The Combined Cairo-museum pass — seven days, four major museums.
The Combined Cairo-museum pass is the newest pass category in the rota (launched November 2024). It covers the four major Cairo museums — the Grand Egyptian Museum, the National Museum of Egyptian Civilisation, the Cairo Egyptian Museum at Tahrir, and the Coptic Museum — across a seven-day validity window. $120 tourist tier, EGP 1 200 resident tier.
The four museums.
The pass covers the GEM (EGP 1 200 tourist stand-alone), the NMEC (EGP 600 stand-alone, includes the Royal Mummies hall), the Cairo Egyptian Museum at Tahrir (EGP 550 stand-alone), and the Coptic Museum (EGP 200 stand-alone). The four together at stand-alone tourist pricing would cost EGP 2 550; the Combined pass at EGP 1 200 (~$120) saves the visitor about fifty-three percent against individual entry.
The seven-day validity.
Seven days from first scan at any of the four museums. The window is generous because Cairo's traffic and the museums' geographic distribution mean that practical visiting cannot fit four major museums into fewer than three or four days. Most pass-holders consume the four museums across four separate days within the window.
Gate-applied variances.
One main variance to be aware of. The GEM's pass-holder entry uses a different ticket-window queue than the GEM's main individual-ticket queue; pass-holders should look for the "Combined pass" sign at the GEM entrance which is to the left of the main entry. New gate staff occasionally direct pass-holders to the wrong queue; ask politely for the Combined-pass queue if redirected.
Refund policy.
Refundable within seven days of purchase if no museum has been visited. After first scan, non-refundable. The refund process is administered at the GEM main ticket office.
How to buy.
Sold only at the GEM main ticket office (no other outlet currently). Payment in US dollars cash, Egyptian pounds cash, or Egyptian and foreign credit cards.
The Combined pass's first-year performance.
The Combined Cairo-museum pass was launched in November 2024 and the registry has tracked its first eighteen months of operation closely. Volume has grown steadily — the Tourism Authority's published quarterly figures show approximately four thousand passes sold in the first quarter (November 2024 to January 2025), eight thousand in the second quarter, eleven thousand in the third quarter, and approximately fourteen thousand in the most recent published quarter. The growth reflects the pass's strong value proposition (the four major museums at fifty-three percent off individual entry) and the fact that the GEM's full opening from November 2024 created the visitor population that the pass was designed to serve. The registry expects the Combined pass to overtake the Luxor Pass as the highest-volume pass category by late 2026 if the growth curve holds.
The pass's gate-applied rule clarifications since launch.
The Tourism Authority published two clarifications to the Combined Cairo-museum pass's gate-applied rules in the first eighteen months of operation. The first clarification (January 2025) addressed a recurring confusion at the GEM's pass-holder queue, where new gate staff had been directing pass-holders to the main queue; the clarification formalised the separate pass-holder queue and provided improved signage. The second clarification (October 2025) addressed the Cairo Egyptian Museum at Tahrir's intermittent ticket-window confusion about which museum entrances accept the Combined pass; the clarification confirmed all five public entrances accept the pass.
The recommended pass-purchase sequence for a typical seven-day Cairo visit.
The registry's recommendation for a typical seven-day Cairo visit (four museums plus the Giza plateau plus other attractions) is: buy the Giza Pass on the first plateau-visit day at the Giza visitor centre (consumes day one and one return for the evening light show), then buy the Combined Cairo-museum pass at the GEM on the planned GEM-visit day (consumes four separate days for the four museums). The total pass cost at tourist rate is $60 + $120 = $180; the visitor effectively spreads the museum visits across the seven-day Combined pass window with the Giza plateau handled separately.
The pass is the cooperative's most-watched single pass file because it is the newest in the rota and the gate-applied rules are still settling into their stable form. Readers planning Cairo visits in 2026 should expect further refinements as the museums and the Tourism Authority continue to align the operational practice with the published framework.
The companion files on Luxor Pass, Giza Pass and expat-resident card cover the other categories.