Sports in Egypt

What sports are played in Egypt?

The widest countable measure of breadth is the Olympic entry list. Olympedia records Egyptian entrants at the 2024 Olympic Games in 26 sports and disciplines: archery, artistic gymnastics, artistic swimming, athletics, beach volleyball, boxing, canoe sprint, track cycling, diving, fencing, football, handball, judo, modern pentathlon, rhythmic gymnastics, rowing, sailing, shooting, swimming, table tennis, taekwondo, tennis, trampolining, volleyball, weightlifting and wrestling.^[2] Pages here cover swimming, diving, artistic swimming, athletics, fencing, judo, taekwondo, wrestling, weightlifting, modern pentathlon, handball, volleyball, football, rowing, sailing, shooting, archery and table tennis.

Squash is not on the Olympic programme and so does not appear in an Olympic entry list at all; it is measured instead by the professional tour's own ranking, in which four Egyptians held places in the men's top ten and four in the women's top ten of the PSA World Rankings published for 14 September 2026.^[5][6] And the aquatic disciplines are administered together: the Egyptian Federation for Aquatic Sports describes itself on its own site as "the Egyptian official governing body for the five Aquatic Sports" — swimming, diving, water polo, synchronised swimming and open water swimming — and states that it was founded in 1907.^[4] Karate was on the Olympic programme only in 2020 and is absent from the 2024 list for that reason.^[3]

What is the most popular spectator sport in Egypt?

Two structural proxies are available on different bases, so both are given. The first is the admission ceiling set for the top football tier. Ahram Online reported on 18 February 2024 that the president of the Egyptian Premier League, Ahmed Diab, had announced that the limit on spectators per match would rise from 10,000 to 20,000, "implemented beginning with the 13th matchday" of the 2023–24 season.^[7] That figure is an administrative cap on attendance rather than a measured average, and the two are different quantities.

The second is the season the cap governs. Ahram Online's factbox of 21 May 2026 records Zamalek taking the 2025–26 Egyptian Premier League title the day before, with 56 points from 26 matches, ahead of Pyramids FC by two points and Al Ahly by three.^[8] The admission ceiling applies to every match in that season.

Indoor sport carries its own proxy: Egypt staged the 27th IHF Men's World Championship in January 2021.^[23] No audited audience measurement for Egyptian sport broadcasting could be retrieved, so no broadcast-audience figure is given.

How is sport organised in Egypt?

Sport is governed under Egyptian Sports Law No. 71 of 2017. A Getting The Deal Through survey of Egyptian sports law records that each sports body under the supervision of the Ministry of Youth and Sports "has the authority to draft and enact its own statutes", and that articles 66 to 70 provide for a sports dispute resolution centre, established under the auspices of the Egyptian Olympic Committee by a decision of its board of directors on 26 July 2017; the text of the law itself could not be retrieved for this page.^[9] See national sports law. ANOC's directory gives the committee's address in Nasr City, Cairo, and the election of its president on 25 April 2025; the entry carries no founding year and no year of IOC recognition, which are distinct dates and neither could be confirmed for this page from a primary source.^[10]

Below that sit the sport-by-sport federations, among them the Egyptian Fencing Federation, the Egyptian Judo, Aikido and Sumo Federation and the Egyptian Federation for Aquatic Sports.^[4] Football is administered by the Egyptian Football Association, under the Confederation of African Football.

Anti-doping decisions have reached federation level. The Independent Member Federations Sanctions Panel suspended the Egyptian Weightlifting Federation for two years by a decision of 12 September 2019, taken under article 12 of the IWF Anti-Doping Policy; the IWF's announcement of the decision states no ground.^[11] The federation appealed; the International Weightlifting Federation reported on 4 December 2019 that the Court of Arbitration for Sport had dismissed the appeal and upheld the panel's decision, and that the suspension prevented Egypt from entering the 2019 World Weightlifting Championships or qualifying weightlifters for the 2020 Olympic Games.^[12] Separately, the International Testing Agency announced on 19 May 2022 that six Egyptian weightlifters had accepted two-year periods of ineligibility, running from 22 January 2020 to 21 January 2022, following adverse analytical findings for a prohibited stimulant in samples collected on 29 and 30 August 2019 at the African Games; the ITA records the cases as accepted by the athletes.^[13] See anti-doping.

What are the main domestic leagues and competitions?

The Egyptian Premier League is the top football tier. Ahram Online records Zamalek as 2025–26 champions, confirmed the day before its report of 21 May 2026, and gives the club's league titles as 1960, 1964, 1965, 1978, 1984, 1988, 1992, 1993, 2001, 2003, 2004, 2015, 2021, 2022 and 2026 — fifteen in all.^[8]

Continental trophy counts are contested, and the distinction between a confederation's record and a club's own claim matters. CAF reported on 25 May 2024 that Al Ahly's 1–0 win over Espérance Sportive de Tunis at Cairo International Stadium was "the Egyptians' 12th TotalEnergies CAF Champions League title".^[14] Al Ahly's own website separately states that an Egyptian Super Cup win on 9 November 2025 "extended Al Ahly's record haul to 156 titles across domestic, regional, continental and international competitions" — a figure published by the club about itself, on a basis the club sets.^[15] For Zamalek, CAF reported on 15 January 2025 "five successes in the TotalEnergies CAF Champions League, the last of which was in 2002".^[16]

Egyptian league football was stopped after the Port Said stadium disaster of 1 February 2012. The 2011–12 season was abandoned; the Egyptian Football Association set the competition's restart for 30 December 2012, with matches closed to spectators and played on armed-forces pitches.^[17] Spectators were readmitted to Premier League matches in September 2018, the association lifting the closure after consulting the Interior Ministry and undertaking to penalise clubs whose supporters were found responsible for disorder.^[18]

How has Egypt performed at the Olympic Games?

This section uses Olympedia throughout and mixes no other count. Olympedia records Egypt's first appearance at the 1920 Olympic Games.^[1] Summing Olympedia's "Medals by Games" table over the rows it types as Olympic Games — its Youth Olympic Games rows are excluded — gives 9 gold, 11 silver and 19 bronze, 39 medals in all. Summing its "Medals by sport" table independently gives the same 9, 11 and 19. The two tables agree.^[1]

Olympedia's narrative header does not. It reads: "Through 2022, the nation has won 36 Olympic medals, with eight golds." That sentence is written to 2022 and predates the 2024 Games, which the tables include; this page uses the tables.^[1]

The by-sport distribution in that table is weightlifting 15 medals (5 gold, 4 silver, 6 bronze), wrestling 7 (2, 2, 3), taekwondo 4 (all bronze), boxing 3 (1 silver, 2 bronze), and two each in modern pentathlon (1 gold, 1 silver), karate (1 gold, 1 bronze), diving, fencing and judo (1 silver and 1 bronze each). The medal-winning Games run from 1928 to 2024, the largest single hauls being six medals at 2020 and five at each of 1936, 1948 and 2004.^[1] See the Olympic Games.

Which athletes and teams are internationally recognised?

At the 2020 Olympic Games, held in 2021, Feryal Ashraf won the gold medal in the women's kumite over 61 kilograms in karate, the only edition at which karate was on the programme.^[3] At the same Games Ahmed El-Gendy took silver in the men's individual modern pentathlon.^[3]

At the 2024 Olympic Games, Ahmed El-Gendy won the men's individual modern pentathlon.^[2] Sara Samir took the silver medal in the women's heavyweight class in weightlifting at those Games, and Mohamed El-Sayed took bronze in the men's individual épée.^[2]

In team sport, Ahram Online reported on 3 August 2021 that Egypt's men's handball team had beaten Germany 31–26 to reach an Olympic semi-final for the first time: "They have now become the first African and Arab team to qualify for the semis."^[19] In squash, the World Squash Federation describes itself as "the recognised International Federation for squash" and lists, under the heading "Memberships", the International Olympic Committee, ASOIF, ARISF, The World Games, World Masters Sport and Commonwealth Sport; an international federation is recognised by the IOC rather than a member of it.^[20] The professional tour's own measure is the PSA World Rankings: in the men's ranking of 14 September 2026, Egyptians held places 1, 4, 6 and 7^[5]; in the women's ranking of the same date, places 1, 2, 3 and 7^[6]. Both are taken from one specialist secondary publisher, SquashInfo, under the headings "Men's PSA World Squash Rankings (14 September 2026)" and "Women's PSA World Squash Rankings (14 September 2026)". See world ranking.

What major international competitions has Egypt hosted?

The oldest of them is also the one Egypt originated. The International Committee of the Mediterranean Games records that the first Mediterranean Games were held in Alexandria in 1951, and that the project came from a proposal by Mohamed Taher Pacha, president of the Egyptian NOC and an IOC vice-president, put forward at the 1948 London Olympic Games with the support of the Greek IOC member Ioannis Ketseas; the committee's list of editions records no later Egyptian host.^[21] See the Mediterranean Games.

Cairo staged the African Games in 1991.^[25] The Association of National Olympic Committees of Africa subsequently selected Egypt to host the 2027 edition, its president notifying the Egyptian Olympic Committee by letter, as reported on 6 December 2023.^[25] At the 2023 African Games in Accra, Egypt finished first in the medal table with 192 medals, 103 of them gold, on a tally reported on 11 March 2024 — a single secondary report, which did not give the silver and bronze split.^[24] See ANOCA, South Africa and Kenya.

In football, CAF records Egypt as the host of the 2006 Africa Cup of Nations, one of the three host nations at which Egypt won its consecutive titles.^[26] A record of the competition's editions compiled by the Rec.Sport.Soccer Statistics Foundation, last updated 19 March 2026, gives Egypt as host also in 1959, 1974, 1986 and 2019; that list rests on a single secondary compilation.^[32]

In world championships, Egypt staged the 27th IHF Men's World Championship in January 2021, a 32-team event across eight groups whose final was played at the Cairo Stadium Indoor Halls Complex.^[23] The FIE staged the World Fencing Championships in Cairo in July 2022; the federation's report of 25 July 2022 records the championships completing three days of preliminaries and six days of finals.^[22]

What are Egypt's main sporting rivalries?

The named domestic fixture is the Cairo derby between Al Ahly and Zamalek. A head-to-head count published on 29 September 2025 gives 249 meetings in official competitions, with 109 Al Ahly wins, 59 Zamalek wins and 81 draws, and 394 goals to Al Ahly against 241 to Zamalek. That count rests on a single secondary source, which did not name the compiling body, and it is current only to its publication date.^[27]

The clubs' competing honours claims run alongside the fixture. CAF's record gives Al Ahly twelve CAF Champions League titles to May 2024^[14] and Zamalek five, the last in 2002^[16]; Al Ahly's own site claims 156 titles in all competitions as at 9 November 2025, on a basis the club defines.^[15]

At national-team level the continental frame is the Africa Cup of Nations, where CAF wrote on 21 December 2025 that "Egypt remain the most successful nation in AFCON history, having lifted the trophy seven times", three of them consecutively at the 2006, 2008 and 2010 editions.^[26] That is a continental record and is not a record in the Mediterranean or world frames, which are separately contested.

What is the role of school and university sport?

School sport runs through the Egyptian School Sports Federation. On 17 September 2025 the Ministry of Education and Technical Education announced the launch of the Egyptian Schools League, stating that the competition returns after a ten-year hiatus, is played in school playgrounds and youth centres, targets middle and high school students, and is run by the Egyptian School Sports Federation with the company Estadat under the oversight of the Ministry of Youth and Sports and the Ministry of Education.^[28]

The same ministries run an international schools competition in football. The ministry's announcement of 27 July 2022 describes an African School Football League launched by the Ministry of Education and Technical Education, the Ministry of Youth and Sports and the Egyptian School Sports Federation in cooperation with the Egyptian Football Association, for boys and girls in the 13-to-15 age group attending school regularly, with eight governorates qualifying for the national finals.^[29] See youth and junior sport.

University sport is organised by the Egyptian Universities Sports Federation, whose competitions are held under the joint patronage of the Minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research and the Minister of Youth and Sports. A ministry announcement of 25 April 2026 records a darts championship for Egyptian universities and higher institutes, contested by students from public, private, national and technological universities, as part of the activities of the 53rd Universities and Higher Institutes League.^[30]

Were any sports invented in Egypt?

No modern sport's laws were written in Egypt, and none of the international federations governing the sports Egypt competes in traces its code to an Egyptian body. The claim that is documented is a different one, and it is a claim about heritage rather than about codification.

Tahteeb, a stick game, was inscribed on UNESCO's Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2016 on Egypt's nomination. UNESCO describes it as "a brief, non-violent interchange between two adversaries, each wielding a long stick while folk music plays in the background", practised particularly in rural areas of upper Egypt, and records that "in ancient Egypt, tahteeb was used as a form of martial arts. Its role has since changed to that of a festive game but some of the symbolism and values associated with the practice remain."^[31] Inscription on that list is recognition of a cultural practice by a United Nations agency; it is not the writing of a competitive code by a sports federation, and the two are different acts.

Where Egypt has shaped a sport's international architecture it has done so institutionally rather than by authorship: the first Mediterranean Games, at Alexandria in 1951, followed a proposal by the president of the Egyptian NOC.^[21]