Ohad Ben Ami and Eli Sharabi, both taken hostage from Kibbutz Be'eri during the cross-border Hamas-led attack on October 7, 2023, and Or Levy, abducted that day from the Nova music festival, will be handed over on Saturday, Hamas said.
In exchange, Israel will release 183 Palestinian prisoners and detainees, including 18 serving life sentences, 54 serving long sentences and 111 detained in Gaza during the war, Hamas media office said.
Dozens of masked and armed Hamas fighters deployed in Deir al-Balah, in central Gaza, at the site of the exchange, where hostages will be handed over to the International Red Cross Committee, which will transport them to Israeli forces in Gaza.
For families of the hostages who have been held incommunicado in Gaza for more than a year, the wait has been a roller-coaster of dread and hope as the moments of reunion drew near.
"I can't even start to describe the emotions that the excitement, how happy we are that it's finally close to be over, said Michael Levy, brother of Or Levy, who lost his wife in the October 7 attack and has a three-year-old son.
"We are waiting to hug him, waiting to see Almog (Levy's son), hugging his father again."
The exchange is the latest in a series of swaps that have so far returned 13 Israeli hostages as well as five Thai workers abducted during the Hamas attack and 583 Palestinian prisoners and detainees.
Despite hiccups, a 42-day ceasefire and hostage-for-prisoner exchange worked out with US backing and mediation by Egypt and Qatar has held up since it took effect almost three weeks ago.
But fears the deal might collapse before all the hostages are free have grown since US President Donald Trump's surprise call for Palestinians to be moved from Gaza and for the enclave to be handed to the US and developed into the "Riviera of the Middle East".
Arab states and Palestinian groups have rejected the proposal, which critics said would amount to ethnic cleansing.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, however, welcomed Trump's intervention and his defence minister ordered the military to make plans to allow Palestinians who wished to leave Gaza to do so.
Under the deal, 33 Israeli children, women and older men are to be released during an initial phase in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners and detainees.
Negotiations on a second phase began this week aimed at returning the remaining hostages and agreeing on a full withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza in preparation for a final end to the war.
Hamas-led gunmen attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, killing some 1200 people and seizing more than 250 as hostages.
In response, Israel launched an air and ground war in Gaza that has killed more than 47,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza health authorities, and devastated the narrow enclave.Â
Earlier, Hamas accused Israel of multiple breaches of their ceasefire agreement, a day before the latest scheduled hostage/prisoner exchange in a fragile deal aimed at ending the war in Gaza.
As well as delaying the entry of hundreds of trucks carrying food and other humanitarian supplies, Hamas said Israel had only allowed in a fraction of the tents and mobile homes needed to provide shelter to people returning to their bombed-out homes.
Almost three weeks after the start of the ceasefire, "the catastrophic humanitarian situation in Gaza continues to deteriorate dangerously", Hamas said in a statement on Friday.
