Raman scattering in ε-GaSe has been investigated at room temperature in a diamond anvil cell by using helium gas as a pressure transmitting medium. The first observation of the solid − solid phase transition under pressure from a hexagonal structure at ambient pressure to a NaCl-type at around 29.2 GPa is reported. A photoinduced change in the pressurised crystal was observed. The transition under pressure was found to be irreversible at room temperature. It was shown that the pressurised form of ε-GaSe at ambient conditions most probably belongs to the γ-type as characterised by an increased intensity of the Raman modes at 234 cm −1 and 250 cmGallium selenide is a layer semiconductor. Four distinct modifications, the β-, the ε-, the γ-and the δ-types were reported for GaSe, differing by the stacking order of the two-dimensional Se−Ga−Ga−Se sheet [1]. The differences between these types arise from the stacking of layers as well as from the number of layers per unit cell. The ε-modification (D 3h 1 space group (SG), containing two layers per unit cell) is the most common and best studied. Up to now the existence of the β-modification (D 6h 4 SG, two layers per unit cell) has not been confirmed. The γ-type has three layers (C 3v 5 SG), and the δ-type contains four layers per unit cell (C 6v 4 SG). Normally the crystals grown by the Bridgman method are a mixture of ε-and γ-types, with a predominant content of the former.Most common and well investigated among the different polytypes is ε-GaSe, which is one of the promising materials for far-infrared conversion applications [2]. The properties of ε-GaSe at ambient conditions (room temperature, atmospheric pressure) are reasonably well known. Several Raman scattering experiments under pressure have already been performed on GaSe [3−6]. The pressure dependence and the mode Grüneisen parameters for Raman-active phonons of ε-GaSe have been measured up to 1 GPa [3, 4], 3.5 GPa [5], and 8 GPa [6]. Recently [7,8] high-pressure X-ray powder diffraction studies have been made on ε-GaSe. It was shown that at pressures of 29 GPa [7] and of around 25 GPa [8] the crystal undergoes a phase transition (PT) to the NaCl-type structure. The reason for this discrepancy is