Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to present a procedure, which determines the magnetic force acting between a soft magnetic cylinder and a coil taking the hysteresis phenomena into account.Design/methodology/approach – The magnetic force is computed replacing the ferromagnetic body with an equivalent magnetic moment distribution. Isotropic vector Preisach model with analytical expressed Everett function describes the magnetic properties of the ferromagnetic material. The magnetization distribution is calculated applying the integral equation method. The Preisach hysteresis model is included in the iteration process based on Picard‐Banach scheme.Findings – In the case of integral equation method the unknown quantities are the magnetization and the magnetic field intensity. In this way the Preisach hysteresis model can be included in a convenient way in the iteration procedure. Knowing the magnetization distribution the magnetic force can be determined. The developed algorithms can be applied in tubul...