The government of Egypt finally announced a new grand opening date for the Grand Egyptian Museum, but at the same time they left out several other very important details. In this brief update video, John Navarre, creator of GrandEgyptianMuseum.org, discusses the important information that was left out of the new announcement and what visitors to Egypt can expect surrounding the newly announced target opening period during the fourth quarter of the year.
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We finally have a NEW opening date for the official grand opening of the Grand Egyptian Museum in Egypt, and it only took them 2 more months after canceling the last full grand opening date over the summer to officially confirm a new date.
Remember when they postponed the long-awaited and promised July grand opening date, it was out of fear that the new and unexpected conflict between Israel and Iran, which the US then quickly entered too, would last much longer than it did and cause all kinds of disruptions in the region, including restricted air travel, world leaders and dignitaries not being able to travel to Egypt for the grand opening ceremony, and a generally bad aesthetic to be hosting a lavish series of ceremonies and parties in the same region that all that was going on.
However, luckily for everyone, that conflict quickly dissipated after about a week, but the postponement had already been done. At the time, the government of Egypt said that it would reschedule the GEM’s grand opening for later in the fourth quarter of the year – so some time between October 1st and December 31st of 2025.
You’ll recall in my last video update for the world about the GEM’s full opening postponement, at the very end of that video I spent a few minutes predicting, based on historical tourism patterns that I’ve seen here in Egypt over the past 13 years, when during that fourth quarter period would be the least worst time to move the new full opening date to, given that they would have to inevitably close the full museum for at least a few days to a week beforehand to get ready for the opening ceremony.
When they were planning to open it in early July, they announced a full closure of the GEM for a full two weeks prior, which really disappointed thousands of visitors to Egypt that had pre-planned trips here during that period. But at least that was during the slow summer low season for tourism in Egypt, although even in the low season Egypt still has tens of thousands of tourist arrivals each month.
Unfortunately, they did not do a good job of communicating that closure with the global public far enough in advance, but we’ve come to expect that with the GEM and with things here in Egypt in general.
Now, as I predicted, they have chosen the beginning of November for the new grand opening date – the 1st of November to be precise. But that could still change by a few days, because remember how last time around they promised the 3rd of July, then it got changed to the 5th and then finally the 6th, with slightly more than a 2-week full closure period immediately preceding that full public opening date.
Surely they will have to close the GEM for a period of time before this new opening date of November 1st too, although they cannot possibly close it for that long during the very busy high season month of October. That would just be insane. It’s likely that they’re going to compress the closure period to a week or less, which is still bad to do during the last week of October.
They would have been much better off doing the closure the first week of November and having their big opening ceremony and party around November 6th or 8th or 10th. But they have decided, for now, on November 1st, so that forces them to do the pre-opening preparations closure during the last week of October.
Unfortunately, they did not follow up on the new opening date announcement with any announcement about this pre-opening closure period. And that was really NOT a smart move, because that matters equally as much to hundreds of thousands of foreign tourists who already have pre-planned trips to Egypt during that period, having fully expected, in good faith, that the museum would already be long open by then, as previously promised.
Communicating with the public and public relations is not a strong point for Egypt. The GEM even has a public relations office that doesn’t seem to do much public relations at all, which is not only unprofessional and a huge mistake, but it’s really harming Egypt’s image to keep the global public in the dark about important details like this, as has been the case for the entire time the GEM has been under construction and partially open.
Both Egypt and the GEM need to do better, and hopefully in the future they will. But until then, you have experts – like yours truly – who have volunteered our time and effort to finding out detailed information about what to expect with the GEM and sharing it with the global public so that you all can plan better and make more informed choices about when and how to travel to and around Egypt.
So for now, we have a new official target full grand opening date for the Grand Egyptian Museum of November 1st, 2025. And we have an expectation of a pre-opening full closure period of some time between a few days and a week before that as they finalize the transfer of King Tut’s greatest treasures to their new home in the GEM and secure the property and its perimeter for the grand opening ceremony and associated parties and events around November 1st.
And although the date that the full museum will be fully open to the public may shift forward by a day or few around then, I’d put the chances of it finally opening that first week of November, as I predicted, at about 99 percent at this point. That is, unless aliens decide to invade or something else crazy and unpredictable happens.
At this point, only something like that could stop the full grand opening of the Grand Egyptian Museum in early November.
As we find out more information on the ground here in Egypt, rest assured that I’ll continue to keep you informed both here on The Egypt Travel Channel and on GrandEgyptianMuseum.org – the only home on the web for verified and up-to-date information about the Grand Egyptian Museum’s progress toward its full opening to the world.
