This introduction highlights the need for studies exploring the formation of coalitions in North Africa and the Middle East by privileging processual, relational and intersectional approaches. First, it proposes conceptual clarifications, followed by a discussion of the main trends that characterize the literature on coalitions in the region. Using several examples, the authors argue that in order to better understand the making (but also the unmaking) of coalitions in the MENA region it is essential to provide micro-sociological studies that look beyond the ideological divides to analyse the manifold transformations that emerge out of 'coalition moments', and that link processes of alliance-building to processes of differentiation and categorization. KEYWORDS Coalitions; social movements; political change; MENA region; social differentiation Coalitions of actors that have traditionally not been allies but who join forces to achieve a common goal have been a recurrent factor in contentious politics in North Africa and the Middle East, from anticolonial movements to post-independence mobilizations. Bridging social, regional, and ideological divides, they have developed in various social spaces such as anti-regime opposition groups, anti-globalization networks, and movements claiming economic rights, the equal distribution of resources, and social justice. Within such alliances, 'strange bedfellows' (Clark, 2010, p. 101) have joined forces: Islamists with leftists, urban with rural protesters, lawyers with peasants, armed forces with opposition movements, workers with students, marginalised populations with established elites.Coalitions are nothing new in the Middle East: the early struggles against European colonization, including the Arab revolt of 1915, the 1919 insurrection in Egypt and the Iraqi uprising of 1920, offer many examples of coalitions that brought together broad constituencies. More recently, however, such coalitions have especially attracted the attention of researchers because processes of CONTACT Marie Duboc