Egypt · Citizenship by investment
Egyptian Citizenship by Investment
Open and unchanged in price since the 17 April 2023 repricing. Legal basis is Law 190 of 2019 (amending Nationality Law 26/1975), which replaced the 'deposit residency' route created by Law 173/2018. Volumes are very small — an industry source reports just 36 approvals in 2025. Note that GAFI publishes the process and the USD 10,000 state fee but does NOT publish the investment amounts; those come from Henley, Fragomen and licensed agents.
At USD 250,000, this is the cheapest citizenship-by-investment programme anywhere, and one of only two in the region. But you are buying a rank-85 passport with roughly 50 visa-free destinations. There is no Schengen access, no UK, and no US. The honest use case here is narrow. This is a second nationality as pure political insurance for someone holding a weaker one, not a mobility upgrade.
Qualifying routes
The cheapest route. You can pay in instalments over one year. Nothing comes back.
A 5-year hold applies. Sources conflict on whether only government-owned projects qualify, or whether private developers are also accepted.
This comes with a further USD 100,000 non-refundable donation, plus a 5-year hold.
It is refundable after 3 years without interest. Critically, the refund comes in Egyptian pounds, not dollars.
The facts
- Minimum investment
- $250k
- Total landed cost
- From USD 250,000 (donation route), plus a USD 10,000 state fee paid from abroad to the Central Bank, plus agent and legal fees, typically USD 15-40k. No official source publishes the per-dependant fee schedule, and no family-of-four figure is given rather than guessed. Insist on a written GAFI-referenced quotation.
- Route type
- Citizenship by investment
- Timeline
- 3–12 months (GAFI states 3-6 months. Practitioners report 6-12 months in practice.)
- Physical presence
- Officially, none. GAFI states there is no required residency period. But an industry source reports a minimum 2-day visit during the application, and a further month (or two visits totalling four weeks) after approval. This conflict is unresolved. It matters.
- Family
- SpouseMinor children up to the age of 21
- Permanent residency
- Not applicable. This route delivers citizenship directly, without a prior residency period. Egypt offers no permanent residency at all, not even through its separate property-residency tiers.
- Citizenship
- This is the citizenship route, granted by Prime Ministerial decision.
- Language test
- None
- Dual citizenship
- Permitted
- Requirements
- clean criminal recordfunds transferred in hard currency from abroadvalid passportmedical/health documentationnationality on the accepted listUSD 10,000 state fee paid from abroad to the Central Bank
- The E-2 pitch does not work anymore, and any adviser still making it is wrong. Egypt is a genuine E-2 treaty country, but the NDAA (P.L. 117-263, signed 23 December 2022) requires that anyone who obtained treaty-country citizenship by investment must have been domiciled there for a continuous three years before applying for E-1/E-2 status. Grandfathering only applies if citizenship was obtained before 27 December 2022. The single most heavily marketed reason to buy Egyptian citizenship no longer holds up.
- The deposit route is really a currency bet dressed up as a deposit. The USD 500,000 is refunded after three years, but in Egyptian pounds, and without interest. The EGP moved from 8.85/USD in 2016 to roughly 50.5/USD in July 2026. In effect, you are lending half a million dollars to a state with a chronic FX shortage and absorbing all the devaluation risk yourself. If you do choose Egypt, the USD 250k donation option is more honest about what it actually costs you.
- Volumes are tiny. Industry figures put approvals at roughly 36 in 2025. This is not a mature, well-trodden programme with predictable administration.
- GAFI does not publish any official investment amounts. Every figure in circulation comes from agents, not the authority itself. Get the number confirmed in writing before you transfer anything.
- The 2023 cut was a deliberate policy choice to attract hard currency during an FX crisis, not a side effect of the exchange rate itself. If Egypt's FX position eases, a reprice upward is entirely plausible.
- Applications from Syrian nationals have been suspended since December 2024, and the programme currently processes applications from only around 15 nationalities. Confirm your nationality is accepted before you start.
- Foreign buyers are capped at two residential properties of up to 4,000 sqm each, and face a five-year resale bar on top of that. The property route locks you in twice over.
- Egypt is a CRS non-participant. That sounds like a feature, but it is actually a liability. It is exactly the profile that draws enhanced scrutiny from banks and revenue authorities elsewhere, and it will not last forever.
- Sources conflict on whether the real-estate route requires government-owned projects. Do not commit to a private developer without written confirmation.