Cairo International Stadium

Cairo International Stadium Capacity and Facilities

Cairo International Stadium seats about 75,000 spectators in the Nasr City district of Cairo, making it the third-largest stadium in Egypt and the main home of the Egypt national team.

The figure is not settled. Wikipedia and the Stadium Information System list 75,000; the venue's own site, cairo-stadium.org.eg, gives 72,000; worldofstadiums.com records 74,000. All three describe the same all-seater bowl built in 2005. Before that work the stadium held closer to 100,000 with standing room. We use 75,000 as the working number and flag the official 72,000 for anyone who needs a certified figure.

The stadium is one piece of a large sports complex. The grounds hold swimming pools, covered halls, training arenas, a squash complex, tennis courts, four practice football pitches and an equestrian arena under construction. The playing surface was relaid in 2019 with a FlexGrass hybrid pitch ahead of that year's Africa Cup of Nations.

Rail access is the simple option. Two Cairo Metro stops, Stadium and Fair Zone, sit within walking distance, and the newer Cairo Monorail adds a Stadium station of its own. The complex is roughly 10 km from Cairo International Airport and a similar distance from the city centre.

Al Ahly and Zamalek: Africa's Fiercest Rivalry Under One Roof

Al Ahly and Zamalek, the two Cairo clubs that have shaped Egyptian football for over a century, both stage their biggest fixtures at Cairo International Stadium, and their derby regularly drew crowds above 100,000 before the all-seater conversion.

Al Ahly, founded in 1907, won the first Egyptian championship in 1949 and has grown into the most decorated club in African football, with a run of seven straight league titles from 1994 to 2000 and a tenth CAF Champions League crown in 2021. Zamalek, its cross-city rival, is a multiple league and Champions League winner in its own right. The meeting between them, the Cairo derby, ranks among the most heated fixtures on the continent.

Ahmed Hassan is the player most tied to this rivalry. He won 184 caps for Egypt, for a time the most by any men's international, and is one of the few to have represented both Al Ahly and Zamalek. He scored in the 2008 CAF Champions League final.

Al Ahly will not lean on the national stadium forever. The club laid the cornerstone in 2021 for a 50,000-seat ground of its own in Egypt's New Administrative Capital, designed by the architecture firm Gensler. Until it opens, the club's biggest matches stay at Cairo International.

AFCON Finals and Landmark Matches

Cairo International Stadium has hosted two Africa Cup of Nations finals: Egypt's penalty-shootout win over Ivory Coast in 2006 and Algeria's 1–0 victory over Senegal in 2019.

The venue's biggest nights span more than six decades, from its inauguration to two continental finals.

Egypt built its 2006 title run almost entirely in this bowl, from a 3–0 win over Libya to a 2–1 semi-final against Senegal. The Africa Cup of Nations returned in 2019, when Baghdad Bounedjah's early goal settled the final for Algeria.

Construction, Renovation and the Werner March Legacy

Werner March, the German architect behind Berlin's 1936 Olympic Stadium, designed Cairo International Stadium between 1955 and 1960. It was the first Olympic-standard arena in Africa and the Middle East.

President Gamal Abdel Nasser opened the ground on 23 July 1960, the eighth anniversary of the revolution that brought him to power, and for years it carried his name as Nasser Stadium. The Egyptian firm ACE Moharram Bakhoum handled the engineering. No other major African stadium traces its design back to Berlin's 1936 Olympic project.

Two renovations reshaped it. The 2005 overhaul, timed for the 2006 Africa Cup of Nations, converted the terraces into an all-seater bowl with its blue zigzag seating and cut capacity from roughly 100,000 to 75,000. In 2019 the pitch was replaced with a FLexGrass hybrid surface for that year's tournament.

The Port Said Disaster and the Return of Supporters

Egyptian authorities barred fans from Cairo International Stadium after the February 2012 Port Said disaster, in which 74 people died, and full crowds did not return until March 2018.

The deaths came during a league match between Al Masry and Al Ahly in Port Said, and the fallout reached every ground in the country. For six years most Egyptian league football was played in near-empty stadiums under a blanket spectator ban.

Supporters returned to Cairo International in March 2018, when Al Ahly hosted CF Mounana in the CAF Champions League before a full house for the first time since the tragedy. The authorities widened attendance limits further in 2024.