The defeat of the 2010-2011 Arab Spring uprising in Egypt changed political activists’ lives as well as their political behavior. In recent years, Egyptian activists have been forced into exile in Europe and the United States as the country’s authoritarian regime reconsolidates. While the defeat of the Arab Spring galvanized activists to continue contesting status quo politics, the form of contestation has necessarily changed due to being physically located outside of Egypt. In spaces of exile, activists continue to mobilize but utilize new approaches in support of intersectional causes, diverse ideologies, and transnational movements. This paper lays out a theory and provides evidence of activism in exile, drawing on ethnographic research of Egyptian communities in New York City and Berlin. In doing so, it conceptualizes political hope and disappointment as politically relevant emotions that help to explain mobilizational continuation and innovation in exile. The paper seeks to explore the dynamics of defeated revolution, a topic neglected in the study of contested politics, and humanize the experience of political change in documenting activists’ life trajectories of activists and first-hand accounts.