Art Fairs and Festivals in Dubai and the GCC: The 2026–2027 Season

I keep this calendar for myself, because planning a year as an artist means knowing when the region is awake.

I am publishing it because almost every version of this list currently online is wrong, and for a specific reason: the spring season was disrupted. Art Dubai, World Art Dubai, Design Doha and Bahrain's Spring of Culture were all postponed and, in some cases, moved to different venues. Most aggregator articles have not been updated and are still printing the original dates.

So this list follows one rule. If a date is confirmed by the organiser, it is here as a date. If it is not announced, it says so, rather than guessing. I would rather this be shorter and correct.

Everything below was checked in July 2026. Confirm with the organiser before booking anything — this region has had a year that rewards checking twice.

United Arab Emirates

Confirmed

Muscat Art 2026 — 28 to 30 October 2026, Oman Convention and Exhibition Centre. Fifteen national pavilions. Not in the UAE, but it opens the regional autumn.

Dubai Design Week 2026 — 3 to 8 November 2026, Dubai Design District. The city's design anchor, and much more visual-art-adjacent than the name suggests.

Downtown Design 2026 — 4 to 8 November 2026, also at d3, running inside Design Week.

Sharjah Architecture Triennial, third edition — 14 November 2026 to 14 April 2027, across multiple Sharjah venues. Titled Architecture Otherwise, curated by Vyjayanthi Rao with thirty-two participants. A five-month run, so there is no excuse to miss it.

World Art Dubai 2026 — 19 to 22 November 2026. Note two changes: it was postponed from April, and the venue has moved to the Dubai Exhibition Centre at Expo City rather than the World Trade Centre. Anything you read giving April dates or DWTC is out of date.

Frieze Abu Dhabi, inaugural edition — 20 to 22 November 2026, Manarat Al Saadiyat. This is the significant structural change in the region's calendar. Abu Dhabi Art held its seventeenth and final edition in November 2025; Frieze now runs the fair in partnership with DCT Abu Dhabi, with Dyala Nusseibeh continuing as director. If you only attend one new thing this season, this is it.

Sharjah Biennial 17 — 21 January to 13 June 2027, with opening week 21 to 24 January. Titled What remains, sits restive, curated by Angela Harutyunyan and Paula Nascimento, with a hundred and nine participants. Sharjah's biennial is, in my view, the most serious recurring exhibition in the Gulf, and it is free.

Art Dubai 2027, twenty-first edition — 7 to 11 April 2027, Madinat Jumeirah. Confirmed.

For context on this year: the twentieth anniversary edition eventually ran 15 to 17 May 2026 with a VIP preview on 14 May, having been moved from April. It went ahead with around fifty galleries rather than the hundred and twenty originally planned, and still drew record public attendance of more than twenty-five thousand. I wrote about what that felt like from inside.

Louvre Abu Dhabi, across the season: A Pictorial Adventure from July 2026 into April 2027; Spices and Wonders from 14 October 2026 to 14 February 2027; the Richard Mille Art Prize from 11 November 2026 to 28 February 2027; Heritage Lives from 23 November 2026 to 25 April 2027.

Not yet announced

Sikka Art and Design Festival, fifteenth edition — January 2027, in the Al Shindagha and Al Fahidi historic neighbourhoods. The theme has been announced as The Return and the open call for artists closed in August 2026, but exact dates were not published when I checked. Sikka matters more than its scale suggests: it is where a lot of UAE-based artists show for the first time.

Quoz Arts Fest, Alserkal Avenue — returns in late January 2027, dates to be announced. Free, and the best weekend of the year in Al Quoz.

Sharjah Art Foundation March Meeting 2027 — not announced. Dates circulating online are unsourced.

Dubai Art Season 2027 — not announced. The 2026 edition ran from January to April.

Ras Al Khaimah Art Festival 2027 — not announced; the open call is live. The 2026 edition ran through January and early February in Al Jazeera Al Hamra, and it is one of the most atmospheric settings in the country.

Xposure International Photography Festival, Sharjah — 2027 edition not announced.

World Art Dubai 2027 — not announced.

Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia now has the region's densest programme, and the least predictable calendar.

Confirmed

AlUla Skies Festival — 6 to 15 November 2026.

Ancient Kingdoms Festival, AlUla — 26 November to 12 December 2026.

Winter at Tantora, AlUla — 17 December 2026 to 9 January 2027.

AlUla Arts Festival, sixth edition — 15 January to 16 February 2027. This is the most solidly confirmed Saudi date in the season and the one I would build travel around.

Islamic Arts Biennale, third edition — 1 November 2027 to 1 March 2028, at the Western Hajj Terminal in Jeddah. Yes, that is well over a year away. It is worth knowing now, because the previous editions were extraordinary and accommodation in Jeddah moves early. Curators have not been announced.

Hayy Jameel, Jeddah — Red Wind, Coral Worlds and Global Positioning System, both running from May to 26 October 2026. The latter is shown jointly with Jameel Arts Centre in Dubai, which is a rare and interesting arrangement.

Not yet announced

Noor Riyadh 2026 — not announced. The 2025 edition ran from late November into December with fifty-nine artists from twenty-four countries. It is one of the largest light-art festivals anywhere and it is free.

Desert X AlUla — the next edition is not announced. The fourth ran from January to February 2026 under the title Space Without Measure. Be careful searching for this: Desert X in California has separate dates and is a different exhibition.

Art Week Riyadh, second edition — not announced. A warning here, because I have seen this repeated in several places: the inaugural edition was April 2025, not 2026. Search engines are confidently reporting an April 2026 edition that did not happen.

Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale, fourth edition — not announced. The third ran from 30 January to 2 May 2026 in the JAX District, with sixty-eight artists from thirty-seven countries.

Downtown Design Riyadh is listed for 15 to 18 September 2026 at JAX District, but the organiser's own page still shows last year's edition. Confirm before travelling.

Qatar

Confirmed

M7, Msheireb — three exhibitions running 27 October to 26 December 2026.

Mathaf — Baghdad Modern Art Group, 25 October 2026 to 6 February 2027. For anyone interested in the history of modernism outside Europe, this is a significant show.

National Museum of Qatar — Giuseppe Penone, 26 October 2026 to 13 February 2027.

Rubaiya Qatar, inaugural edition — 21 November 2026 to 30 April 2027, across multiple sites. A brand-new national quadrennial, with a flagship exhibition titled Unruly Waters featuring more than fifty artists and over twenty new commissions. First editions are usually worth attending.

Design Doha Biennial, second edition — opens November 2026 and runs to 31 January 2027. This was postponed earlier in the year. The exact opening day and the venues were still being confirmed when I checked.

Art Basel Qatar, second edition — 28 to 30 January 2027 at M7 and the Doha Design District in Msheireb, with preview days on 26 and 27 January. Artistic director Wassan Al-Khudhairi, founding director of Mathaf. The theme is between. The first edition in February 2026 brought eighty-seven galleries from thirty-one countries in an unusual booth-less format, and it is now the most significant new fair in the region.

Qatar's Year of Culture pairs with Canada and Mexico in 2026, and with Egypt and Greece in 2027.

Not yet announced

Tasweer Photo Festival, fourth edition — 2027 dates not announced, though a Tasweer residency exhibition runs from 31 October to 15 December 2026.

Two longer-term notes: the Art Mill Museum in Doha is due to open in 2030, and the Lusail Museum is currently expected to complete construction around 2029.

Bahrain, Kuwait and Oman

I want to be straightforward here, because these three are where published lists are least reliable.

Bahrain. The Annual Fine Arts Exhibition reached its fifty-second edition in spring 2026 at the Bahrain National Museum, with seventy-five Bahraini artists. The 2027 edition is not yet announced. Spring of Culture is paused — the twentieth edition, programmed for spring 2026, was postponed, and the festival is expected to return in 2027 with dates to be confirmed. As for Art Bahrain Across Borders, I could find no edition since 2019 and its official site is no longer live. I would not plan around it.

Kuwait. There is real activity here but very little of it is published with dates. The Contemporary Art Platform in Shuwaikh, the Sultan Gallery, Dar al Athar al Islamiyyah and the Sheikh Abdullah Al Salem Cultural Centre are all operating and all worth visiting, but none of them publishes a reliable forward calendar in English. Treat Kuwait as a city you visit and then look up what is on, rather than one you plan a trip around. I could not verify the current status of the Kuwait International Biennial and would not list it as upcoming.

Oman. Muscat Art runs 28 to 30 October 2026 at the Oman Convention and Exhibition Centre — note that it is branded simply Muscat Art. Stal Gallery and Bait Muzna Gallery in Muscat are both open. And Oman is presenting its first ever national pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2026, with Haitham Al Busafi, under the title Zīnah. For a country with a small formal art infrastructure, that is a genuine milestone.

How I actually use a calendar like this

Three things I have learned about the regional season.

November is the compression point now. Dubai Design Week, World Art Dubai, Frieze Abu Dhabi and the Sharjah Architecture Triennial all open within three weeks of each other. If you can only travel once, come in November.

January and February belong to Saudi Arabia and Sharjah. AlUla, Sharjah Biennial, Art Basel Qatar and Sikka all fall in that window. It is the better month for looking rather than selling.

April is Art Dubai's again in 2027. After this year's disruption, the fair returns to its April slot, and the whole city reorganises itself around it.

For an artist, the practical value of a calendar is not the fairs themselves. It is knowing when collectors, curators and gallerists are physically in the region, because that is when studio visits happen. I plan my painting year backwards from these dates.

If you would like to see what comes out of that year, the collection is here. And if you are visiting rather than exhibiting, my guide to Dubai's galleries covers what is open on an ordinary week, when no fair is on at all.