The museum is sited on a plot of land of about 480,000 square metres (5,200,000 sq ft) approximately 2 kilometres (1.2 miles) from the Giza pyramid complex and was built as part of a new master plan for the Giza Plateau called Giza 2030.

The museum was built by a joint venture of the Belgian BESIX Group and the Egyptian Orascom Construction company. As of January 2023, there is no announced opening date, despite past estimates ranging from 2020 to 2023.

The building design was decided by an architectural competition[13] announced on 7 January 2002. The organisers received 1,557 entries from 82 countries, making it the second largest architectural competition in history.