NEW YORK MAGAZINE August 10 – 23, 2026 SWANA Edition

Welcome to Habibi City

A cultural shift is underway, led by a generation of New Yorkers coming into its own.

These days, it feels very different to be Arab, or Iranian, or Muslim in New York.

Over the past decade, a new generation of artists, chefs, comedians, designers, and others have built unprecedented cultural and political capital. Together, they’re what you might call a scene.

Where the diasporas once seemed siloed, the new Southwest Asia and North Africa (SWANA) scene is increasingly united across identities — Iraqi, Yemeni, Egyptian, Sudanese, Mauritanian, Afghan — and bound together by shared values. It was born out of the pain of the genocide in Gaza, which has led many young people to search for community in the city and build it where it didn’t exist. They found it at protests and in bars and cafés, at comedy shows and clothing pop-ups and fundraisers that turned into all-day hangs. And they found it in the election of the city’s first Muslim mayor and in the Syrian American First Lady.

Our latest issue is an attempt to capture the people and places who are defining this era.