Infectious bronchitis is a highly contagious disease, considered as one of the most important poultry diseases and it causes huge economic losses in poultry industry due to its effect on broiler growth and egg production quantity and quality in laying hens, Egyptian poultry farms suffer from frequent respiratory disease outbreaks associated with IBV variant 2 strains. Inactivated vaccines are important component in vaccination program of layers and breeders for egg production and also provide protection against early infection through maternal immunity in progeny. In this study, a newly prepared inactivated classical and variant 2 vaccine was compared for its field efficacy with commercial (ND&IB) in layer chickens. Vaccinated chickens from both groups were evaluated against both homologous and heterologous challenge in comparison to control unvaccinated groups. Four estimated parameters were applied in this experiment, humoral immunity after vaccination and challenge by Enzyme linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA), egg production percentage, detection of challenge strains by real-time RT-PCR, and histopathological findings after challenge from tracheal and oviduct samples. The results revealed that the prepared vaccine give higher protective antibody titers in serum and better egg production after challenge than commercial inactivated (ND&IB) one . The detection of IB viruses shedding was limited to trachea regarded its effect on oviduct except only in control groups. The current study demonstrates the effectiveness of locally prepared bivalent IBV vaccine in commercial layers; also combination of inactivated variant and classical IBV strains confers broad protection against both homologous and heterologous challenge in IBV endemic areas.