Best time to visit Egypt
The honest answer is October to April, and most people should stop reading there. But the full answer is more useful than that, because the quieter months cost less (our journeys are about 13% cheaper from May to September) and there are two mornings a year worth building an entire trip around.
October to April — the season
Daytime temperatures in Cairo and Luxor sit in the comfortable twenties Celsius, seventies Fahrenheit. You can spend a full day at Giza or on the Luxor west bank without the heat deciding your schedule for you. This is also when everyone else comes, so the sites are busier and hotel rates are at their highest.
December and January are the peak within the peak. Christmas and New Year fill the Nile boats and the good Cairo hotels months ahead, and prices rise accordingly. They are also the most pleasant weeks of the year to be outdoors in Upper Egypt. If your dates are fixed to a school vacation, book early rather than hoping.
Bring warm layers. Desert nights from December to February get genuinely cold, and travelers who packed only for "Egypt is hot" regret it on an early start to Abu Simbel or a felucca after sunset.
May to September — the other option
Hot. In Cairo, manageable. In Luxor and Aswan, genuinely severe — regularly above 40°C / 105°F, and we mean the kind of heat where you do the Valley of the Kings at six in the morning and spend the middle of the day indoors.
It is also considerably cheaper and far quieter. The same hotel costs noticeably less than in January and you can stand in front of a tomb painting by yourself. If you are willing to restructure the day around early starts and long afternoon breaks — which is how Egyptians live in summer — it works, and it works well. We build summer itineraries differently rather than pretending the heat is not there.
The Red Sea is the exception. Hurghada and Sharm are good all year; in summer the sea is warm enough that the heat stops being the point.
Two mornings worth planning around
On 22 February and 22 October, the rising sun enters the inner sanctuary at Abu Simbel and illuminates three of the four seated figures at the back — Ra-Horakhty, the deified Ramesses II, and Amun-Ra. Ptah, a god of the underworld, stays in shadow, as he was built to.
Two honest caveats, because most sites selling this trip do not mention either. The temple was cut apart and moved in the 1960s to escape the rising water behind the Aswan High Dam, so the modern alignment is a careful reconstruction rather than the original. And the original dates themselves have drifted over three thousand years with the Earth's axial precession. It remains one of the most extraordinary things you can stand in front of. It is simply not quite the same event the builders set up.
If you want it, say so when you inquire. Those two mornings sell out in Aswan a long way ahead and the day starts around three in the morning.
Ramadan, and why it matters less than you think
Ramadan moves roughly eleven days earlier each year against the Western calendar. Travel during it is entirely possible and many people find it the most interesting time to be here.
What actually changes: opening hours shift, some restaurants close during daylight, the roads are chaotic in the hour before sunset as everyone races home, and the whole country eats together at iftar. What does not change: sites open, hotels run normally, your guide and driver work. Tourists are not expected to fast, and food and drink are served in hotels throughout.
We will tell you if your dates fall inside Ramadan or across the Eid holidays that follow, and what that means for your specific itinerary, before you book rather than after.
The one thing nobody warns you about
The khamaseen — hot, dry sand-carrying winds that blow out of the Western Desert, most often between March and May. A bad khamaseen day turns the sky orange, drops visibility, and makes a desert excursion unpleasant rather than dangerous. They pass in a day or two. It is a reason to keep a little flexibility in a spring itinerary, not a reason to avoid spring.
So when should you come?
If it is your first time in Egypt and the budget allows: late October, or March. Our Classic Egypt journey, the essential first-time route, works at either end. Shoulder weeks at either end of the good season. The weather is still kind, the crowds have thinned, the prices have come off the peak, and late October gives you the Abu Simbel alignment if you want it.
If price matters more than comfort: June to September, with an itinerary built around early mornings and the Red Sea.
If you are coming for the diving rather than the temples: it genuinely does not matter.
Planning around this?
Tell us your dates and we will tell you honestly what they mean for your trip — including when we think you should come instead.
Ask a Cairo consultant