Middle East Business
Licensed buildings in Dubai rose by 37.4 per cent in the first half, with more than 24,000 buildings recorded under construction
By Staff Writer | 27 August 2026
Municipality data puts the count at 4,305 for the six months to June, against 3,134 in the same period last year, an increase of 1,171 buildings.
The number of licensed buildings in Dubai rose by 37.4 per cent year on year in the first half of 2026. On Dubai Municipality data the count went from 3,134 buildings in the first half of 2025 to 4,305 in the same period this year, an increase of 1,171.
Set beside that is a stock figure: more than 24,000 buildings are recorded as under construction across the emirate. The two numbers describe different things and both are worth separating carefully. The first is a flow, the licences granted in six months. The second is the size of the live construction book at a point in time.
Having more than 24,000 buildings under construction reflects the scale of Dubai's ongoing urban transformation. It also highlights the importance of continuing to develop supply in line with market needs while maintaining the high standards that have established Dubai as a global destination for living, working and investment.
Badar Rashid Al Blooshi, Chairman of Arabian Gulf Properties
The part of the reading that matters commercially
The interpretation offered alongside the figures is that the increase is not confined to new project launches. It is said to extend to the development and improvement of existing assets and projects, in a market responding to what residents, businesses and investors are asking for.
If that holds, a material share of the additional licences represents refurbishment, extension and fit-out rather than new build on clear sites. Those are different jobs to price. Existing structures carry survey risk, occupation constraints and pre-existing defects, and they generate a larger proportion of variation and disruption arguments per pound of value than a tower on a cleared plot.
On work to an existing building, the ground the parties fight over is usually what was known at tender. Where the employer holds surveys, asbestos registers or as-built records that were not issued with the tender documents, the resulting instruction is often a variation, and the sooner the notice goes in the cleaner the entitlement.
What a rising licence count does to a delivery programme
The chairman of Arabian Gulf Properties also said that the strength of the market rests on an integrated system of long term urban planning, infrastructure and efficient regulatory processes, alongside the emirate's ability to attract residents, businesses and investment, and that as development continues, project quality, efficient delivery and sustainability will remain essential to competitiveness.
The practical consequence of a 37.4 per cent rise in licences is competition for the same trades, the same plant and the same inspectors. Programme risk on a Dubai job over the next 18 months is more likely to arrive through subcontract resource and lead times than through anything on the drawings. Where a contract fixes a completion date on the assumption of ordinary market availability, the assumption is the thing to test.
The limits of the figures
The count published is of licensed buildings, not of permits, floor area or contract value, so it says nothing directly about the size of the buildings behind the number. A licence is also not a start on site: a proportion of any half year's licences will not be built in that period, and some will not be built at all.
Nor has a split been published between residential, commercial and industrial, or between new build and works to existing property, so the reading that growth extends to existing assets cannot be measured from the figures given. What the data does establish is direction and magnitude, and both point the same way.