Infrastructure: Egypt's high-speed railway moves into trial runs — 660 km from Ain Sokhna to Matrouh

From building to testing

Egypt’s first high-speed electric railway has moved from construction into commissioning. The first line runs 660 kilometres from Ain Sokhna on the Red Sea to Marsa Matrouh on the Mediterranean, through the New Administrative Capital, Greater Cairo, Alexandria and New Alamein, with 21 stations.

At a meeting on 2 August 2026 in New Alamein, chaired by President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, Transport Minister Kamel El-Wazir said trial operation of the first line would begin in September 2026 and continue for six months. The latest schedule reported afterwards put the first passenger-free sectional tests in early October, to be extended progressively across the line.

That distinction matters, and this article keeps it: trials without passengers are not a passenger service. Commercial operations are to follow only after technical and security requirements are completed, including remaining work on fencing, bridges and road crossings. No commercial opening date is promised here, because none has been firmly fixed in the sources.

A line that links two seas — and Cairo in between

The line’s nickname explains its purpose. Minister El-Wazir has called it a “Suez Canal on rails” — not a substitute for the canal, but a complementary land route moving people and freight between Egypt’s Red Sea and Mediterranean ports, through the Cairo region.

For Greater Cairo, the point is connection, not just speed. The corridor passes through the New Administrative Capital and the Cairo area, links new cities and industrial areas to established population centres, and interchanges with the Alexandria Metro at Borg El Arab station.

The freight side is built in from the start. On 30 August 2026, the minister inspected a roughly 6-kilometre rail connection between Ain Sokhna station and Ain Sokhna Port, designed to carry freight between the port and the rest of the network, and inspected Ain Sokhna and Central Capital stations, reviewing finishing work and passenger flows from entrances to ticket halls and platforms.

The trains: three kinds, one electrified network

The high-speed train is Siemens’ Velaro, adapted for Egypt’s desert conditions, seating 489 passengers and reaching 250 km/h. Alongside it, the Desiro regional train runs at 160 km/h and the Vectron freight locomotive at 120 km/h — three different jobs on one electrified system.

Two fleet figures are often confused, so they are kept apart here. The first line itself is planned to operate 15 high-speed trains, 34 regional trains and 14 freight trains. Across the whole three-line network, Siemens is supplying 41 Velaro high-speed trains, 94 Desiro regional units and 41 Vectron locomotives, with 15 years of maintenance.

The regional train has already run on the new track: at TransMEA 2025 in Cairo, a Desiro completed its first run on newly built tracks near the 6th of October Depot, west of Cairo, with commissioning planned for the first line. The Velaro was unveiled to the Egyptian public at the same exhibition.

A network far bigger than one line

The first line is the start of a network of more than 2,000 kilometres across three lines. The second line, about 1,100 kilometres, will run from the 6th of October area south through Upper Egypt to Abu Simbel. The third, about 225 kilometres, will connect Qena with Safaga and Hurghada on the Red Sea.

A fourth line, about 250 kilometres between Port Said and Alexandria, is planned as a private-sector partnership, but it is not part of the three lines now under construction.

The scale of the supporting works shows why commissioning takes months. Near Central Capital station, the minister inspected a maintenance facility of about 259,000 square metres, and a main workshop of 578 feddans (about 243 hectares) that will serve all three lines, carrying out major and minor overhauls and storing up to 50 trains and locomotives.

What to watch next

The next milestones are practical, not ceremonial: sectional passenger-free tests, then phased testing of the whole first line, then the completion of the safety and security works that must come before any passenger service.

Financing for the second and third lines is also moving: Presidential Decree No. 160 of 2026 concerns a financing agreement involving a group of European banks, backed by Germany’s export credit agency Hermes, described by officials as commercial rather than governmental financing.

For Cairo readers, the honest summary is this: a 660-kilometre, two-sea railway that runs through the Cairo region is now being tested in sections, with its high-speed, regional and freight trains already built for it. When it carries its first fare-paying passengers, and at what timetable, is still to be confirmed — and that confirmation, when it comes, will be the real opening.