What to Pack for Egypt: A Complete Packing List (2026)

Pack for Egypt around three realities: a punishing sun, a conservative dress culture, and a big daily temperature swing between baking afternoons and cool desert nights. Get those right and you're comfortable and respectful at every temple, mosque and resort. Nearly everything below fits in a carry-on, which matters — internal flights cap bags tightly and cruise cabins are small, so packing light pays off at every transfer.

The short list: loose clothes covering shoulders and knees; closed shoes for dusty sites; high-SPF sunscreen and a hat (both hard to buy well there); a Type C or F adapter for 220V; a refillable bottle; rehydration salts; and small EGP notes for constant tipping.

Clothing: light, modest, layered

Pack loose, lightweight cotton or linen in light colours. The working rule at most sites, and a hard requirement at mosques, is to cover shoulders and knees — and long loose sleeves and trousers actually block the sun better than shorts and a vest, while keeping the dust off your skin. Women should carry a scarf for covering hair and shoulders at religious sites; a large one doubles as a sun wrap and a shoulder cover in a pinch. Bring one light layer — a fleece or packable jacket — for cool evenings, fierce air conditioning on trains and cruise boats, and genuinely cold desert nights, where the temperature can drop 15°C after dark. Add one smarter outfit for a nice dinner or a cruise evening; nothing formal, just something you'd wear to a good restaurant at home. For the Red Sea, normal swimwear and beachwear are fine at resorts and on cruise sundecks, but keep a cover-up handy for walking to and from the pool. A handful of quick-dry underwear and socks beats a week's worth of cotton, since you'll be washing on the go.

Footwear

Comfortable closed walking shoes or trainers matter more than travellers expect. The great sites are large, dusty and uneven, and you'll walk for hours on hot stone and sand — open sandals leave your feet grey with grit and exposed to the sun. Bring a second pair of sandals for the beach, the boat and the evening. Break in new shoes before the trip; a full day at Karnak or on the Giza plateau is not where you want to discover a blister. Pack a few pairs of good socks too — the dust works into everything, and clean feet at the end of a long day is a small luxury. If you're heading into a tomb or two, note the floors can be slick with fine dust, so grip matters more than looks.

What to pack by season

The season sets the layers, not the whole bag. The essentials — sun kit, modest cotton, closed shoes — stay constant year-round; what changes is how much warmth you add for the evenings and how hard you lean into sun defence.

Season	Days	Nights	Pack accordingly
Winter (Dec–Feb)	Mild, 18–24°C	Cool to cold, near freezing in desert	Warm fleece or jacket, long layers for evenings, a hat still essential
Spring / Autumn (Mar–May, Oct–Nov)	Warm, 25–33°C	Mild	Light layer for evenings; the ideal, easy packing window
Summer (Jun–Aug)	Fierce, often 40°C+ inland	Warm	Maximum sun defence, loose long cotton, extra water; skip heavy layers

See the best time to visit Egypt for the full month-by-month picture behind these bands.

Sun and health

Non-negotiable: a wide-brimmed hat, sunglasses, and high-SPF sunscreen. Sunscreen in particular is expensive and hard to find in Egypt, so bring your own supply and enough of it — a fortnight of daily reapplication burns through more than you think, and running out mid-trip means paying triple at a resort shop. Pack a refillable water bottle — you'll drink two to three litres a day — and a basic medical kit: any personal prescription medication in its original packaging, rehydration salts, a stomach remedy such as loperamide, plus painkillers, antihistamines and any plasters. Travellers' diarrhoea is common and usually mild, but it's miserable to shop for it at 2am, so pack ahead. Add hand sanitiser and tissues or wet wipes, because public toilets often have neither soap nor paper. Insect repellent earns its place near the Nile and the oases at dusk. If you wear contact lenses, bring extra solution and a pair of glasses, since dust and dry air are hard on eyes at the sites.

Toiletries and the small forgotten things

Hotels supply the basics, but a few items are worth bringing rather than hunting for locally: lip balm with SPF (the dry heat cracks lips fast), a small tube of aloe or after-sun, and quick-dry travel towel if you're doing desert camps or budget guesthouses. A zip-lock bag or two keeps sand and dust out of electronics on desert days. Women visiting during their period should pack their preferred products — brands and choice are limited outside big-city pharmacies. And a compact microfibre cloth for wiping camera lenses and sunglasses earns its place; grit gets on everything.

The practical extras

Egypt runs 220V on European-style two-round-pin plugs (Type C and Type F), so bring a suitable adapter — US and UK devices both need one. Pack a power bank for long days with no outlets. Carry cash in small EGP notes for the constant small tips (baksheesh) — see our Egypt travel tips for how much to give whom. Bring a photo and a paper photocopy of your passport and visa, kept separately from the originals. A daypack carries water, sunscreen and a layer each day, and a dust scarf or buff is genuinely useful on desert trips and windy sites. If you're diving the Red Sea, pack your certification card and logbook — centres won't take you down without proof.

Packing by leg: cruise, desert, Red Sea

Match a few items to where you're headed. For a Nile cruise, pack one smart-casual outfit for dinner, a swimsuit for the sundeck pool, and a light wrap for breezy evenings on the water. For a desert or oasis trip such as Siwa or the White Desert, the dust scarf, a warm layer for cold nights, and closed shoes are the priorities — winter nights in the Western Desert drop near freezing. For the Red Sea, add reef-safe sunscreen, a rash guard for long snorkel sessions, and water shoes for rocky entries; the Hurghada travel guide covers what the trips involve. If you plan to enter mosques, keep one modest outfit accessible rather than buried at the bottom of the bag.

How much to bring

Aim for a carry-on plus a small daypack, even for two weeks. Egypt is warm and hotel laundry is cheap and fast, so pack for four to five days and wash mid-trip rather than hauling a fortnight of clothes. Roll clothes to save space and leave room for a souvenir or two. Domestic EgyptAir flights cap checked bags tightly and cruise cabins are cramped, so a heavy case works against you at every single transfer.

What you can skip

Leave behind heavy clothing (outside winter desert nights), formal wear beyond one smart outfit, and bulk toiletries you can buy locally in any city pharmacy. Skip the hairdryer — hotels supply them. Don't bother with a money belt worn on show; a zipped daypack and normal city sense do the job. You also don't need a heavy guidebook if you've downloaded offline maps and a couple of guides to your phone, and you can leave the drone at home — flying one near sites or cities needs permits and is often confiscated at the airport. Packing lean here isn't minimalism for its own sake; it's the difference between gliding through internal-flight bag limits and small cruise cabins, and fighting your luggage the whole trip. For the wider plan, browse the best things to do in Egypt, check the best time to visit Egypt, or start building your route from our experience catalogue.

See also: which vaccinations you need for Egypt.