Launch of the Second Round of the BA Grand Reading Award
Posted on
Dr. Ahmed Zayed, Director of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, announced the launch of the second round (2025-2026) of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina’s Grand Reading Award, which was launched last year under the theme “Live a Thousand Years with Reading.” The award was a great success, both in terms of the number of participants and the quality of the entries. He noted that the results of the first edition confirmed the great capacities of the Egyptian youth in their pursuit of knowledge and learning. He said that the award's management had set the theme for the new season as “Egypt in the First Half of the 20th Century: Social Transformations and the Rise of a Nation,” noting that this was a rich period in Egypt's history, which witnessed transformations and developments that affected contemporary Egyptian history at all levels.
According to the award's program, the winners will be announced on 30 June 2026, and the awards ceremony will be held during the Library’s International Book Fair in the second half of July 2026. The ceremony will be attended by cultural, intellectual, and media figures, where 100 contestants will be honored and graded monetary and nominal prizes will be distributed. The first-place winner will receive EGP 50,000, the second-place winner will receive EGP 40,000, the third place winner will receive EGP 30,000, the fourth place winner will receive EGP 20,000, the fifth place winner will receive EGP 10,000, the sixth to tenth place winners will receive EGP 8,000, the eleventh to twentieth place winners will receive EGP 7,000, the twenty-first to fiftieth place winners will receive EGP 4,000, and the fifty-first to hundredth place winners will receive EGP 3,000.
Dr. Zayed said that the BA Reading Award is held annually and launched by the Library for all segments of the Egyptian society, targeting young people aged 18-40. He mentioned that a website and social media platforms will be dedicated to the award, and that registration will also be available through the Library’s Embassies of Knowledge across the country.
Stages of the Competition:
The award tests are conducted in stages as follows:
Registration and preparation for the competition (from 15 November 2025 to 15 March 2026).
This stage begins immediately after the announcement of the award, during which participants visit the award website, register to compete in the competition, read the award conditions and testing methods, check this year's theme, and begin preparing for the test. During this stage, contestants should read up on the competition topic to prepare themselves for the testing stages.
Tests: Contestants will take three tests throughout the award period, each of which qualifies them for the next:
An objective electronic test that is automatically corrected, the first test (16-31 March 2026) begins four months after the announcement of the award. The winner of this stage receives 50% of the total score.
The second test (from 1-15 April 2026) is taken by the winners of the previous stage. It is an objective electronic test (also designed automatically). Success in this stage is achieved by obtaining 60% of the marks.
The third test (from 1 April to 31 May 2026) is taken by the winners of the previous stage. It is in the form of free writing about ten books, with each contestant writing 100 words about each book summarizing its main idea, in addition to answering a number of questions about the book. The books must be related to the same theme “Egypt in the First Half of the 20th Century: Social Transformations and the Rise of a nation.” This stage is graded by the committee supervising the award exams. The winner of this stage is the contestant who obtains 70% of the total score.
For more information, please visit the official website of the award: https://readingcompetition.bibalex.org/Home/Home.aspx