Arrival guide · 2026
Arriving at Cairo Airport
Visa, cash, and the ride across town to Bashtil. Everything between stepping off the plane and stepping into your cabin.
See dates and prices
Visa, cash, and the ride across town to Bashtil. Everything between stepping off the plane and stepping into your cabin.
See dates and pricesFlying to Cairo, yes.
Your passport needs six months left on it from the day you arrive, plus one blank page.
Children need their own visa, whatever their age.
Apply at visa2egypt.gov.eg. It is the only official site.
The e-visa lasts up to three months from issue. Apply about a week ahead.
This is the easy one. You land and go straight to passport control.
Keep it on your phone and print a copy. Airlines sometimes ask at check-in.
Bank kiosks sit before passport control. You buy a sticker for your passport and it lasts 30 days.
Take exactly $30. The kiosks often have no change, and what you get back comes in Egyptian pounds.
New since 1 August 2026, and Cairo only for now.
You get a QR code instead of a sticker. Get it at visaonarrival.gov.eg, on the Visa On Arrival app, or at a machine in arrivals.
The $36 is the $30 visa plus a $6 digital fee. The machines take cards.
The code can be obtained up to 48 hours before you arrive, so leave it close to your travel date rather than applying months ahead.
There is one exception, and it confuses a lot of people.
Fly to Sharm el-Sheikh, stay under 15 days, stay inside Sharm, Dahab, Nuweiba or Taba, and you get a free entry stamp instead.
That is where “you don't need a visa for Egypt” comes from. It only covers a Red Sea resort trip.
Most foreign tourists flying into Cairo need a visa.
Egypt's portal lists which passports can. It covers:
If your passport is not listed, you apply through an Egyptian consulate.
Have a look at the portal yourself rather than taking our word for it.
You do not need anyone to get your visa for you. The kiosks charge $30. Anyone in the terminal offering to sort it out for you will charge more.
Egypt is moving to digital, and paper cards are on the way out at Cairo. You might not get one at all.
If you do, it wants your name, passport number, flight number and hotel. Worth having a pen.
You'll probably need mobile data within minutes of arriving in Cairo.
You may need it to request an Uber or Careem, check your hotel address, use Maps, message your driver or contact someone if your plans change.
You can buy a physical SIM after landing, but it is one more thing to organise after immigration, baggage collection and a long flight.
The easiest option is to install an eSIM before you travel.
Set it up before your flight and when you arrive in Cairo, simply switch your data on.
You land knowing your phone is ready to use.
Get an Egypt eSIM before you travel →Your driver waits in arrivals with a name board. Check with them beforehand which terminal, and what happens if the flight is late.
Uber and Careem both work in Cairo. You see the price up front, so there is nothing to work out.
Pickup is not directly outside arrivals. Follow the signs, or let the app direct you, and book in the app rather than taking an offer on the way.
There are fixed-price car desks in the arrivals hall. You pay more than an app, and in return there is nothing to arrange and nobody to find. Worth it if you have landed late or you are travelling with family.
Agree the price and the drop-off before you get in.
Worth planning if your train goes the same evening.
Cairo sleeper trains leave from Bashtil, not Ramses. Two different stations, opposite sides of the city. Bashtil is west of the Nile, the airport is east.
Book the ride in an app so the address is already pinned. In Google Maps it comes up as Bashtil - Upper Egypt train station.
If you are travelling directly from Cairo Airport to Bashtil Railway Station, leave plenty of time between your flight arrival and your sleeper departure. Immigration, baggage collection and Cairo traffic can all vary significantly.
Two hours may be enough in ideal conditions, but it should not be treated as a guaranteed connection time. If possible, allow a larger buffer.
More in our Bashtil Station guide.
Cairo to Luxor and Cairo to Aswan, overnight. Pick your date and see the cabins available.
See dates and pricesCairo can feel intense when you first arrive. Agree prices before accepting informal services, be comfortable saying no to unsolicited offers, and use clearly priced or app-based transport whenever possible.
Dinner is brought to your cabin. The city lights thin out, then it is dark, and you eat with the country going past the window.
You sleep. Through the night the train works its way south down the Nile valley.
When you lift the blind in the morning you are somewhere completely different. The Nile on one side. Farmland, palms, small towns, and desert behind all of it.
Then you step off in Luxor with the whole day ahead of you.
No airport. No hotel bill for that night. No day lost getting south.
You are in the middle of it as soon as you arrive. The Valley of the Kings and the West Bank are a short hop across the river. Karnak is up the road.
Go up in a balloon at dawn if you do one thing. It goes up as the sun comes over the hills and it is the part people talk about afterwards.
See dates and prices →
Further south and much slower in feel. Wider river, granite islands, feluccas going back and forth.
Philae sits on its own island, a short ferry across. Abu Simbel is a long day trip south, leaving at four in the morning, and worth every bit of the early start.
The rest is slower. A felucca out to Elephantine Island, a motorboat over to a Nubian village on the west bank, lunch in someone's home, and a sail back at sunset.
Three days does it properly.
Three days in Aswan →The sleeper runs Cairo to Luxor and Cairo to Aswan, and back the other way. So you can do both in one trip, in either order.
Yes, if you are flying to Cairo. The only exception is a short stay at a South Sinai resort after flying into Sharm el-Sheikh.
$30 online or $30 cash at the airport. The digital version at Cairo is $36, because of a $6 service fee.
visa2egypt.gov.eg for the e-visa, visaonarrival.gov.eg for the digital one at Cairo. Those are the official sites.
For the paper sticker, yes. The digital version is card only.
Bashtil, not Ramses. Your ticket will say.
Take a bit out of an ATM for your first taxi and day. Change more in the city.
Entry rules are set by the Egyptian government and can change. Check visa2egypt.gov.eg and your own government's travel advice before you book.
Trains Egypt books Egypt's overnight sleeper trains for travellers from anywhere in the world. Official tickets issued in your name, your own cabin, and the PDF in your inbox within two hours. If we cannot get you a cabin, you get every penny back.