Prayer Times in Hurghada, Egypt Today

Ten minutes of sun ahead of Cairo

Hurghada lies on the Red Sea coast at about 27.26 degrees north and 33.81 degrees east. That longitude is more than two and a half degrees east of the capital, and since the sun crosses a degree every four minutes, every prayer here enters roughly ten minutes earlier on the clock than it does in Cairo.

Ten minutes is a large enough gap that using the capital's table here would be a genuine mistake rather than a rounding issue, particularly during Ramadan. It applies uniformly to all five prayers and does not change with the season, because longitude shifts the whole day rather than stretching parts of it. Only Sharm El Sheikh, further east across the gulf, receives its prayers earlier than this page does.

Open sea to the east, high ground to the west

Hurghada's horizon is unusually lopsided, and it is worth setting out because it affects sunrise and sunset in opposite ways.

To the east there is nothing but water. Prayer time calculation assumes a flat, unobstructed horizon at sea level, and on this coast the eastern horizon really is one. The listed sunrise and the sun's first appearance over the water agree about as closely as they ever do anywhere in Egypt. To the west, the Red Sea Mountains rise steeply within a short distance of the town, so the sun goes behind the ridge some minutes before it reaches the astronomical horizon and the observed sunset comes early.

The table does not model the ridge, and neither do the town's mosques. Follow the calculated Maghrib rather than the visible one; the alternative would leave every district keeping a slightly different time according to how much rock stood in front of it.

Visitors' phones and Egypt's method

More people arrive in Hurghada from abroad than in most Egyptian cities, and a large share of the discrepancies reported here come down to a phone still configured for another country's convention rather than Egypt's.

Egypt calculates Fajr at 19.5 degrees of solar depression and Isha at 17.5. An application set to the Muslim World League's eighteen degrees at both ends, or to a Gulf convention with a fixed interval after sunset for Isha, will produce a different morning and a different evening from the mosque next door. Before concluding that a local mosque is out, check which method the app is using. The Egypt prayer times hub explains the national convention in more detail.

The afternoon threshold in use

Asr is listed at the point where an upright object's shadow has grown by the object's own height beyond its midday length — the Shafi'i and Maliki reckoning, which is what Egyptian mosques overwhelmingly use. The Hanafi threshold doubles that requirement and arrives roughly forty minutes to an hour later.

Guests from Hanafi countries frequently notice this as an early Asr. It is a difference of school rather than of accuracy, and it touches no other prayer in the table.

How much the year moves this table

At just over twenty-seven degrees north, Hurghada's day length runs from around thirteen and three quarter hours at midsummer to about ten and a quarter at midwinter — roughly three and a half hours of annual range, moderate by Egyptian standards.

Layered on top of that is the clock. Egypt keeps summer time again, so the entire table steps by an hour in spring and back in autumn. Visitors who arrive across a changeover weekend should re-check the page rather than relying on figures noted down a few days earlier.

Fasting in a town that runs on rotas

Hotel and diving operations here work shifts rather than a standard day, and during Ramadan those shifts cut across both boundaries of the fast. The monthly view is more practical than a single day's figures, because Fajr and Maghrib both drift steadily through the month and a rota built on the first night's times will be out by several minutes by the last.

Sunrise is in the table but bounds neither end of the fast; it marks the close of the window in which Fajr may still be prayed. Egypt's wide dawn angle makes that window long, so the distinction is not academic. Local calendars sometimes publish an imsak a little before Fajr as a margin; the figure here is the calculated dawn.

Jumu'ah on the coast

Friday prayer replaces Dhuhr for those attending and is timed from the Dhuhr entry above. Congregations in the resort districts are more variable in size than in the older parts of town, and mosques set their own interval between the call and the standing. Anyone praying at home or in a hotel room performs Dhuhr at the ordinary listed time.

Facing Makkah from this coast

Makkah lies under a thousand kilometres from here across the Red Sea, considerably closer than it is from Cairo, and the bearing from Hurghada is not the bearing you would use in the Delta. Do not carry a direction over from another Egyptian city. Compute it for where you are with the Qibla direction tool, and if you are fixing an orientation permanently in a building, have it surveyed rather than trusting a phone compass near steel and reinforced concrete.

Ramadan and Eid dates are on the Hijri calendar, an Arabic Hurghada schedule carries the same table, and the nearest comparable coast page is Sharm El Sheikh prayer times.