Egypt Lifted Its 9 P.M. Shop Order After One Month

Egypt restored ordinary shop and cafe hours on April 28, 2026, ending a 9 p.m. energy order that had run for a month. Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly’s government had used the early close to cut a fuel bill he said had more than doubled after the Iran war began on February 28, 2026.

The decree spared the big resort map and the Nile. The hours that vanished were in Cairo’s cafes, bazaars and side streets, and the Cabinet reversed course once that trade started to seize up.

Prime Minister’s Decree 909 of 2026

Madbouly announced the package on March 18, 2026. Prime Minister’s Decree No. 909 of 2026 was issued on March 27 and took effect on Saturday, March 28, for one month.

Public shops under Public Stores Law No. 154 of 2019, including malls, restaurants, cafes and bazaars, had to close to the public at 9 p.m. On Thursdays, Fridays and official holidays the close moved to 10 p.m. Home delivery could run all day and night.

The same clock covered restaurants, cafes, bazaars, nightclubs, discos and tourist-goods shops under Hotel and Tourist Establishments Law No. 8 of 2022. Sports clubs, factory clubs, youth centers and community centers sat on the same timetable.

THE HOURS UNDER DECREE 909

Madbouly said the measures had one goal, to cut the consumption bill, because the other path was another round of price increases, which he called very harmful. He also said the order was meant to cut the cost of people moving around and using transport, and that a longer crisis would bring a harder round of cuts.

The decree did not write its own fines. Under the public shops law, running a store without a license already carries a fine of EGP 20,000 to EGP 50,000, and a repeat can add prison of six months to one year and a shutdown at the owner’s expense.

South Sinai, Luxor and the Nile Stayed Open

When the order first landed, early talk of a tourist night curfew spread even though the text left the main resort governorates outside the 9 p.m. net. Article 4 kept public and tourist outlets open in South Sinai, Luxor, Aswan, Hurghada and Marsa Alam, and along the Nile in Cairo and Giza.

WHO STAYED OPEN AFTER 9 P.M.

• The resort map: South Sinai, Luxor, Aswan, Hurghada and Marsa Alam were carved out of the order.
• The Nile belt: Shops and tourist spots on the river in Cairo and Giza kept later hours.
• Hotels and gates: Tourist-licensed restaurants and cafes in hotels, and those at airports, seaports, land ports and railway stations, were exempt.
• Daily food and medicine: Groceries, supermarkets, bakeries, pharmacies, fruit and vegetable shops, poultry shops and wholesale markets kept ordinary hours.
• Workshops: Craft shops inside residential blocks stayed on Local Development Decision No. 456 of 2020, not the 9 p.m. clock.

IMF figures put Egypt’s tourism receipts at $17.1 billion for the fiscal year then underway, up from $10.7 billion in 2021/22. The tourism ministry said on March 16 there had been a relative slowdown in some forward bookings. The decree tried to keep that hard-currency machine running while it dimmed the rest of the street.

Mahmoud Esmat, the electricity minister, has said the state still buys gas for power at about $4 a unit, below the market price that arrived with the war. That gap is why the Cabinet reached for shop clocks, billboard blackouts and a 6 p.m. close for the government district in the New Administrative Capital, plus a study of remote work one or two days a week for public staff outside factories, clinics and production jobs.

Who Lost Hours When Cairo Went Dark?

Khan El Khalili, Korba and the ordinary cafe streets of Cairo lost the late sitting that pays the rent, while hotel dining rooms and Nile boats kept serving. On the first night, Korba’s arcades went dark at 9 p.m., shutters down and chairs stacked, and that picture travelled as the face of the policy.

Mohamed El Ott, 34, who lives off El Moez Street, said the tourist-heavy pockets were supposed to be spared, but the curfews killed the atmosphere. The big cafes stayed open for visitors, he said, while the streets around them went dark, so tour groups hit two or three famous rooms and could not walk the rest of the quarter.

Umm Islam, who sells hand-worked copper in the historic market, said police came through each night telling people to kill the lights and close. Larger shops, she said, could lean on connections; stalls like hers could not. Visitors came for the handicrafts and jewellery, she said, and without that they stayed half an hour and went back to the hotel.

Hassan Abdelfattah, 52, manages an upscale restaurant in Korba. He said the past month had been close to a disaster for a neighbourhood that lives after sunset.

The measures were nothing short of catastrophic for business.

Hassan Abdelfattah, restaurant manager in Korba, Cairo

He said the owners, whom he called well connected, spent weeks asking officials to ease the clock, and that he had to tell staff their jobs were not safe, with a possible cut of up to 20 percent of the team if the war dragged on. Dining-in fell, so kitchens leaned on delivery, which then ran into the second half of the package: dark streets.

Hussein Shawky, 26, a driver for one of the large food-delivery platforms, said he had no fewer than five accidents in that month because of the dark, and that damaged orders come out of the driver’s pocket. Sayed Samir, who runs a mobile coffee cart with his brothers in Hadayek Al Qubba, said they used to keep the cart open 24 hours and did not think a small cart would be covered, until police told him to close.

Some shopkeepers tried to beat the clock with diesel generators, which moved the bill off the grid and onto fuel. Delivery was legal all night. The streets that had to carry those bikes were the ones the lighting cuts had emptied.

Normal Hours Came Back in Late April

The one-month trial did not hold its original 9 p.m. line. By early April the Cabinet was already feeding hours back, first for Coptic Easter, then for the rest of the month, before it killed the emergency clock altogether.

FROM ANNOUNCEMENT TO REVERSAL

1. March 18, 2026: Madbouly announces a one-month early close, dark billboards, a 6 p.m. finish in the New Administrative Capital, and a study of remote work.
2. March 28, 2026: Decree 909 takes effect, with a 9 p.m. close and a 10 p.m. close on Thursdays, Fridays and holidays.
3. April 1, 2026: The Cabinet sets an 11 p.m. close from April 10 to April 13 for the Coptic holidays.
4. April 9, 2026: Madbouly extends the 11 p.m. close through April 27, citing a ceasefire watch and the coming Sham El-Nessim holiday, and says tourist and coastal areas remain exempt.
5. April 23, 2026: After a press conference in Sokhna, Madbouly says the crisis committee would meet before the April deadline, that the month had been assessed, and that remote work had already saved energy and cut car traffic, so it would likely stay.
6. April 26, 2026: The Central Crisis Management Committee, with Mohamed El-Homsany speaking for the Cabinet, stopped the 11 p.m. closing rule and sent shops, malls and restaurants back to their previous hours.
7. April 28, 2026: Ordinary hours resume. Shops and malls run from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m., and to midnight on Thursdays, Fridays and public holidays. Restaurants and cafes run from 5 a.m. to 1 a.m. Delivery stays around the clock. Workshops in residential areas run from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m., with exceptions for urgent work.

A Cabinet source said the crisis-management committee had concluded that the plan cut consumption and was also strangling business. Other rationing steps, including partial remote work for public employees, were described as still in place.

Our plan was very successful at conserving energy, perhaps too successful.

A Cabinet source, after the April 26 review

Madbouly had said on April 9 that the government was watching the ceasefire around the clock and hoped the next two weeks would bring a lasting end to the conflict, after which policy could move again. On April 23 he added that fuel and energy prices would not fall back to pre-war levels even if the fighting stopped, because damage to energy plant in the Gulf and Iran would take time to repair.

Shop Closing Times Have Been a Recurring Lever

The 9 p.m. order sat on a tool Cairo already knew. When the state needs to shave power, it shortens the night, then hands the hours back when the political cost rises.

EARLIER TURNS OF THE SHOP CLOCK

• March 2020: A public-health order closed restaurants, cafes, nightclubs and malls from 7 p.m. to 6 a.m., while delivery, bakeries, groceries and pharmacies stayed open.
• April 2023: Cairo cut lighting in streets and squares by 75 percent, and switched off extra lights on government buildings, as part of a drive to save gas for export.
• July 2024: Shops were put on a 10 p.m. weekday close (11 p.m. on weekends), with malls and restaurants running later, during a summer of load cuts.
• June 2025: A conservation plan told retail to close by 11 p.m., midnight on Thursdays and Fridays, and to dim shopfronts, while government buildings killed lights after 8 p.m.

Those older clocks were summer and winter timetables, or covid rules, not a one-month war order. They still trained the same muscle: pull the shutters, cut the billboards, tell the public it is a patriotic save. The March 2026 package added a television and billboard campaign that asked people to stand with the country. Then the same state, after four weeks of dark Korba and a quiet Khan El Khalili, put the lights back because the evening economy is how a hot city actually earns after dusk.

How Much Power Did the Trial Save?

The government never published a full, named ledger of kilowatt-hours saved by the 9 p.m. close. What it did put out were early cash figures, one in-trial power claim, and a later hint that homes had used the slack.

THE FIGURES PUT ON THE TRIAL

• The fuel bill: Madbouly said Egypt’s energy import bill had more than doubled since the war began.
• Early cash save: An informed government source put daily fuel savings in the first two days at EGP 33 million to EGP 40 million (about $620,000 to $750,000).
• In-trial power claim: A government official said electricity use fell by about 10 percent in the first days, with Saturday demand near 30,000 megawatts.

After the trial ended, an electricity-sector source said household use had risen and that the shop-hour cut had not produced a large net saving. The two claims sit on different dates and different unnamed mouths. They are not a single official total.

On June 15, 2026, the Ministry of Petroleum and Mineral Resources said it would not cut loads that summer, with onshore regasification at Ain Sokhna and Damietta and LNG cargoes already booked. The 9 p.m. experiment was not brought back for the hot months. Seasonal winter hours, a separate standing timetable, put shops on a 10 p.m. weekday close from September 25, 2026.

Cairo got its late sitting back on April 28. The fuel bill that Madbouly said had more than doubled did not go back with it.