Berberism is a Berber political-cultural movement of ethnic nationalism, started mainly in Kabylia (Algeria) and in Morocco later spreading to the rest of the Berber communities in the Maghreb region of North Africa. The Berberist movement in Algeria and Morocco is in opposition to cultural Arabization, the pan-Arabist political ideology and Islamism.

Berbers or the Berber peoples, also called by their endonym Amazigh or Imazighen, are a diverse grouping of distinct ethnic groups indigenous to North Africa who predate the arrival of Arabs in the Arab migrations to the Maghreb. Their main connections are identified by their usage of Berber languages, most of them mutually unintelligible, which are part of the Afroasiatic language family. They are indigenous to the Maghreb region of North Africa, where they live in scattered communities across parts of Morocco, Algeria, Libya, and to a lesser extent Tunisia, Mauritania, northern Mali and northern Niger. Smaller Berber communities are also found in Burkina Faso and Egypt's Siwa Oasis.