Egypt’s Gaming Market Nears $1 Billion as Country Looks Beyond Playing to Building Games
Egypt’s video game market is approaching the $1 billion mark, but the bigger economic opportunity may lie in converting one of the region’s largest gaming audiences into a local industry capable of developing and exporting games.
The Egyptian gaming market was valued at $912.9 million in 2025 and is projected to reach around $1.8 billion by 2034, nearly doubling in less than a decade, according to estimates from market research firm IMARC cited in a new report by Egypt’s Cabinet Information and Decision Support Center (IDSC).
The forecast represents a compound annual growth rate of 7.61% between 2026 and 2034, supported by Egypt’s young population, expanding internet access, smartphone adoption and growing interest in esports.
But the IDSC report points to a more significant question for Egypt: how much of that growing market can eventually be captured by Egyptian developers, studios and digital content companies rather than remaining primarily consumer spending.
31 million gamers create a sizeable home market
Egypt already has around 31 million gamers, giving developers a large domestic audience on which to build.
The country’s demographic profile has long made it one of the region’s most important gaming markets by number of players. Earlier research from Niko Partners identified Egypt as having the largest gaming population among Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the UAE.
That scale creates opportunities extending beyond game sales themselves, including esports, advertising, digital content, software development and specialized technology services.
For Egyptian companies, however, the bigger prize would be turning domestic demand into a base for developing products that can also reach Arabic-speaking and international markets.
Mobile remains at the center of the global gaming economy
Egypt’s growth is taking place against a global gaming industry that generated around $201.6 billion in 2025, according to figures highlighted by the IDSC.
Mobile games accounted for $113.3 billion, more than half of the total, compared with around $44.7 billion for console games and $43.6 billion for PC gaming.
The dominance of mobile could be particularly relevant to Egypt, where smartphones provide a much lower entry barrier to gaming than expensive consoles or gaming PCs.
It also changes the opportunity for developers. Building a gaming industry no longer necessarily requires competing first in the traditional high-budget console market; mobile distribution provides smaller studios with access to users well beyond their home countries.
AI is changing how games are made
Artificial intelligence is also beginning to reshape the economics of game development.
Generative AI can be used across parts of the production process, including creating digital assets, supporting software development and accelerating content production, potentially reducing some of the resources required to develop increasingly sophisticated games.
Cloud gaming represents another change. Moving more processing away from the user’s device could eventually make high-quality gaming accessible without requiring consumers to purchase high-end hardware, although the model remains dependent on network quality, latency and cloud infrastructure.
These developments increasingly position gaming at the intersection of several technology sectors in which Egypt is already trying to expand its capabilities: software development, AI, cloud infrastructure, digital content and outsourcing.
The next challenge is turning gamers into an export industry
A market approaching $1 billion demonstrates strong demand, but consumption alone does not necessarily translate into a domestic gaming industry.
Capturing more of the economic value will depend on expanding local studios, developing specialized talent, improving access to investment and helping Egyptian developers reach international distribution channels.
The IDSC highlighted incubation and acceleration programs, connections between developers and global investors, technology partnerships and intellectual property protection among the areas needed to strengthen the industry.
For Egypt, that makes the $1.8 billion forecast only one measure of gaming’s potential. A more consequential measure will be how much locally created intellectual property, software and digital content Egyptian companies can sell beyond the domestic market by 2034.