SWANA & Arab Events in NYC This Month

Break the Chain October Mass Meeting

From France to dance floors across Ibiza, Morocco, and beyond, Irenee S brings his international electronic sound to New York City for a special night presented by Haus of Joon.

A six-hour party at 650 Sackett in Brooklyn, with music from Sid Vaga, Alex Raouf, and AG (NYC)

Composer and pianist Sogomon Egoyan brings an intimate solo concert of entirely original works to Manhattan

Master calligrapher Khalid Casado is leading an all-day immersion in classical Arabic calligraphy in New York—materials provided, all levels welcome, and advanced students can refi…

Throughout his career, Guillaume Toumanian (born 1974, France) has remained steadfastly committed to painting, forging a distinctive pictorial language through his “landscapes of m…

A seven-hour house music marathon across two levels with six exceptional DJs spinning all night

Iraqi-American musician and award-winning visual artist Maryam Turkey releases her new single "Ya Amma" on Friday, October 9, 2026, via Otherly Love Records

Warm Greetings from one long day in the desert

Naza is an urgent documentary that pulls back the curtain on the systems behind Israel's calculated mass killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza

Ridikkuluz opens an eight-painting exhibition that refuses polite compliance with the post-9/11 order

ANAHITA is an exhibition by Amy Rose Khoshbin creating a contemporary sanctuary for grief, play, ritual, and collective release

I’M NOT EVEN HALF

This intimate concert brings together the rich rhythmic language of Persian percussion, including Tombak and Daf, with the expressive and delicate sound of the Setar

Mazzika Orchestra, under the artistic direction of Amal Guermazi, pays tribute to timeless iconic melodies of the Arab world, reimagined through powerful orchestral arrangements

Mixmag Lab records live in NYC with DJ Habibeats presenting Habibi's House, a party celebrating global sounds including Arab, African, Brazilian, Caribbean, Indian, and Latin influ…

PROMOCODE: MENNA (20% OFF)

A cozy Sunday gathering centered around tea and mamoul, bringing together a community of people to welcome the autumn season

A book salon centered on Molly Crabapple's work, with a short musical performance by Max Fractal

A Festive Fall Bazaar in the heart of West Village, celebrating Middle Eastern and South Asian culture, creativity, and local brands.

Sabri Sisters perform live at Le Poisson Rouge on Sunday, October 18th, 2026

Spend an evening with Rami Gabriel, the Lebanese leader of The Arab Blues, performing solo work that blends electric buzuq, guitar, and oud into staggering sonic hybridity

Three voices of modern Lebanese cuisine converge for one night only: Jad Youssef and Aga Youssef, co-owners of the award-winning Lebnani in Surrey, UK; Edy Massih, founder of Edy's…

Learn stab binding, an East Asian bookbinding technique that uses thread as both fastener and ornament to create geometric patterns

A documentary essay on radicalization and landscape — Éric Baudelaire's methodical investigation into how geography shapes ideology

A concert celebrating resistance through music and collective expression

Omar Dewachi traces the transformations of medicine across three decades of war, sanctions, occupation, and displacement in Iraq and the wider Middle East

An evening centered on Ghassan Kanafani's landmark essay on Palestinian resistance literature, newly translated into English for the first time

Filmed over a decade, One in a Million is an intimate portrait of Israa's journey from Syria to Germany and back — a coming-of-age story told across borders and displacement

Zaina Arafat, Lambda Literary Award-winning author of *You Exist Too Much*, reads from her new essay collection *Our Arab: On Longing, Belonging, and Hope*—a meditation on diaspora…

Spend an evening with the Brooklyn Nomads, a group dedicated to preserving and performing songs rooted in Palestinian resistance and diaspora culture

School Nite is MoMA PS1's after-hours music series spotlighting rising digital, internet-based, and underground acts

Join the Arab and Middle Eastern Journalists Association for the 2026 AMEJA Awards! This is our biggest night of the year, featuring a fireside chat with the journalists Leila Fade…

I’M NOT EVEN HALF

A night of standup comedy in an intimate cellar space, featuring New York's sharpest comedians from Comedy Central, Netflix, Late Night, Just for Laughs, and the Comedy Cellar

A day-to-night gathering exploring psychedelic science, Arab culture, consciousness, music, and collective experience

Hanan Sharifa presents a fashion happening that bridges New York and Morocco, featuring a performance at 8 PM with Mona Namér.

Traveling, leaving one’s home and country, has long been part of the Armenian cultural imagination, appearing in folklore, songs, and the work of medieval Armenian poets

Imal Gnawa brings the hypnotic pulse of Moroccan Gnawa tradition into the future, layering ancient strings and rhythms with electronic soundscapes that feel both rooted and otherwo…

Canadian-Iranian artist Navan brings his Kisses on the Moon Tour to New York City for an intimate live performance at The Chelsea

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Come build with us at Moroccothon 2026!

A community day celebrating the host's 30th birthday (actual birthday Oct 22) with friends, lovers, crushes, and enemies invited

MIDDLE EAST RIVER ֍ Hye House Club Night For The NYC Diaspora

An afternoon block party celebrating Arab food, music, and community in Red Hook

Al-Bait Baitkom is a Sudanese open mic series, join us for an exciting night of Sudanese comedy, music, poetry and everything in between

Mastī is the ecstatic joy Sufi poets wrote about—that moment when the music takes over and you're transported

This is the second performance of SWANA Sagas, a storytelling event bringing two beloved Middle Eastern tales to life: adaptations of Aladdin and His Wonderful Lamp and The Seven V…

A sharp 16-minute comedy short about the absurdity of airport security profiling

A two-hour workshop exploring the restoration of Al Hakeem, Palestine's first Arabic printing press established after the Nakba

It's the 9th annual Yallaween—a Halloween party built for the Yalla! community to dress up, dance, and celebrate spooky season together

The MAS Youth Center is marking 25 years of serving as a gathering place for individuals and families to grow, connect, and build community — and they're throwing a gala to celebra…

I’M NOT EVEN HALF

Ahmed Spins headlines the Main Hall at Knockdown Center on October 24

A solo piano recital featuring works by DeFalla, Debussy, Khachaturian, and Liszt — a program that spans Spanish impressionism, French modernism, Armenian romanticism, and Hungaria…

An evening of contemporary folk music and Armenian dance hosted by the Armenian Relief Society's Tsiran Chapter

An evening of contemporary folk music and dance hosted by the Armenian Relief Society's Tsiran Chapter of Manhattan

BAM's first Poetry Overnight is exactly what it sounds like: a poetry reading that goes all night long, with featured readers, special guests, and unique collaborations

Armadi Tsayn, meaning 'Sound of the Roots' in Armenian, is a contemporary folk ensemble from Boston featuring oud player and composer Samuel Sjostedt, bassist Filippo Novi-Goller, …

Murda brings the UZAY TOUR to Irving Plaza for an evening concert

An evening of chamber music anchored by Syrian American clarinetist-composer Kinan Azmeh, performing alongside the Claremont Trio — one of the leading piano trios in the United Sta…

Mokeb is a dark comedy following Ayan, a late-20s freelancer from NYC, as she joins 20 million pilgrims on the Arbaeen walk—an 86-kilometer spiritual journey from Najaf to Karbala …

An evening of live jazz at a Brooklyn supper club, featuring Omar Kabir

Club Joon is celebrating its one-year anniversary with a Halloween party at the iconic House of Yes in Brooklyn on October 28!

Abode NYC is throwing a drag Halloween party that's equal parts costume spectacle and dance floor mayhem

A masquerade celebration hosted by Tarab NYC, a nonprofit building community for queer and gender non-conforming Arab, Middle Eastern, and North African people across the greater N…

A two-and-a-half-hour workshop in the ancient art of Arabic calligraphy, grounded in somatic practice and feminist reclamation

Club Joon is throwing a Halloween takeover that doubles as their one-year anniversary—a dance floor packed with people ready to celebrate Persian, SWANA, and MENA culture through m…

Chicago's Fugu Dugu is a wild East punk band that collides Balkan spirit, Slavic folklore, Americana, klezmer, and punk into one theatrical explosion

A celebration of 103 years of the Turkish Republic — democracy, secular governance, and the vision of Atatürk — set to a night of DJ-driven dance and music

Two musical traditions from opposite sides of the world meet head-on in this conversation between jazz and ghazal—mid-20th century forms that share an emotional core despite their …

A rare pairing of two celebrated poets and performers — Naomi Shihab Nye and Haleh Liza Gafori — for an evening that weaves poetry, music, and translation into something intimate a…

Chef Ala'a, a Yemeni filmmaker and food enthusiast, is hosting an immersive dinner and cooking demo centered on Yemeni cuisine—with a twist connecting the Arabian Peninsula's pre-R…

Ross Gay's book-length poem about basketball legend Julius Erving—known as Dr

An evening of Egyptian meditation and ancient magick, led by Yoko — a senior guide trained in the Modern Mystery School with Egyptian Magick and Hermetic Ray Kabbalah

A Halloween celebration hosted at Atolye NYC, a versatile event space in Williamsburg designed to bring gatherings to life

This documentary reopens a decades-old murder case that shook Santa Ana in 1985, when Palestinian American community leader and teacher Alex Odeh was killed by a tripwire bomb in h…

A Halloween drag wrestling spectacular featuring a voodoo booty battle with Choke Hole, Function, and Big Freedia

A night of poetry featuring Sarah Kay, Clint Smith, Anis Mojgani, and Hanif Abdurraqib celebrating poetry and community

A Halloween party built for dancing, drinking, and getting into the spooky spirit

Spend an evening with Mehrnam Rastegari, a NYC-based kamancheh master, singer, violinist, and award-winning composer, as he leads a night of Persian music and improvisation

Legendary Iranian singer Moein, known as "The Eternal Voice of Love," performs live at the United Palace in Manhattan

An introduction to Nastaliq, one of the most prominent and fluid calligraphic styles used for writing the Perso-Arabic script

Comedian Nasser Al-Rayess performs at Town Hall in New York City

A panel discussion celebrating the life and works of Mahmoud Darwish, the Palestinian poet whose verses have shaped generations

Brooklyn Maqam is launching its first Takht Ensemble Workshop series—a six-week deep dive into one of Arabic music's most storied chamber formats

Trio Fadolín, a new ensemble featuring Sabina Torosjan (violin), Valeriya Sholokhova (cello), and Ljova (fadolín), performs their debut at Joe's Pub with material from their upcomi…

A three-hour workshop on soundsystem culture, DJing, and radical music-making led by Shirine Saad, a Beirut-born writer, programmer, and DJ

A book launch celebration for Anna Hezel's *The Little Book of Olives*, a stylish guide to cooking, eating, and drinking for olive lovers

Ten years after stepping onstage for the first time, Salma Hindy celebrates a decade in stand-up with her biggest New York performance yet

A short film screening and documentary collage workshop led by director Hana Elias, exploring how we build narratives from fragments of memory and place

A panel discussion exploring how immigrant and diasporic artists use plants and gardens as frameworks for thinking through migration, displacement, and belonging

Acclaimed Persian tar virtuoso Sahba Motallebi, known as the "Queen of the Tar," performs a solo set then joins ensemble featuring vocalist Marjan Vahdat, tar master Reza Mohsenipo…

Cem Adrian, one of Turkey's most distinctive and celebrated singer-songwriters, performs three intimate nights at DROM NYC

Goods for Gaza presents Threads Between Us, a two-day gathering of art, writing, music, film, food, and community created in collaboration with friends and cultural workers in Gaza…

Three SWANA women founders gather to talk about the brands they've built—the stories the feed doesn't show

Elena Dudum reads from her debut memoir They Told Me Back Home Would Be Beautiful, a deeply felt exploration of Palestinian American identity, family inheritance, and the reckoning…

Two award-winning journalists in conversation about their latest books on Gaza, U.S

Born from the sounds of Beirut and inspired by cultures across the world, Lebanese DJ and producer Jad Halal brings his distinctive sound to New York City with Haus of Joon.

Gillo Pontecorvo's The Battle of Algiers is a landmark film — a docudrama that captures the Algerian independence struggle against French colonial rule in the 1950s with unflinchin…

Noor Theatre, New York's OBIE-winning theater company dedicated to MENA/SWANA artists, brings an evening of original short performances that defy genre

Farah Siraj, Jordan's 'Musical Ambassadress,' performs with Latin Grammy-winning Spanish guitarist and producer Javier Limón

Yeller Tooth is a folk music collaboration between Sahar Milani and Cameron Scoggins—a husband-and-wife duo whose sound fuses musical heritage with raw emotional chemistry

Lina Mounzer launches Janus City, a lyrical essay that weaves together personal, political, and mythological histories of Beirut — a city she describes as both beguiling legend and…

Anthropologist Samee Sulaiman examines mass disablement in Gaza as a deliberate technology of colonial elimination, tracing how bombardment, siege, displacement, and destruction of…

ArteEast is throwing its 23rd Anniversary Benefit—a full evening celebrating two decades of presenting and amplifying SWANA arts and culture

Yeller Tooth is the musical collaboration of Sahar Milani and Cameron Scoggins, a husband-and-wife duo who met in middle school in Greensboro, North Carolina and reunited nearly tw…

Bedouine (Azniv Korkejian), a Syrian-born singer-songwriter who grew up in Saudi Arabia, performs at Le Poisson Rouge on her Neon Summer Skin tour

Bedouine performs live with Steady Holiday at Le Poisson Rouge

Rachid Bouchareb's documentary examines colonialism through the untold story of French atomic bomb testing in the Algerian desert

An animated short about freedom, detention, and resistance

A book club discussion of *The Coin*, Yasmin Zaher's debut novel about a wealthy Palestinian woman navigating life in New York City

Orkhan Zeynalli brings his genre-bending sound to DROM for a night that fuses traditional Azerbaijani music with contemporary hip-hop

Lucy McNair and Habiba Boumlik discuss their book 'An Introduction to North African Indigenous Film' (2025), followed by a screening of Taazrit, a 35-minute film directed by Arinas…

UNRWA USA's "What We Carry" is an immersive four-night journey across the U.S

UNRWA USA presents the NYC stop of their "What We Carry" Tour, an immersive live experience bringing Palestinian culture, music, and storytelling to the stage

Tul8te performs at Terminal 5 in New York

Learn the bağlama — the Turkish stringed instrument that's been central to folk music across the Balkans, Anatolia, and the Middle East for centuries — in an eight-week group class…

A portrait of life under Israeli occupation told through the voices and images of the Palestinian people

An evening celebrating the electrified Arabic guitar style of Omar Khorshid, the legendary musician who accompanied Umm Kulthum's tarab ensembles

LubDub Theatre Co is throwing an evening built around *halqa*—that North African tradition of gathering in a circle for stories, music, poetry, and spectacle

Djam NYC presents an immersive Arabic Night featuring live Middle Eastern music and belly dance performances at the Secret Room, an underground speakeasy-style basement lounge