The jury panel, composed of Ahlam, Ragheb Alama and Hassan El Shafei, is completed by Lebanese pop star Nancy Ajram.
On finale night, Mohammed Assaf from Palestine won the competition against Ahmad Gamal and Farah Youssef.
This year was a premiere since it will be the first time that there is a non-Arab/non-Arabic speaker contestant (Parwas Hussain, from the Kurdish part of Iraq).
In this part of the competition, candidates were split into 11 groups of 5 or 6, and had to perform iconic Arabic songs from movies and plays from the previous century.
The repertoire consisted of the following songs : For the girls: For the guys: After further cuts, only 46 contenders remained, and moved onto the third and final part of the second round of auditions.