El Gouna Photo Week Returns for Its Second Edition This December

El Gouna Photo Week will return for a second edition from 4 to 12 December, according to CairoScene, bringing photographers from across Egypt and the wider region to the Red Sea town for nine days of exhibitions, workshops and industry events.

The festival is organised by Photopia, the Cairo-based independent photography school founded in 2012 that also runs Cairo Photo Week and Alex Photo Week. CairoScene reported that the December programme will pair talks, open-access exhibitions, portfolio reviews and hands-on workshops with photography experiences staged across El Gouna itself.

It would be the first El Gouna edition since 2022. In its preview of that inaugural festival, CairoScene said the event ran from 16 to 23 July 2022 in partnership with Orascom Hotels Management and was built around more than 100 hours of workshops, over 25 talks and panels, three exhibitions and 20 shooting locations opened to participants free of charge. Organisers expected 10,000 people.

Photopia's own programme page for 2022 placed the festival's "Big Weekend" at the TU Berlin campus in El Gouna and listed open-call exhibitions titled "Humans of El Gouna" and "Sard | Upper Egypt Edition". CairoScene's preview at the time named Ali Ali, Karim El Hayawan, Salma El Kashef and Coucla Refaat among the speakers, with the closing ceremony held at the Casa Cook hotel.

In its report on the return, CairoScene said the 2022 edition drew figures from Egypt's creative industries including Ahmad Al Morsy, Ali Ali, Maged Nassar and Tamer Ashry.

Further programme details for December — speakers, sessions and the full schedule — will be announced through Photopia's Instagram page in the lead-up to the event, the organisation said.