Ramadan 2027 in the Maghreb: get your UGC videos ready three months ahead

Ramadan 2027 is expected to begin around 8 February, depending on the sighting of the moon. For a brand selling in the Maghreb or to its diaspora, it is the month when attention peaks — and the month when rushed videos stand out the most. The brands that will be there with the right content ordered it in November.

What changes during the month

Timing first. Audiences shift towards two moments: after ftour, when families are in front of their screens, and late at night before s'hour. A video showing breakfast at 8 in the morning is off-topic for thirty days.

Then the products. Food (dates, milk, pastries, drinks), kitchenware, home textiles and Eid gifts take up all the space. But a product that has nothing to do with Ramadan can perfectly well be shown during Ramadan — as long as it respects the context: no meal scenes in broad daylight, no “aggressive promotion” tone during a month of restraint.

Finally, the tone. The month is family-centred, calm, often nostalgic. The videos that work are the ones that show the real table, the real kitchen, the real family — not a studio set with a lantern placed in the corner.

The three mistakes we see every year

• Translating the European campaign “into Arabic” and pushing it out as it is in Algiers, Casablanca and Tunis. An Algerian ftour and a Moroccan ftour have neither the same dishes nor the same words.
• Ordering the videos in January. Creators are booked up, shoots are rushed, and the dialect review gets skipped.
• Forgetting Eid. The last two days of the month and the three days of celebration are a second peak — clothes, gifts, pastries — that few brands prepare for.

A timeline that works

• November: brief, choosing creators by dialect (Algerian, Moroccan, Tunisian, Kabyle), shipping the products.
• December: shoots and deliveries, review by someone who speaks the video's darija, subtitles.
• January: editing the variants (formats, lengths), test runs.
• February: going live, with content already prepared for Eid.

What we do at ASLI

• A Ramadan brief asks for one dialect per video and states what time of day the scene takes place.
• Creators film at home, in their own kitchen, with their family: it is the only way to get a believable ftour.
• The review before delivery checks the language AND the context (no meals in broad daylight, no mistakes about the dishes).

The most-watched month of the year isn't prepared the month before. It is prepared when nobody is thinking about it yet.