PUMA will end its kit sponsorship deal with Israel’s national football team when its contract expires next year, it was announced today.

The German corporation insisted the decision to part ways was made long before Hamas’s attack on October 7 and the subsequent war in Gaza, but the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement hailed a win for their long-running campaign.

From next year, Puma will no longer supply kits to Israel’s international sides having opted not to renew its contract with the Israel Football Association (IFA).

The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI), a founding part of the BDS movement, welcomed the news and said in a statement: “Puma has been the target of a worldwide BDS campaign since 2018 over its support for Israeli apartheid oppressing millions of Palestinians. The IFA governs and advocates to maintain teams in illegal Israeli settlements on stolen Palestinian land.

“Leaked internal messages revealed that Puma was under tremendous pressure to drop the contract.

“As Israel carries out its unfolding genocide against 2.3 million Palestinians in occupied and besieged Gaza, killing over 18,000, including dozens of footballers, the boycott pressure was only increasing.

“The years of relentless, global BDS pressure on Puma and the damage to its image should be a lesson to all companies supporting Israeli apartheid that complicity has consequences.

“It is also a lesson to the deeply complicit, Western-dominated Fifa, which continues to shield Israel from accountability despite the settlement teams violating its own statutes.

“We thank the hundreds of grassroots solidarity groups, athletes and teams across the world who supported the call from 215 Palestinian teams to boycott Puma.”