Shakira at the Pyramids: What fans can expect from her Egypt concert

Shakira’s concert at the Pyramids of Giza on November 28 will go ahead as planned, according to promoter Rabih Mokbel.

At this stage, the Egypt date is set to be Shakira’s only regional stop on her latest world tour.

Abu Dhabi’s Offlimits Music Festival, where she was due to headline on November 21, was called off this month, while her November 18 Doha concert at Stadium 974 has also been cancelled, with promoter Live Nation and ticketing platform Platinumlist removing the date from their websites on Friday. Shakira’s official website has also been updated to reflect the cancellation.

Speaking to The National before the Doha cancellation, Mokbel, founder and chief executive of Venture Lifestyle, the promoter of the Giza show, said the main concern for the company, which has previously staged concerts by artists including Anyma at the ancient site, was whether the economics of the wider regional tour would continue to support bringing such a large production to Egypt.

But he said Shakira’s interest in returning to perform at the Pyramids, where she previously played in 2007, effectively sealed the deal.

“The only worry we have is that, production-wise, flying 200 people in Shakira’s crew to the Middle East is humongously expensive,” he says.

“So, the fewer countries she has around us, the less likely she would be to do Egypt, because then the Egypt date alone would not be enough to cover her costs. But to be honest, she wanted to do the Pyramids.

“And it’s never about the money. It’s always about the uniqueness of the locations.”

For one thing, the Giza date will be a relatively intimate affair, with Mokbel stating it will have a capacity of 20,000. There will also be production restrictions put in place to protect the setting and ensure the Pyramids remain the dominant visual presence.

“We always make it clear to the artists that you are not the hero here. The Pyramids are the hero, and you are here because of the location,” Mokbel says.

“That’s why they respect the rules and abide by them. We allow no projections. You also cannot cover the Pyramids. They honour these rules and respect them.”

Mokbel says these limitations push artists to be more creative when performing in front of the monument.

“You need to be smart enough to make your show go viral without overshadowing the Pyramids. This is the challenge,” he says.

“Each artist should spend a lot of time on the design phase to make themselves stand out without overshadowing the Pyramids. The monument should always remain the main focus.”

Mokbel points to Anyma, the visually driven electronic music project of Italian-American DJ and producer Matteo Milleri, whose October 2025 concert at the Pyramids was also staged by the company, as an example.

“They managed to hide the Pyramids with huge fog machines. Then, in a second, they lit them up with the strongest strobe lights in the world, and that gave them the viral moment they wanted.”

With a sell-out crowd expected, staging an event of that scale at the Pyramids is considerably harder than working at a conventional stadium. Mokbel says some outside expertise will be consulted.

“In the last big show we had with Anyma, we had about 1,200 employees working on the event, including security, ushers, the technical team, production supervisors, health and safety staff,” he recalls.

“There were more than 1,200 employees, and among them we flew in about 200 people from abroad to help us with the show.”

Moving the crowd to and from the site will require another operation. Mokbel says most tickets are general admission and a detailed logistics plan is being put in place, including about 600 shuttle buses and a meeting and parking point near the Grand Egyptian Museum.

“They come by Ubers, buses, private cars. They park there, and then our shuttle buses move them safely into the pyramids and then back to the pickup point,” he adds.

For those travelling from central Cairo, about 15km from the Grand Egyptian Museum, Mokbel expects the entire journey to the concert site should take about two hours, including the transfer through the museum meeting point.

Success will be measured, in part, by how many people travel to Egypt for a Pyramids show. He says the aim is to mirror the success of major events in the UAE and Saudi Arabia by using concerts as a gateway to wider tourism in the country.

“I would say the authorities here have seen the positive impact tourism has had on these countries,” Mokbel says.

“It made the decision easier for them to allow such things to happen at the Pyramids, because when they see other countries doing it, it becomes easier for people to accept.

“As long as the artist respects the value of the Pyramids, everyone is going to want them here.”

This has led to collaborations with travel companies on packages linking the Shakira concert with hotel stays and travel elsewhere in Egypt. Mokbel expects half of the anticipated sell-out crowd, about 10,000 attendees, to be tourists and says more than 6,000 international visitors have so far taken packages associated with the concert.

“They’re doing the whole tour. They’re staying for three to five days in Egypt, visiting key places such as Luxor, Aswan, the Pyramids and the Nile,” he says.

“If you translate that financially, this is an indirect $20 million to $30 million in income for the economy.”

That destination-led approach will continue with Starlight, which Venture Lifestyle is producing with Serbia’s Exit Festival, one of Europe’s best-known electronic music festivals, with plans to be the first multi-stage, multi-day festival at the Pyramids.

The main festival nights will take place on October 9 and 10, with a line-up led by Charlotte de Witte, Adriatique and Michael Bibi.