Before you read on
- When you race
- 14–15 November 2026
- How many nights to book
- 3 nights
- Who this race suits
- A cheap, warm, dry race in a city you would come to anyway.
- Nearest airport to the venue
- Cairo International (CAI), About 25 min by ride-hail, or Line 3 to Fair Zone and a cab
- Cost for the weekend
- EGP 6700 (USD 119) per person, Flights and race entry.
On this page
Should you race here?
A cheap warm-weather race, in a city worth three extra days.
Reasons to
- Warm and almost rainless: 24.9°C (77°F) by day and 4mm of rain in the whole month.
- Cheap in a way few races are. Rooms from about USD 23 and a bowl of koshary for a dollar.
- Twenty-five minutes from the airport to the venue, which no other race on the calendar matches.
- The Grand Egyptian Museum and the pyramids are an hour away on the other side of the city.
Reasons not to
- The air. Egypt's annual PM2.5 is eight times the WHO guideline and mid-November is the burning season.
- Traffic decides every journey, and the distances on the map bear no relation to the time.
- The venue sits in the dullest part of the city, so the good evenings are all half an hour away.
Conditions on the day
HYROX Cairo runs November 14th, 2026 to November 15th, 2026 at Egypt International Exhibition Center. Here is what that specific window is like on the ground.
The catch
Warm, dry and almost rainless
25°C (77°F) by day, 16°C (60°F) at night
Cairo in mid-November
- The November average reaches 24.9°C (77°F) by day and falls to 15.6°C (60°F) at night.
- It is the driest month of a dry year: 4mm of rain, spread across less than one day.
- Humidity is 61%, which is lower than it sounds for a city on a river.
- Daylight runs 06:19 to 17:00, so the evening is short even though the day is warm.
- Daylight
- Dark
- Bar height is temperature
What racing here is like
Your race is here
Egypt International Exhibition Center
November 14th, 2026
HYROX Cairo
- Everything below describes this building first, and the other for comparison
The venue at a glance
- Address
- El-Moshir Tantawy Axis, Al Hay Al Asher, Nasr City, Cairo
- Nearest station
- Fair Zone metro station, Line 3 (then a short cab)
- Parking
- On site at the exhibition centre, with room for the fairs it was built for.
- From the nearest hotel
- 5 to 15 min by road from Hotels in Nasr City
- Altitude
- 23m above sea level, low enough to make no difference to your race.
- Bag drop
- Hyrox has not published the bag drop arrangement for Cairo.
- Supporters
- Hyrox has not published spectator ticketing for Cairo.
Cairo has moved building, moved season, and grown from a single day into the best part of a week. Where you race, and when, changes the day more than most people expect.
Egypt International Exhibition Center, your race is in this building
Four trade-fair halls with 8m ceilings on the eastern edge of Nasr City, about 20km from the river and the old city.
Known for. The defence and technology fairs that bring the region to Cairo, including EDEX and Cairo ICT.
The building. Built as Egypt's main exhibition ground on the desert side of Nasr City, where the land was flat and there was room to add halls.
Race day and start times
The thing that shapes your travel is not the race date. It is when you find out what time you are racing on it.
Hyrox links individual start times on the event page about three days before the race. A provisional schedule goes up earlier.
What to bring
At the exhibition centre, and only on the day you compete. Registration opens 90 minutes before the first wave of your division.
You do not bring a chip. You collect the ankle strap at check-in, wear it for the race, and hand it back after the line.
What your wristband does not cover
You are given a wristband at check-in. Hyrox has not published what the Cairo one admits you to, and check-in is open only on the day you race, so do not assume it covers a second day.
Getting there on the morning
Book an Uber or a Careem in the app. Twenty minutes from most of Nasr City and Heliopolis, and the roads are empty early.
What you need to book
Before you book
Book flights and the last night around the provisional schedule, not around a wave you have not been given.
If Hyrox cancels or postpones the event, its terms do not cover your flights or your room. Check the cancellation deadline on both before you pay for either.
Flying into the city
Sphinx International, out towards Giza, takes a few budget routes and is much further from Nasr City.
Search flights to CairoBy train
Check train times and faresSomewhere to stay
The closest beds go first, and those are the ones that matter on race morning.
Compare hotels near the venueSomething to do with the rest of the weekend
Most people fly in for one race and see nothing. The day before is dead time if you do not plan it.
Tours and tickets in CairoSomewhere to put your bag
Flying out the same evening? This is the difference between a good afternoon and hauling a kit bag around a city.
Left luggage in CairoYour entry
Sold by Hyrox, one ticket per division per day. We earn nothing from this link and include it because you need it.
Official Hyrox entriesEstimate weekend cost
| Item | Local currency | USD |
|---|---|---|
| Three nights Nights near the venue | EGP 3900 | $69 |
| Travel, airport and around the city | EGP 1,100 | $20 |
| Eating, three days | EGP 1,700 | $30 |
| One athlete plus one supporter | EGP 6700 | $119 |
Getting to Cairo
Cairo International is about 25 minutes from Nasr City by ride-hail, which is the shortest airport transfer on the calendar.
Ride-hail from the airport
Cairo International to Nasr City is about 25 minutes and about EGP 290 in the app, which is roughly five dollars. The shortest airport transfer of any race on the calendar.
The metro gets close
Line 3 runs from the airport across the city and stops at Fair Zone, on Salah Salem in front of the fairground. A single fare is EGP 10 to 20 and you finish the trip in a cab.
Entry requirements
Quick tip
Book the car in the app rather than taking a kerbside taxi. The fare is about EGP 290 and the argument is not worth the EGP 100.
Getting to the venue
Nasr City is the closest and the dullest. Heliopolis is fifteen minutes away and far better to spend an evening in. Downtown and Zamalek are half an hour of traffic each way.
The metro is cheap, clean and fast, and it does not quite reach the venue: Fair Zone on Line 3 leaves you a short cab ride away. Almost everyone will use Uber or Careem instead, which are cheap here by any standard and easier than explaining the hall number to a street taxi.
Where to stay
Nasr City is the closest and the plainest. Heliopolis, fifteen minutes north, is the better base: the same drive to the hall, a far better evening.
Open in Google Maps · Get directions
1. Hotels in Nasr City
Business hotels and serviced flats, from about USD 23 a night. Closest to the hall and nearest the airport.
2. Hotels in Heliopolis
A garden suburb of wide streets and old villas, with the city's best business hotels. Fifteen minutes from the hall.
3. Hotels in Zamalek
The nicest place to stay in Cairo and the furthest from the race. The film festival is on its doorstep that week.
The film festival fills Zamalek and Downtown from 11 November. Nasr City and Heliopolis are unaffected and are where the race is.
Neighbourhoods worth the commute
Cairo is enormous and the traffic decides everything. The distances below are short; the times are what the roads do to them.
| Area | To the venue | Why | Suits |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nasr City | about 10 min by road | A planned district of apartment blocks and malls built east of the old city. Dull, convenient and cheap, with City Stars for anything you forgot. | |
| Heliopolis | about 15 min by road | A garden suburb laid out in the 1900s, with arcades, wide streets and the best hotels outside the centre. The easiest evening near the race. | |
| Downtown | about 30 min by road | Belle Epoque blocks, the Egyptian Museum and the best cheap eating in the city. Noisy and the real thing. | |
| Zamalek | about 35 min by road | An island in the Nile, leafy and quiet, full of embassies and galleries. Where visitors wish they had stayed. | |
| New Cairo | about 25 min by road | A newer district further east, with the compounds and the chain restaurants. Easy driving, no character. |
Eating before and after
The night before a race is not the night for the best meal of your trip, which is harder discipline than it sounds in a city this good at food.
City Stars, in Nasr City
A mall ten minutes from the hall with every chain you recognise and a few you do not. Not an experience, but it is open, it is close and it serves rice.
Heliopolis
The arcades along Korba have pavement kitchens that serve early and well, fifteen minutes from the hall. The best version of a quiet night before.
Egyptian food is carbohydrate and more carbohydrate, which for once is exactly right the night before.
Koshary at Abou Tarek
Rice, lentils, macaroni, chickpeas, tomato sauce and fried onions in one bowl. Four floors of it, served since 1950, and about the best pre-race meal any city offers by accident.
Koshary anywhere else
Every district has its own shop and most charge EGP 25 to 80. The modern chains like Zööba take it to EGP 90 to 150 and add a nicer room.
Race day supplies
The practical failures that spoil a race weekend are almost never the training. They are forgetting the gels, or carrying a kit bag around a city for six hours.
Pack list
- Something for the air if you are asthmatic. Mid-November is the end of the Delta burning season and the haze can be thick.
- A layer for the evening. Nights fall to 15.6°C (60°F) and the sun is down by five.
- Nothing waterproof. Cairo gets 4mm of rain in the whole of November.
Quick tips
- Use Uber or Careem rather than street taxis. The fares are low and fixed, and nobody argues.
- Carry small notes. A great deal here costs EGP 20 and nobody has change.
Nasr City has City Stars ten minutes from the hall, which has a supermarket and a pharmacy. You will not need to plan ahead here.
The last race in Cairo
Hyrox has not raced in Egypt before, so there is no previous weekend here to describe.
What happened
The last edition, in short.
- Hyrox calls this its debut in Cairo, so nobody has a lap of this hall to pass on.
- The race is in Hall 4 of four, on a site large enough that the hall number matters.
What it means for you
How your race differs from that one.
- No report from a previous year describes this building, because there has not been one.
- The air is the local variable here, not the heat. Mid-November is the tail of the burning season in the Delta.
What else is on that weekend
A full week in the city, though nothing shares the exhibition centre.
| What | When | Where | What it means |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Cairo International Film Festival, 47th edition | 11 to 20 November | The Cairo Opera House, Zamalek | Ten days across the race weekend. It fills the Zamalek and Downtown hotels and the streets around the Opera House in the evenings. |
| Cairo Comix | 13 to 15 November | The Mahmoud Mokhtar Cultural Centre, Zamalek | Both race days, on the other side of the city. No effect on Nasr City. |
| Hiba Tawfiq at the Fustat Festival | 13 November | Fustat, south of the centre | The Friday evening before racing. Traffic on Salah Salem is heavier than usual that night. |
| Max Amini, live | 13 and 14 November | The New Administrative Capital, east of the city | An hour further east again. Nothing to do with your weekend unless you want a night out. |
What to see
Written for someone racing tomorrow, not a tourist with a week. Each entry says how far it is, because some of these are worth a longer trip and some are not.
The Grand Egyptian Museum
Twenty years in the building, on the desert edge at Giza, holding the whole Tutankhamun collection together for the first time. A full day, and the reason to arrive early rather than late.
The Giza pyramids and the Sphinx
They are on the edge of the suburbs rather than out in the sand, which surprises everyone. Go at opening, before the heat and the coaches.
The National Museum of Egyptian Civilization
Quieter than the two famous ones, and it holds the royal mummies in a dark hall downstairs. Twenty pharaohs, lying in a row, lit one at a time.
The Citadel
Saladin's fortress on the hill, with the Muhammad Ali mosque inside it and the whole city below. The clearest view you will get of how large Cairo is.
What to do
Al-Azhar Park
A park built on what was a rubbish tip for six hundred years, looking across the medieval city to the Citadel. Flat paths and somewhere to sit, which is what the day before wants.
Khan el-Khalili
A market that has been trading on the same lanes since the fourteenth century. Free to walk through, impossible to walk through quickly, and the coffee at El Fishawy has been poured for two hundred years.
A felucca at sunset
An hour on the river in a wooden sailing boat, hired by the boat, not by the seat. The light goes at five in November, so go at four.
Fayoum and Wadi El Rayan
Two hours south-west, a lake and a desert valley with waterfalls and whale fossils in it. A full day out, and the only green thing here that is not the river.
Raced here? Tell us about it.
Anything you wish you had known. It goes into this guide for the next person, and most of them have never done a Hyrox.
Things people find useful
- How early you really needed to arrive
- What caught you out
- What the hall was like inside
- Where your supporters watched from
- Anything good you did in the city
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Last updated November 7th, 2026.