Méridien · An interactive sector report · 2026 edition

The city counts everything.Except its museums.

INTERNATIONAL OVERNIGHT VISITORS · DUBAI · 2025

0

Counted, audited, published. The third record year in a row.1

MUSEUM VISITORS · DUBAI · 2025

—

No public figure exists. Not per venue, not sector-wide.

Dubai's tourism authority reports international visitors down to the last digit, and 2025 was the third record year in a row. The museum sector has no public attendance figures at all: not per venue, not consolidated, not once a year. This report assembles what is known, marks what is not, and shows what a sector report for Dubai's museums could look like.

Read the report

STATE OF DUBAI MUSEUMS · SPEC EDITION BY MÉRIDIEN · ALL FIGURES FROM THE PUBLIC RECORD

Section 01 · The operators

Who actually runs Dubai's museums

Four kinds of institutions share the sector, and the map explains a lot about the data gap: the body that counts visitors best runs no museums, and the bodies that run museums publish no counts.12

  • Regulator and main public operator

    Dubai Culture & Arts Authority12

    • 6 museums
    • 4 heritage sites
    • 7 libraries
    • 4 cultural centres

    Etihad Museum, Al Shindagha, Saruq Al-Hadid Museum and more

  • New operating company under Dubai Culture

    Dubai Museums Company11

    • mandate: manage and develop the emirate's museum sector

    MD Muna Faisal Al Gurg. The natural author of a report like this one.

  • Operator of the Museum of the Future

    Dubai Future Foundation2

    • 1 museum
    • the sector's only public attendance curve

    Not part of Dubai Culture.

  • Owns the tourism statistics. Runs no museums.

    Department of Economy & Tourism1

    • 19.59M visitors counted in 2025

    Proof the city knows how to count when it decides to.

  • Foundations, developers, commercial immersives

    Private & independent12

    • Art Jameel
    • Al-Futtaim (DUMA)
    • DIFC (MODA)
    • Arte Museum, AYA, TODA

    No attendance disclosure either.

Section 02 · The numbers that exist

Everything the public record knows

Three data points cover the whole sector: one museum publishes a milestone curve, one figure survives from a closed fort, and one number appeared once in a creative-economy report. This section is exhaustive, which is the problem.7

Museum of the Future · cumulative visitors

opensFeb 20221M163 countriesFeb 20232M172 countriesFeb 20243Munder 3 yearsDec 20244MAug 20255M4th anniversaryFeb 2026
Milestones as announced by Dubai Future Foundation and the Dubai Media Office; months are announcement dates.32

1.5M

visitors in 2019 at Al Fahidi Fort — the sector's busiest venue until it closed for restoration4

12M

visits to Dubai museums and galleries in 2022 — published once, in a creative-economy report, never updated7

Section 03 · The numbers that don't

The charts this report cannot draw

Every frame below is standard content in a museum sector report anywhere in the world. For Dubai, none of them can be filled from public sources. The frames are the finding.

  • Attendance by venue, by year

    The basic table: each museum, each year, one number. Abu Dhabi publishes it down to a single venue; Dubai has never published it for any.

  • Visitor mix

    Residents against tourists, first visits against returns. Unknown for every public museum in the city.

  • Exhibitions and programming reach

    Audiences of exhibitions, school programmes and public events, year over year. Dubai Culture reports its activity, not its audiences.

  • Sector total

    One consolidated line: how many people entered a Dubai museum this year. The 2022 one-off figure has had no successor.

Section 04 · The strategy

Targets set, scoreboard missing

The Creative Economy Strategy, launched in 2021, set precise targets for 2025. The most recent public checkpoint is from 2022. As of mid-2026 no final results have been published, so the tracker below is exactly as complete as the public record allows.8

Creative industries' share of Dubai GDP7

2.6%2020

4.6%2022 · last reported

5%2025 target

Creators based in the emirate8
no interim figure ever published

70,0002020

140,0002025 target

175,727

people employed in Dubai's creative sectors in 2022, across 47,544 companies — the strategy's last public checkpoint7

Progress bars show published checkpoints only. A dashed track means the strategy's own metric has no public update.

Section 05 · The pipeline

More museums are coming than data about them

The sector is in its biggest building phase since 1971. Each project below will open into the same statistical vacuum unless someone starts counting in public.9

  1. 1787

    Al Fahidi Fort built

    Dubai's oldest building

  2. 1971

    Dubai Museum opens in the fort

    runs for five decades, then closes for full restoration

  3. Oct 2025

    DUMA announced

    first modern & contemporary art museum, by Tadao Ando, on the Creek

  4. May 2026

    MODA launched

    Museum of Digital Art, DIFC, by Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill

  5. 2026–27

    Al Fahidi Fort reopens

    six new galleries, phased opening; official dates vary

Announcement and opening dates from official releases and coverage.105

Section 06 · The benchmark

What gets published, one emirate against the other

This is not a contest of museums; it is a contest of publishing habits. On collections and architecture Dubai competes fine. On numbers it forfeits.6

PUBLISHED?

Dubai

Abu Dhabi

Annual tourism results

YES19.59M, audited

YES26.6M

Consolidated culture attendance

NOnever published

YES8.6M across sites & libraries

Per-venue museum figures

NOno venue, no year

YESLouvre AD: 1.4M in 2025

Culture events attendance

NOactivity reported, audiences not

YES4.2M in 2025

Publication cadence

NOone-off report, 2022

YESevery January

Dubai column: DET and Dubai Culture public releases. Abu Dhabi column: DCT Abu Dhabi 2025 results.16

Section 07 · Method & sources

Sources

Every figure in this report comes from the public record and is listed below. One caveat belongs in the method: Dubai's open-data portal, Dubai Pulse, is geo-fenced outside the UAE, so any cultural datasets it may hold could not be inspected for this edition. Where official formulations vary — the Al Fahidi reopening dates — we quote the range.

  1. 01Dubai Media Office · Dubai's tourism industry achieves third successive record-breaking year (19.59M, Feb 2026)
  2. 02Dubai Media Office · Museum of the Future receives 5 million visitors (Feb 2026)
  3. 03Dubai Future Foundation · Museum of the Future attracts one million visitors from 163 countries in first year
  4. 04Wikipedia · Dubai Museum (Al Fahidi Fort) — attendance history
  5. 05Gulf News · Final design approved for rehabilitated Al Fahidi Fort, Dubai's oldest building
  6. 06Abu Dhabi Media Office · Culture and tourism sectors deliver strong growth in 2025, with 26.6M visitors
  7. 07Dubai Culture x DinarStandard · Creative Dubai 2024 Impact Report (2022 data: AED 21.96bn, 4.6% of GDP, 12M museum & gallery visits)
  8. 08UAE Government · Dubai Creative Economy Strategy (2.6% to 5% of GDP, 70,000 to 140,000 creators by 2025)
  9. 09Dezeen · Tadao Ando designs Dubai Museum of Art on the Creek (Oct 2025)
  10. 10Dubai Media Office · Latifa bint Mohammed launches Museum of Digital Art (May 2026)
  11. 11Arabian Business · Dubai appoints senior executive to manage the city's museums (Dubai Museums Company)
  12. 12Dubai Culture · Museums and heritage attractions of Dubai
  13. 13Dubai Statistics Centre · Culture and Leisure theme (downloadable tables)
  14. 14Dubai Culture · Open data (Dubai Pulse portal; geo-fenced outside the UAE)