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Nile Cruises Luxor to Aswan: Routes, Boats and Prices
Classic Egypt Tours: Cairo, Luxor and Aswan Itineraries
Nile Cruise and Red Sea Holidays: Two-Week Egypt Trips
White Desert Tours from Cairo: Oases and Desert Camping
Short Breaks in Egypt: Three and Four Day Cairo Trips
Tailor-made Egypt Tours: Private Trips Built Around You
Top 10 · History and myth
Egypt today is a country of about 109.5 million people, almost all of them living along the Nile. Its capital, Cairo, is a city of around twenty million. People speak Arabic, pay in Egyptian pounds and run on GMT+2, or GMT+3 in summer. The country holds the Suez Canal, seven UNESCO World Heritage Sites and, since November 2025, the fully open Grand Egyptian Museum. These ten facts are the ones worth knowing before you go. For pyramids and pharaohs, see our list of ancient Egypt facts.
This list is about Egypt now, the country you land in. We picked facts that change how you plan a trip: where people live, what they speak, what money they use and what time it is.
Every number comes from an official or primary source, named at the end of each fact. Where we already cover a topic in depth, we link to that page. Many people searching for facts about Egypt want the ancient story. That has its own list: ten ancient Egypt facts.
Egypt's statistics agency, CAPMAS, keeps a live population clock at its Cairo headquarters. On 19 September 2026 it read 109,540,965. That counts people living in Egypt. Egyptians abroad are extra.
The number keeps climbing. The clock added about a million people in the first nine months of 2026.
Cairo is the capital and by far the biggest city. Its wider area is home to around twenty million people. Giza, with the pyramids, is part of the same sprawl on the Nile's west bank.
Traffic shapes every day you spend there. Our Cairo travel guide explains how to plan around it.
Egypt covers about a million square kilometres, mostly desert. Almost the whole population lives along the Nile and in its delta, on well under a tenth of the land.
You see it from the air. A narrow green ribbon runs through brown and gold desert, then fans out into the delta north of Cairo.
Egypt relies almost entirely on the Nile for its fresh water, Egypt's irrigation minister said in 2023. A 1959 treaty with Sudan gives Egypt 55.5 billion cubic metres a year.
Ethiopia, upstream, was never a party to that treaty. The Aswan High Dam, built between 1960 and 1970, ended the yearly flood and gave farms water all year.
Arabic is Egypt's official language under its constitution. Day to day, people speak Egyptian Arabic.
Guides, hotel staff and many shopkeepers in the tourist areas speak English. A few words of Arabic still go a long way. Our phrases page has the basics.
The currency is the Egyptian pound, code EGP. You will see it written as LE or E£, and hear it called the gineih. One pound is 100 piastres, though coins that small hardly matter now.
Notes run from five to two hundred pounds. The ten and the twenty come in both paper and plastic versions. Carry small notes for tips.
Egypt brought back summer time by law in 2023. Clocks go forward an hour on the last Friday of April and back after the last Thursday of October.
That keeps Egypt two hours ahead of London for most of the year. The two countries change clocks on different dates. So for a few weeks in spring the gap is one hour, and for a few days in late October it is three. In 2026, Egyptian summer time ran from 24 April to 29 October.
The Suez Canal links the Mediterranean and the Red Sea. It opened for ships on 17 November 1869, according to the Suez Canal Authority.
It was 164 kilometres long then. After works finished in 2015 it runs 193.3 kilometres. East of it lies Sinai, the part of Egypt that sits in Asia.
UNESCO lists seven sites in Egypt. Six are cultural: Ancient Thebes in Luxor, Historic Cairo, Memphis and the pyramid fields from Giza to Dahshur, the Nubian monuments from Abu Simbel to Philae, Saint Catherine and Abu Mena.
The seventh is natural: Wadi Al-Hitan, the Whale Valley, where fossil whales lie in the desert. Another 34 places are on Egypt's waiting list, including Siwa.
After more than two decades of building, the Grand Egyptian Museum near Giza opened fully in November 2025. It is a couple of kilometres from the pyramids.
It shows the complete Tutankhamun collection in one place for the first time. It is air-conditioned, which makes it the one major sight that suits any month.
Cairo. It is also the largest city, with around twenty million people in the wider area.
Arabic, the official language. People speak Egyptian Arabic in daily life. English is widely spoken by guides and hotel staff in the tourist areas.
Mostly Africa. The Sinai Peninsula, east of the Suez Canal, is in Asia, so Egypt spans both continents.
Egypt runs on 220 volts with the round two-pin European plug. Visitors from the UK and Ireland need an adapter. US travellers should check their chargers handle the voltage.
Most UK and US visitors do. Many can choose between an e-visa and a visa on arrival. Our visa page explains which suits you and who cannot use either.
Check the current advice from the US State Department and the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office before you book and again before you travel. Both update their pages for each region of Egypt.
About 109.5 million, according to the CAPMAS population clock in September 2026. That figure counts people living in the country.
Entry rules, opening hours, security advice and exchange rates all move. Check them at the source, not here.
Written and checked by the Nile Trip Guide editorial team · Last reviewed . Entry rules, prices and opening hours change — check anything critical against the official sources linked on this page.
Plan this trip
A real itinerary with real prices, usually within 24 hours. Nothing is booked and nothing is charged until you say yes.
8 days · Classic Egypt
The route most people take first, at the length it was built for: Giza and the Grand Egyptian Museum, then a flight to Luxor and four nights sailing down to Aswan.
from US$2,135 / per person
5 days · Short break
Five days in Cairo and nowhere else: Giza, the Grand Egyptian Museum, the Egyptian Museum, the Citadel, Coptic Cairo and Khan el-Khalili. Four nights in one hotel, and every sightseeing day run privately.
from US$935 / per person
