Non-oil economy rebounds at fastest pace in two years, but hiring stalls

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WHAT WE’RE TRACKING TODAY

THIS MORNING: Indian, Chinese buying spree drives up UAE crude costs + Abu Dhabi property market sales eclipse last year’s total

Good morning, lovely people. We’ve made it through the first week of September and its raging traffic. While it’s been business as usual domestically, the war next door is still the elephant nobody quite wants to name over coffee.

Behind the scenes, the phones have been busy. President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed took a call from US President Donald Trump yesterday, with the two going over the UAE-US relationship and the latest on the region. That came just days after Steve Witkoff, White House envoy, reportedly sat down with National Security Adviser Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed on the sidelines in Sardinia, according to Axios, to talk through next steps on Iran as Washington leans harder on Tehran's last remaining trade lifelines.

The cost of that pressure campaign (and the ongoing war) is showing up at home. The UAE halted all trade, commercial exchange, and financial transactions with Iran days before Washington's sanctions push went public — no small matter, given Dubai alone did some USD 28 bn in trade with Iran in 2024 and has long served as its go-to re-export hub.

And Jebel Ali, the port that built modern Dubai, is still nowhere near recovered: The Financial Times reports that container volumes there plunged more than 90% at the worst of the war and have barely come back, with Hormuz transits still running at a fraction of pre-war levels — averaging 17 vessels a day against roughly 135 before the conflict.

The UAE isn’t sitting still. It’s building out its East Coast infrastructure (read: this morning’s Planet Finance) and developing its infrastructure links with the rest of the Gulf. Businesses are adapting too — this morning's PMI data show non-oil firms increasingly turning to domestic suppliers to insulate themselves from exactly the kind of disruption Jebel Ali just went through. Still, experts speaking to the FT argue that the infrastructure built around Jebel Ali cannot be replicated. That remains open to debate — our take? This country has surprised bigger skeptics before.

Dubai Ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid put it plainly this week at a cabinet meeting: The government won't wait for “perfect conditions” to keep projects, markets, and the economy moving. It’s set to meet for the annual government meetings on 8-10 November, themed — pointedly — around “readiness and resilience.”

Also on deck at the cabinet meeting

The cabinet approved an AI adviser system set to assess policies and legislation and their economic, financial, social, and environmental impacts, state news agency Wam reports. It also approved: sharing its AI curriculum for schools with other countries; rules covering autonomous-vehicle testing, inspection, registration, and licensing; a national ecotourism policy; federal cloud migration for finance and HR systems; and a framework for financial sustainability standards. Wam did not provide rollout timelines for several of the newly approved measures.

Air France does an about-turn on Dubai

Air France has briefly suspended flights to and from Dubai until today, with flights from Dubai suspended until tomorrow, as it “monitors the situation in the Near and Middle East,” according to an update. The airline had resumed flights only last week.

BACKGROUND- Others, including Lufthansa, have sworn off Dubai for at least a couple of months, while some have delayed their return until next year.

Indian, Chinese buying spree drives up UAE crude costs

UAE crude's costly climb: Indian and Chinese refiners are once again stepping up spot purchases of Middle Eastern crude, pushing physical premiums sharply higher as they compete with buyers in Japan and South Korea for limited supplies, Bloomberg reports.

The clearest sign of the squeeze is Abu Dhabi’s flagship Murban crude, which now has a premium of more than USD 30 per barrel over benchmark Dubai crude for delivery to East Asia, traders said. That makes Murban at least USD 10 per barrel more expensive than shipping US WTI crude to the region. Dubai futures have climbed to nearly USD 100 per barrel, the highest since May.

BACKGROUND- Unlike most Gulf grades, which still move largely through Hormuz via ship-to-ship transfer — shuttle tankers that have to risk crossing the strait before offloading further out — Murban can travel via Adnoc's Habshan-Fujairah pipeline straight to the Gulf of Oman. The line currently carries up to 1.8 mn bbl / d, and Adnoc is expanding it to 3.6 mn bbl / d by 2027.

Why this matters: The premium shows that access to crude outside the chokepoint is now priced as a scarce commodity. Refiners are paying more for barrels carrying lower transit risk, and Murban is currently one of the few Gulf grades that can offer that at scale.

Data point

AED 155 bn (USD 42.2 bn) — that’s the value of property transactions recorded in Abu Dhabi YTD, surpassing the AED 142 bn (USD 38.7 bn) registered during all of 2025, according to the Abu Dhabi Real Estate Center. Foreign direct investment transactions came in at AED 16 bn, up from AED 8.2 bn last year. Sales values reached AED 107.3 bn, up from AED 99.4 bn last year, and mortgage values saw a slight dip, at AED 42.3 bn, down from AED 42.7 bn in 2025.

The results build on momentum from the first half, when FDI into real estate spiked 309% y-o-y to AED 13.8 bn as new development projects and licensed professionals came to the emirate.

PSA

WEATHER- The mercury is set to peak at 41°C today in Dubai before dropping to a low of 34°C overnight, while Abu Dhabi is seeing a high of 39°C and a low of 32°C.

The big story abroad

AI is making headlines on three fronts this morning: Nvidia bought deeper into open-source AI, OpenAI leapfrogged Anthropic on paper with its latest model, and Anthropic built its IPO war chest.

Nvidia is paying roughly USD 13 bn to acquire Hugging Face, the open-source platform at the center of a recent OpenAI-linked security breach, which it had already backed — a move it’s touting as a way to protect open-source AI developers;
OpenAI released its latest model: GPT-6 Astra, which it says beats rivals on software engineering, science, and cybersecurity — a launch president Greg Brockman called a “generational leap in capability.”
Anthropic is finalizing a USD 15 bn credit facility ahead of an IPO that’s set to eclipse SpaceX’s as the largest one in history, with annualized revenue already topping USD 65 bn.

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UAE’s non-oil economy grew at its fastest pace since 2024 in August — but hiring fell for the second time in three months

The UAE's non-oil private sector had its best month in almost two years in August — but the recovery comes with an asterisk. The headline S&P Global UAE PMI (pdf) climbed to 55.3 last month from 52.7 in July, the fastest improvement in business conditions since December 2024 and the second straight month of accelerating growth following June’s five-year low of 50.8. Even so, employment fell for the second time in three months — the first stretch of multiple monthly declines in a single calendar year since 2021, David Owen, S&P Global’s principal economist, tells EnterpriseAM.

New business grew at its joint-fastest pace in more than two years, and export orders posted a second consecutive monthly expansion after a rough second quarter. Vendor performance improved too, easing input-price inflation even as firms faced higher costs for energy, fuel, cement, steel, and chemicals. Owen said the non-oil economy has “shifted decisively into a higher gear.”

The recovery also comes as firms “are adapting more effectively to the current market environment,” whether through hedging their supply chains by switching to domestic suppliers, easing delivery times, or by raising prices amid heightened competition.

Output rose at its fastest clip in six months. But firms are struggling to keep pace: the rapid build-up of new orders left some companies with insufficient time to scale up operations, and a growing backlog of unfinished work is the result. Teams haven’t grown much either, “reflecting a degree of hesitancy to commit to long-term capacity expansion,” Owen said, citing ongoing uncertainty around the regional conflict.

Dubai told a similar story, with one wrinkle. The Dubai PMI rose to 54.1 in August from 51.7 in July on stronger client spending and export trade. But input costs there rose at the fastest rate in four months, even as national cost pressures eased — and stock-building hit its quickest pace since December 2017.

What’s next

Will the recovery hold? Owen tells us that the domestic sourcing shift should leave firms more resilient to fresh supply shocks, having built up inventory buffers. Hiring is the bigger question mark — but he notes employment typically lags sales, and sales volumes that weakened during the peak of the conflict have since rebounded, which suggests staffing could recover in the months ahead too.

How sustainable is the local-sourcing switch? “It’s possible that some of the shift [toward] domestic sourcing will unwind if international supply chains normalize and imported inputs regain a cost advantage,” he tells us. “However, this period of disruption has encouraged firms to diversify and enjoy the benefits of having local suppliers, so some businesses may choose to retain stronger local relationships as part of a broader risk-management strategy to mitigate against any possible future supply shocks. The extent of this switch will likely depend on the relative competitiveness of domestic suppliers.”

A fresh escalation could trigger another pullback in demand, Owen says, much like what happened in 2Q 2026 — though firms’ 12-month growth expectations, as of August, are holding roughly in line with their 2025 average.

Luxhabitat-Dubai Sotheby’s International Realty tie-up turns to a lawsuit

Luxhabitat is suing its former real estate partner for AED 439 mn (USD 119.5 mn), alleging Dubai Sotheby's International Realty hid revenue owed to it by routing income through another brokerage, according to DIFC Courts filings cited by Bloomberg.

Dubai Sotheby's International Realty operates independently of the global Sotheby's International Realty network — after spinning off from the auction house back in 1976 — and is led by Chairman and CEO George Azar, who also owns the brand's Saudi Arabia and UK franchises.

The two sides: Luxhabitat alleges its former partner underreported sales, withheld audited accounts, and funneled a “substantial” share of income through Prime Realty Real Estate LLC to avoid paying out its contracted 5-6% cut of combined gross revenue. Dubai Sotheby's counters that Luxhabitat was only ever a marketing services provider — not a joint-venture partner — and that the damages claim is inflated.

It’s not the first time Luxhabitat sues: The pair launched a “long-term strategic alliance” in 2020, and became known as Luxhabitat Sotheby’s International Realty. In 2023, Luxhabitat tried to stop Dubai Sotheby's International Realty from dropping its name and also says it was entitled to a 5-6% cut of combined gross revenue. It sued in late 2024, and Dubai Sotheby’s later failed to get the case dismissed and was ordered to pay more than AED 800k in legal costs.

MBZUAI goes all in on open, Carmignac plants its flag in Dubai, and Standard Chartered brings spot crypto trading to the UAE

MBZUAI rolls out its biggest AI model family yet

Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence’s (MBZUAI) Institute of Foundation Models (IFM) launched K2 Horizon, a six-model AI family spanning 0.9 bn to 375 bn parameters, with weights, code, training data, and methodology all released openly, the university said in a statement (pdf). The smallest models are built to run on watches and phones, while the largest targets enterprise reasoning and agentic workloads.

Why it stands out: IFM says K2 Horizon goes beyond the usual “open weights” model by publishing the training data and recipes too. Its three smallest models also set new performance benchmarks in their size classes, while a new distillation technique speeds performance by roughly 3x without degrading response quality. The models are available now via Hugging Face, vLLM and SGLang, with APIs through partners including AWS and Cerebras.

Carmignac plants its flag in Dubai

French asset manager Carmignac opened its first Middle East office in Dubai International Financial Center (DIFC) after securing approval from the Dubai Financial Services Authority to conduct regulated activities, according to a statement. Christophe Younes (LinkedIn) will lead the operation as senior executive officer and head of Middle East, with a mandate to grow distribution across the UAE and wider region. He rejoined Carmignac earlier this year from Pimco after a previous 10-year tenure at the French asset manager.

The Dubai pull: Carmignac is the latest global asset manager to plant a flag in DIFC as the hub keeps drawing in firms despite the regional conflict and gets a boost from policy support aimed at businesses operating there. French peer Varenne Capital Partners also established a DIFC presence recently, following earlier moves by Swiss manager Finreon and India’s ICICI Prudential Asset Management to set up operations in the hub.

Standard Chartered brings spot crypto trading to the UAE

Standard Chartered became the first major lender to offer BTC and ETH spot trading for institutional clients in the UAE, the bank said in a press release. Eligible institutional clients can now buy and sell the crypto assets for immediate delivery through the bank’s FX interfaces, rather than relying on derivatives.

The UAE’s latest crypto pledge: Standard Chartered initially launched the option from its UK branch last July and later rolled out USDC minting and redemption for institutional clients this summer. The move aims to help clients move funds between traditional banking systems and blockchain networks.

USD 2.1 tn in capex from GCC is going to self-reliance + resilience -BlackRock

BlackRock sees the GCC deploying USD 2.1 tn in capex through 2030 — ranging between USD 1.6-2.5 tn — with a growing share staying home, according to the BlackRock Investment Institute. It’s also set to be a period of re-underwriting as countries reassess priorities in light of performance during war disruption. More than 80% of that capital is directed toward diversifying away from upstream oil and gas into energy infrastructure, industry, digital assets, and social investment — driven primarily by the goal of building resilience and self-reliance.

Existing projects are being reassessed and resequenced as countries weigh how infrastructure performed during the war’s disruption to regional shipping routes, from the Strait of Hormuz to the Red Sea.

REMEMBER- The GCC is already working on developing workarounds to hedge against future disruption that could once again cut it off from catching any upside from higher oil prices. Saudi Arabia is eyeing up expanding its East-West pipeline capacity to the Red Sea, and the UAE is also pushing ahead with plans to increase capacity in its own east-facing infrastructure.

Two segments are set to see up to two-thirds of total capex. Energy, resources, and industry is the largest single bucket at USD 735 bn — covering gas, downstream industries, and mining, including Saudi Arabia’s Jafurah gas program and the UAE’s Ruwais industrial base. Strategic redundancy follows at USD 660 bn, marking the pipeline segment most reshaped by the conflict — spanning export routes, ports, and power and water projects, illustrated by Saudi Arabia’s East-West corridor and Oman’s open-ocean ports.

The remaining three categories round out the shift. Digital infrastructure (USD 323 bn) goes beyond AI itself to the power, grids, and cooling needed to run it. Selective urban growth (USD 212 bn) is increasingly tied to fixed-deadline events like Expo 2030 Riyadh rather than open-ended expansion. Human and environmental resilience (USD 140 bn) covers healthcare, food, water, and waste systems.

More of that money will be staying in the region, BlackRock Investment Institute’s Ben Powell told Bloomberg (watch, runtime: 6:01). The GCC will remain an exporter of capital, he said, but a growing share will go toward building domestic economic resilience. The war has acted as “an accelerant” to diversification plans already underway, he added. Not every GCC market gets there the same way. The resilience strategy in the UAE is likely to see it turn to alternative logistical routing to support investment and trade, as well as to sectors like digital infrastructure, banking, and utilities to generate returns. Saudi, meanwhile, has the deepest pipeline in the GCC — and the highest execution and financing risk to go with it, so BlackRock flags sovereign-backed, well-funded projects as the ones best placed to deliver. Oman’s open-ocean access points present promise for the Sultanate, while Qatar, Kuwait, and Bahrain face a narrower window, with selectivity around corridor dependence, debt issuance, and fiscal repair mattering more there than scale.

MARKETS THIS MORNING-

Asian markets opened higher this morning, tracking a Wall Street rally on the back of a Treasury-yield pullback, with South Korea’s Kospi gaining 1.1%, Japan’s Nikkei adding 0.74%, and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index rising 1.9%. Meanwhile, mainland China’s CSI 300 rose 0.9%. Over on Wall Street, futures slid marginally ahead of Friday’s open.

ADX	9,927	+0.2% (YTD: -0.7%)
DFM	5,844	+0.5% (YTD: -3.4%)
Nasdaq Dubai UAE20	4,757	+0.5% (YTD: -2.7%)
USD : AED CBUAE	Buy 3.67	Sell 3.67
EIBOR	3.3% o/n	4.3% 1 yr
TASI	11,033	+0.2% (YTD: +5.2%)
EGX30	56,270	+1.1% (YTD: +34.5%)
S&P 500	7,748	+1.1% (YTD: +13.2%)
FTSE 100	10,832	+0.7% (YTD: +8.9%)
Euro Stoxx 50	6,383	+0.3% (YTD: +10.2%)
Brent crude	USD 95.86	+0.4%
Natural gas (Nymex)	USD 2.93	+0.5%
Gold	USD 4,516.9	-0.5%
BTC	USD 81,374	+5.2% (YTD: -8.3%)
Lunate JP Morgan UAE Bond UCITS ETF	AED 3.62	-1.1% (YTD: +1%)
S&P MENA Bond & Sukuk	150.84	+0.2% (YTD: -0.7%)
VIX (Volatility Index)	14.32	-5.8% (YTD: -4.2%)

THE CLOSING BELL-

The ADX rose 0.2% yesterday on turnover of AED 1.3 bn. The index is down 0.7% YTD.

In the green: Aram Group (+13.0%), Orascom Construction (+7.1%), and Space42 (+6.7%).

In the red: E7 Group Warrants (-2.7%), Fujairah Cement Industries (-1.6%), and Abu Dhabi Ship Building (-1.5%).

Over on the DFM, the index rose 0.5% on turnover of AED 535.4 mn. Meanwhile, Nasdaq Dubai was up 0.5%.

The entrepreneur who failed at retirement and turned to waste

After spending much of her career building and running businesses across retail, manufacturing, and exports, Veena Munganahalli (LinkedIn) was set to retire in 2016. Her return to business eventually led her somewhere she never expected: the waste industry. Alongside her co-founder and husband, she launched Sencirc, an Abu Dhabi-based holding company investing in a portfolio that spans energy-from-waste, sustainable aviation fuel, and, soon, compressed biogas — all built around a simple prospect: waste has value, provided you can find a commercially viable way to unlock it.

Each week, My Morning Routine looks at how a successful member of the community starts their day — and then throws in a couple of business questions just for fun. This week, we spoke with Munganahalli about accidentally becoming a waste-to-value entrepreneur. Edited excerpts from our conversation:

EnterpriseAM: Take us back to the beginning. Why go into the waste-to-value business?

Veena Munganahalli (VM): I've been an entrepreneur since I was 12. I had my own dance school, did some television work, and eventually ran a large export and retail business. I exited all of that around 2016 because I thought, ‘I'm done for life.’ I wanted to be a stay-at-home mom and do all the things I thought I had missed out on. Turns out, I suck at it. So, I started mentoring women entrepreneurs and investing in impact startups.

Around 2021, my husband and I started thinking about what we wanted to do with the next 20 years of our lives. We had the opportunity to acquire a sustainable energy business in the UK, and we spent about 18 months researching the industry before deciding to do it. That's where Sencirc came from. The idea is to create a future that is circularly sensible.

E: What does that actually mean in practice? What does Sencirc do?

VM: We focus on businesses that convert waste into value. Our first vertical is energy from waste. Our UK business takes municipal solid waste — the waste you and I produce every day — and converts it into electricity through gasification. We process around 250k tons of waste annually and generate roughly 26-28 MW of power.

Our second vertical is sustainable aviation fuel (SAF). Aviation has very few options for decarbonization, and the idea is to use waste or carbon that's already circulating rather than extracting more carbon from the ground through fossil fuels. We partnered with Novus Aviation Capital to establish SAF One, and our first project is coming up in Kakinada in southern India. We will use waste oils, including used cooking oil, to produce SAF. The third vertical, which we are preparing to launch, is compressed biogas. It will use agricultural waste, including paddy straw and sugarcane residue, to create gas.

E: What has surprised you most about working in this industry?

VM: It's a heavy industrial business, and there are so many women in leadership and managerial positions. I think women are intrinsically sustainable. We know how to rotate resources. The other thing that has amazed me is how much younger people are buying into the industry. They actively write to us asking for internships and opportunities. You may be doing something today that benefits people hundreds of years from now. There is a huge amount of forethought, and I love that about this industry.

E: What can the UAE do better when it comes to sustainability?

VM: Segregation has to start at the household level. I lived in Switzerland, where the rules around waste were incredibly strict. If your bin wasn't properly closed, you could be fined. The responsibility was on individuals to make sure they were segregating waste properly. We need to start making that part of everyday life. Otherwise, everything goes into the same bin.

E: Tell us about your morning routine. How does your day begin?

VM: I'm very South Indian at heart. I have to have a newspaper and coffee in my hand. I still read at least one newspaper from start to finish while listening to some music. I'm not a morning person, but that's how I start. Because we work across different time zones, my mornings are also for catching up on emails and messages before the day properly begins.

I've never had a to-do list because I think it constrains you. People get stressed because they haven't finished everything on their list, and I hate that feeling. If something is urgent and I'm worried I'll forget it, I send myself a WhatsApp message. That's my to-do list.

E: How does this pace of life compare with your earlier years of running businesses?

VM: My earlier business involved around 40 retail touchpoints. Somebody hadn't opened a store. There was a regulatory problem. A manufacturing issue had come up somewhere. I used to wake up firefighting and go to bed firefighting. Now, we know what we want, we're deliberate about who we hire, and we encourage our teams to make decisions.

E: What is one constant in your day that keeps you grounded?

VM: Apart from the newspaper and coffee, I speak to each of my daughters every single day.

Recently, I've also developed a habit of lighting a lamp every morning. I don't know exactly why I started doing it, but I miss it when I travel. I don't do elaborate routines. I don't meditate or do breathwork because I don't want to create intentions that become stressful to maintain. I like simple things. Maybe I'll buy a random pair of earrings — I collect junk earrings. That's good enough for me.

E: And how do you switch off when work is finally over?

VM: I don't want to go to sleep thinking about the next management book I need to read or some great thing everyone else is doing. I want to sleep in meaninglessness. Give me a comedy, a crime show, or something completely silly. At the end of the day, I have only one thought: I now need to sleep. Fortunately, I sleep like a baby.

Veena's favorites

What she watches: Crime dramas and “brainless” Netflix. Reacher gets a mention.

Best advice she's received: Never start a business alone. Find a co-founder who complements your skills and doesn't simply think exactly like you. A business is a giant. It can eat you up and consume you. You shouldn't be alone on that journey.

And one final rule: Have at least five minutes of fun every day. “We've built a life around things we ‘have to’ do. Dance, do Sudoku, or listen to random music. Just have some fun,” she says.

CALENDAR

SEPTEMBER

3-5 September (Thursday-Saturday): MENA Congress for Rare Diseases, Beach Rotana Hotel, Abu Dhabi.

7-9 September (Monday-Wednesday): AIM Congress, Dubai World Trade Center.

7-9 September (Monday-Wednesday): International Property Show, Dubai World Trade Center, Dubai.

12-13 September (Saturday-Sunday): Emirates International Congress on AI & Visionary Leadership in Transforming Healthcare, Adnec Center Abu Dhabi.

14-17 September (Monday-Thursday): Arabian Travel Market, Dubai World Trade Center, Dubai.

15-16 September (Tuesday-Wednesday): Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting.

17-19 September (Thursday-Saturday): International Real Estate & Investment Show (IREIS), Adnec, Abu Dhabi.

18-19 September (Friday-Saturday): EuroLeague Basketball SuperCup, Etihad Arena, Yas Island, Abu Dhabi.

28-29 September (Monday-Tuesday): Al Ain Future Business Forum, Adnec, Al Ain, Abu Dhabi.

29-30 September (Tuesday-Wednesday): AFCM Annual Conference, Abu Dhabi.

OCTOBER

1-2 October (Thursday-Friday): MEIRA Annual Conference, Atlantis the Royal, Dubai.

4-10 October (Sunday-Saturday): World Space Week, Abu Dhabi.

5-7 October (Monday-Wednesday): AI Everything Global, Adnec Center, Abu Dhabi.

12-14 October (Monday-Wednesday): Airport Show, Dubai World Trade Center, Dubai.

14-15 October (Wednesday-Thursday): Sharjah Investment Forum, Jawaher Reception and Convention Center, Sharjah.

13-15 October (Tuesday-Thursday): Annual Meeting of Global Future Leaders, Dubai.

20-22 October (Tuesday-Thursday): Future Health Summit, Adnec Center Abu Dhabi.

21 October (Wednesday): Reuters NEXT Gulf, St. Regis Saadiyat Island Resort, Abu Dhabi.

27-28 October (Tuesday-Wednesday): Arab Competition Forum, Dubai.

27-28 October (Tuesday-Wednesday): Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting.

29 October-1 November (Thursday-Sunday): Liveability and Investment Exhibition (LiveX) 2026, Adnec Center, Abu Dhabi.

30 October (Friday): Large businesses achieving annual revenues equal to or above AED 50 mn must appoint an accredited service provider for e-invoicing implementation.

Signposted to happen sometime in October 2026:

Abu Dhabi Space Week, Abu Dhabi.

NOVEMBER

2-6 November (Monday-Friday): Dubai Future Finance Week, Dubai.

4 November (Wednesday): Digital Transformation Summit, Sofitel, Abu Dhabi.

9-10 November (Monday-Tuesday): Annual government meetings, Abu Dhabi.

9-12 November (Monday-Thursday): EMEA Council on Hotel, Restaurant and Institutional Education Conference, Dubai College of Tourism, Dubai.

9-13 November (Monday-Friday): World Congress of Military Medicine, Adnec Center, Abu Dhabi.

10-12 November (Tuesday-Thursday): Dubai International Electric Vehicle Exhibition & Conference, Dubai World Trade Center.

16-18 November (Monday-Wednesday): World Police Summit, Dubai World Trade Center, Dubai.

18-19 November (Wednesday-Thursday): Touchdown Middle East 2026, Conrad Abu Dhabi Etihad Towers, Abu Dhabi.

25-26 November (Saturday-Sunday): Doers Summit, Dubai Silicon Oasis, Dubai.

DECEMBER

2-4 December (Wednesday-Friday): UN Water Conference, UAE.

4-6 December (Friday-Sunday): Formula 1 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, Abu Dhabi.

8-9 December (Tuesday-Wednesday): Capital Market Summit, Madinat Jumeirah, Dubai.

8-9 December (Tuesday-Wednesday): Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting.

7-10 December (Monday-Thursday): Abu Dhabi Finance Week, Al Maryah Island, Abu Dhabi.

8-10 December (Tuesday-Thursday): Abu Dhabi Water & Power Week, Adnec Center, Abu Dhabi.

8-10 December (Tuesday-Thursday) Middle East & North Africa Business Aviation Association Show, DWC, Dubai Airshow Site.

Signposted to happen sometime in 2027:

1 January: Deadline for large businesses to implement e-invoicing;
18-20 January: Entertainment & Leisure MENA, Dubai World Trade Center, Dubai.
1Q 2027: Completion of the first phase of Hassyan seawater desalination project;
1-3 February (Monday-Wednesday): World Governments Summit;
31 March: Small businesses with annual revenues of less than AED 50 mn are obliged to contract with an accredited service provider for e-invoicing implementation;
31 March: Government entities are required to appoint an accredited service provider for e-invoicing implementation;
21-22 April (Wednesday-Thursday): Token2049, Dubai;
1 July: Deadline for small businesses to implement e-invoicing;
1 October: Deadline for governments to implement e-invoicing;
Abu Dhabi’s solar and battery energy facility, combining 5.2 GW of solar capacity and 19 GWh of battery storage, is set for commissioning.

Signposted to happen sometime in 2028:

Artificial Intelligence Summit.

Signposted to happen sometime in 2029:

Sibos 2029 organized by the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT), Dubai;
Annual Meetings of the World Bank Group and the International Monetary Fund, Abu Dhabi;
The commissioning of the seventh phase of Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Solar Park.

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