The largest cities in Egypt by population are Cairo (about 10.1 million), Alexandria (5.4 million), Giza (4.1 million), Shubra El Kheima (1.2 million), Port Said (750,000), Suez (730,000), Luxor (510,000), Mansoura (490,000), Tanta (450,000) and Asyut (420,000). Together these cities anchor a nation of roughly 102 million people, most of whom live packed along the narrow ribbon of the Nile Valley and across its fan-shaped delta.
The Ten Largest Egyptian Cities
Egypt is one of the most urbanised countries in Africa, yet its population is squeezed into a tiny fraction of its land. The list below ranks the ten largest cities by population within their core municipal boundaries:
- Cairo — about 10.1 million
- Alexandria — about 5.4 million
- Giza — about 4.1 million
- Shubra El Kheima — about 1.2 million
- Port Said — about 750,000
- Suez — about 730,000
- Luxor — about 510,000
- Mansoura — about 490,000
- Tanta — about 450,000
- Asyut — about 420,000
Note that Cairo, Giza and Shubra El Kheima physically run into one another to form Greater Cairo, a metropolitan region home to more than 20 million people and the largest urban agglomeration in both Africa and the Arab world.
Cairo, Alexandria and the Megacity Core
Cairo is Egypt's capital and undisputed centre of gravity. Sprawling along the Nile just south of the delta, it is the political, financial and cultural heart of the country, home to government ministries, the Arab League headquarters, and the medieval mosques and bazaars of Islamic Cairo. A new administrative capital is being built in the desert to its east to relieve the pressure on the historic city.
Alexandria, the second city, hugs the Mediterranean coast for some 32 kilometres. Founded by Alexander the Great in 331 BCE, it was once the intellectual capital of the ancient world, famed for its library and lighthouse. Today it is Egypt's leading port and a summer escape from the desert heat. Giza, immediately southwest of Cairo across the river, is best known worldwide as the home of the Great Pyramids and the Sphinx, though it is also a major residential and industrial centre in its own right.
Canal Cities and Industrial Hubs
Several of Egypt's largest cities owe their importance to water and trade. Shubra El Kheima, just north of Cairo, is a dense industrial and manufacturing district that grew rapidly as factories spread along the Nile. Port Said sits at the Mediterranean entrance of the Suez Canal, while Suez guards its southern, Red Sea end. Both were founded or transformed by the canal's construction in the 1860s and remain vital to global shipping, oil refining and petrochemicals. Their fortunes rise and fall with traffic through one of the world's busiest maritime corridors.
Delta Towns and the Upper Nile
The fertile Nile Delta supports a cluster of mid-sized cities. Mansoura and Tanta are agricultural and university towns serving the cotton- and rice-growing heartland; Tanta is also famous for its annual moulid festival, which draws huge crowds. Moving south into Upper Egypt, Asyut is the region's commercial hub, while Luxor sits atop the ancient city of Thebes. Luxor's relatively modest population belies its global fame: the Valley of the Kings, Karnak and Luxor Temples make it one of the greatest open-air museums on Earth and a cornerstone of Egyptian tourism.
Why Egypt's Population Clusters
Although Egypt covers more than one million square kilometres, around 95% of its people live on roughly 5% of the land. The vast Western and Eastern Deserts are nearly empty, so cities crowd along the Nile and across the delta, where water for drinking, farming and industry is available. This concentration explains why Greater Cairo is so dense and why rapid urbanisation continues to swell the major cities. For more background on the country, see our egypt country guide.
Everyone Lives on Four Per Cent of the Country
Egypt is about a million square kilometres, and almost the entire population lives in the Nile valley and delta, an area amounting to roughly four per cent of the territory. The rest is desert.
Seen from orbit at night the country appears as a bright ribbon widening into a fan at the Mediterranean, with a few isolated points along the Suez Canal and the Red Sea coast. It is one of the most visually obvious population distributions on the planet.
Population density calculated over the whole country looks moderate. Calculated over the inhabited strip, it is among the highest in the world, comparable to Bangladesh.
Cairo Is the Largest City in Africa and the Arab World
Greater Cairo holds somewhere above twenty million people, which makes it the largest urban area in both Africa and the Arab world. It has been a major city since the Fatimids founded it in 969, and Fustat beside it dates from the Arab conquest three centuries earlier.
Its historic core is a UNESCO World Heritage Site containing several hundred registered monuments, and al-Azhar, founded in 970, is among the oldest continuously operating universities anywhere and the most influential institution in Sunni Islamic scholarship.
The city's growth has outrun its formal housing supply for decades, so a very large proportion of residents live in informal districts built without permits, typically on former agricultural land at the edges. Estimates of the share of Cairenes living in such areas run above half.
The Government Is Building a New Capital
Since 2015 Egypt has been constructing a new administrative capital in the desert about 45 kilometres east of Cairo, intended to hold ministries, parliament, embassies and several million residents.
It includes the Iconic Tower, the tallest building in Africa, and a government district that began operating from 2023. The stated purpose is to relieve Cairo's congestion; the cost and the question of who will be able to afford to live there have both been widely debated.
It is not Egypt's first attempt. Satellite cities including 6th of October, New Cairo and 10th of Ramadan were built from the 1970s onwards with similar aims, and most grew more slowly than planned while Cairo itself kept expanding.
Alexandria Faces the Mediterranean
Alexandria was founded by Alexander in 331 BC and was the intellectual centre of the Hellenistic world, home to the Library and the Pharos lighthouse, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. Neither survives; the lighthouse fell to earthquakes and its stone went into the Qaitbay citadel on the same spot.
The city was Egypt's window on Europe through the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, with large Greek, Italian, Jewish and Armenian communities, most of which left after 1952. Constantine Cavafy and Lawrence Durrell both wrote it into literature.
Modern Alexandria is the country's main port and second city, strung along a corniche on a low delta coast that is among the parts of the Mediterranean most exposed to sea level rise.
The Canal Cities and the Dam
Port Said, Ismailia and Suez exist because of the canal, opened in 1869 and expanded with a parallel channel in 2015. Canal transit fees are one of Egypt's largest sources of foreign currency, which makes disruptions to Red Sea shipping a direct fiscal problem.
Upstream, the Aswan High Dam, completed in 1970, ended the Nile's annual flood and created Lake Nasser. It secured year-round irrigation and hydroelectricity, and it also stopped the silt that had fertilised Egyptian fields for millennia and that had been replenishing the delta coastline.
Building it required relocating the temples at Abu Simbel and Philae, cut into blocks and reassembled on higher ground in one of the largest archaeological rescue operations ever mounted, and the resettlement of tens of thousands of Nubians whose villages were flooded.
Common Questions About Egyptian Cities
What is the largest city in Egypt?
Cairo is the largest city in Egypt, with about 10.1 million residents in the city proper and more than 20 million across the wider Greater Cairo metropolitan area, making it the biggest city in Africa and the Middle East.
Is Alexandria bigger than Giza?
Yes. Alexandria, with around 5.4 million people, is larger than Giza, which has about 4.1 million. However, Giza is effectively part of the Greater Cairo conurbation, so it functions as one connected metropolis with the capital.
How many people live in Egypt?
Egypt has a total population of roughly 102 million people, making it the most populous country in the Arab world and the third most populous in Africa, after Nigeria and Ethiopia.
Why do most Egyptians live near the Nile?
The Nile and its delta provide the only reliable source of fresh water and fertile farmland in an otherwise arid landscape. With deserts covering most of the country, settlements have always concentrated along the river, a pattern that still shapes where the largest cities sit today.
How big is Cairo?
The governorate holds around ten million, but Greater Cairo, including Giza and Qalyubia, is above twenty million and is the largest metropolitan area in Africa and the Arab world.
Is Egypt really building a new capital?
Yes. A new administrative capital east of Cairo has been under construction since 2015, and government ministries began relocating there from 2023. Cairo remains the legal capital and by far the larger city, and the transfer is incomplete.
Where are the pyramids in relation to Cairo?
The Giza pyramids sit on the western edge of the metropolitan area, in Giza governorate, and the city has grown outwards to meet them. The suburbs now reach within a few hundred metres of the plateau, which surprises most first-time visitors.