Cairotronica was founded as the Cairo Electronic and New Media Arts Festival, which is a biannual festival established in 2016 that showcases emerging and established new media artists and offers transformational learning experiences. The idea for Cairotronica developed from noting the global interest in the overlapping of art with technology and science. It is an up-and-coming area of practice globally, and the region lacked a platform to support its talents to join in on this contemporary movement.

Seeing a lot of potential in local artists from the first two festival editions, Cairotronica saw an opportunity to expand on its current artistic practices, and to democratize/ facilitate the tools for creating new projects that are multidisciplinary within art, science and technology. Hence, developing a platform supporting local artists already interested/ working in this intersection of disciplines. Additionally, the platform aims to activate the international scene with a steady stream of artists and projects that can strongly represent Egypt and the region, and present the region’s perspective on the critical and urgent topics that lie at the intersection of art, science, technology and society.

In 2019, Cairotronica launched a fellowship program under the theme “We Are Data” in collaboration with Impakt Festival in the Netherlands to offer a fellowship for artists to further develop their multidisciplinary practice.