On Sunday, Egypt announced an increase in entry visa fees from 25 to 45 dollars, a move that is expected to hit Libyan travellers particularly hard, given the depth of cross-border movement between the two countries.
The decision, published in the Official Gazette after approval by President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, comes as part of amendments to Law No. 175 of 2025 governing fees collected by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The timing has raised eyebrows. Egypt is in the middle of a tourism boom, with total arrivals rebounding to nearly 15 million tourists in 2023.
Yet the fee hike risks pricing out visitors from neighbouring countries where cost is a key factor—Libya among them.
Libyans are not a marginal market for Egypt. In 2011, Egyptian officials reported around 500,000 Libyan visitors, a 13% increase on the previous year.
More recent tourism data suggest that roughly 900,000 Libyans crossed the shared land border in a single year, placing Libya among Egypt’s top regional source markets.
Many of these trips are not purely touristic: Libyans travel to Egypt for medical treatment, study, business, and family visits, as well as leisure.
Over the past two decades, Cairo and Tripoli have signed multiple cooperation agreements covering trade, tourism, and movement of people, including a 2006 package of 18 agreements and protocols that explicitly promoted tourism and created a framework for a freer flow of goods and visitors.
In 2021, the two countries added a new set of memoranda and executive agreements aimed at deepening economic integration, which indirectly support travel and tourism ties.
Egypt has even eased visa procedures for Libyan men in recent years to stimulate arrivals.
The new visa hike, therefore, appears to run against earlier efforts to encourage Libyan inflows. Travel agents on both sides of the border are likely to adjust package prices, and Libyan families already strained by economic pressures may scale back medical and leisure trips.
Egyptian officials argue the increase is modest relative to overall trip costs and say demand will remain strong. But for Libyan travellers, who often cross frequently and in large family groups, a nearly doubled visa fee is a real additional burden—and it may quietly erode one of the region’s most active people-to-people corridors.
