Developmental dyslexia (DD) is a neurodevelopmental condition with complex genetic mechanisms. A number of candidate genes have been identified, some of which are linked to neuronal development and migration and to ciliary functions. However, expression and regulation of these genes in human brain development and neuronal differentiation remain uncharted. Here, we used human long-term self-renewing neuroepithelial stem (lt-NES, here termed NES) cells derived from human induced pluripotent stem cells to study neuronal differentiation in vitro. We characterized gene expression changes during differentiation by using RNA sequencing and validated dynamics for selected genes by qRT-PCR. Interestingly, we found that genes related to cilia were significantly enriched among upregulated genes during differentiation, including genes linked to ciliopathies with neurodevelopmental phenotypes. We confirmed the presence of primary cilia throughout neuronal differentiation. Focusing on dyslexia candidate genes, 33 out of 50 DD candidate genes were detected in NES cells by RNA sequencing, and seven candidate genes were upregulated during differentiation to neurons, including DYX1C1 (DNAAF4), a highly replicated DD candidate gene. Our results suggest a role of ciliary genes in differentiating neuronal cells and show that NES cells provide a relevant human neuronal model to study ciliary and DD candidate genes. Keywords Cilia. Ciliopathies. Reading disorder. Human neuroepithelial stem cells. RNA sequencing Abbreviations BBS Bardet-Biedl syndrome CAGE Cap analysis of gene expression DAVID Database for Annotation, Visualization and Integrated Discovery DCDC2 Doublecortin domain containing 2 DCG Dyslexia candidate gene DCX Doublecortin DD Developmental dyslexia DNAAF Dynein axonemal assembly factor DYX1C1 Dyslexia susceptibility 1 candidate 1 EGF Epidermal growth factor FANTOM Functional annotation of the mammalian genome FDR False discovery rate FGF Fibroblast growth factor Andrea Bieder and Masahito Yoshihara contributed equally to this work.