims per million Muslims. Iraq’s quota in recent years has ranged between 34,000 and 40,000, divided among governorates, including the Kurdistan Region.