The wheelchair-access audit — thirty-seven checklist items, twelve museums, two-person verification.
The Index's annual accessibility audit covers thirty-seven structured checklist items across the twelve tracked museums. The 2026 audit was conducted between January and April 2026 by Nadine Habashy (the Index's accessibility editor) with audit-partner consultant Ola Hassan (wheelchair user, eleven years' experience as an accessibility consultant). Each museum was visited at least once during the audit window; six museums received a follow-up audit visit to verify specific findings. The full audit report is one hundred and eighteen pages; this page is the public summary.
The headline scores.
The twelve museums scored between 14 and 34 of the 37 audit items, with a mean of 23.5 and a median of 24. The top three scorers and the bottom three scorers are listed below; the full ranking with detailed item-by-item findings is in the audit report.
| Museum | 2026 score | 2025 score | Direction | Top failed item |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Grand Egyptian Museum | 34 / 37 | 33 / 37 | ↑ improved | Sign-language tour availability |
| Nubian Museum (Aswan) | 31 / 37 | 31 / 37 | = stable | Audio guide availability |
| Bibliotheca Alexandrina museums | 30 / 37 | 29 / 37 | ↑ improved | Family bathroom on every floor |
| Cairo Egyptian Museum (Tahrir) | 26 / 37 | 27 / 37 | ↓ declined | Lift operational status |
| Luxor Museum | 25 / 37 | 28 / 37 | ↓ declined | Lift under refurbishment Q2 2026 |
| Coptic Museum | 24 / 37 | 24 / 37 | = stable | Entrance ramp gradient |
| Museum of Islamic Art | 23 / 37 | 22 / 37 | ↑ improved | Multilingual staff at the desk |
| Greco-Roman Museum (Alexandria) | 22 / 37 | 23 / 37 | ↓ declined | Accessible toilet on the main floor |
| Mummification Museum (Luxor) | 20 / 37 | 20 / 37 | = stable | Wheelchair-accessible main entrance |
| Imhotep Museum (Saqqara) | 18 / 37 | 17 / 37 | ↑ improved | Multiple ramp/threshold issues |
| Sohag Museum | 16 / 37 | 15 / 37 | ↑ improved | Lift availability |
| Mallawi Museum (Minya) | 14 / 37 | 14 / 37 | = stable | Entire entrance approach |
The top performer — Grand Egyptian Museum.
The GEM scored 34 of 37 in the 2026 audit, the highest single score in the cooperative's nine-year audit history. The museum's purpose-built 2020s facility, combined with the Supreme Council's explicit accessibility-design brief during construction, delivered a building that scores at or near the top across most of the audit checklist. The three failed items — sign-language tour availability, captioning on the entrance-orientation video, and the family-bathroom presence on every floor (currently on three of five floors) — are all in the museum's published 2026 work plan and are expected to be remediated by the 2027 audit cycle.
The declines — Cairo Tahrir and Luxor.
Two museums declined in the 2026 audit compared to 2025. The Cairo Egyptian Museum at Tahrir lost a point due to one of its two passenger lifts being out of service during the audit window; the lift is reportedly under repair and is expected back in service by mid-2026. The Luxor Museum lost three points due to its main passenger lift being decommissioned for a full refurbishment programme expected to last through October 2026; alternative wheelchair access to the upper galleries is currently being managed via a stair-lift solution that does not score on the audit's lift-operational-status item.
The lowest scorers — site museums of Upper and Middle Egypt.
The Mallawi Museum at Minya scored 14 of 37 and the Sohag Museum scored 16 of 37 — the two lowest scorers in our 2026 audit. Both museums are housed in older buildings (Mallawi in a 1962 building, Sohag in a 1985 building) and both have limited resources for accessibility refurbishment. The audit's findings have been shared with both museums' visitor-services offices and with the El-Minia Cultural Foundation, which has a working accessibility-improvement programme that is gradually addressing the worst items at small site museums in the governorate. Sohag's one-point improvement reflects the installation of an accessible-toilet at the main floor in late 2025.
The EDRA partnership and the 2026 audit feedback.
The Egyptian Disability Rights Association reviewed the draft audit findings between April and May 2026 and provided written feedback that altered five specific findings before publication. Three changes were to the Mallawi Museum's findings (the EDRA's reviewers had visited Mallawi in November 2025 and noted improvements the Index audit had missed); one was to the Mummification Museum's audio-guide rating (downgraded after a specific accessibility-need failure observed by an EDRA reviewer); one was to the Grand Egyptian Museum's family-bathroom finding (clarified to specify which floors have the facility). The full EDRA feedback letter is appended to the audit report.
For the corresponding fee tables, see the Cairo tariff and Luxor and Aswan fees. The methodology page describes the full audit checklist. The previous audit cycles are available to Press & civic and Institutional subscribers.