Dubai Arbitration Week 2026: dates, organiser and what happens

The short version

• Dubai Arbitration Week is an annual, not-for-profit gathering of the international arbitration community in Dubai.
• It launched in 2011 and, on the organisers’ figures, has drawn over 10,000 practitioners and professionals across its editions since then.
• It is run by a community-led Organising Committee, with the Dubai International Arbitration Centre (DIAC) providing the organising team, so it is DIAC-supported rather than DIAC-run.
• The 2026 edition runs 9 to 13 November 2026, with registration open as of 10 November 2026.
• The week is a city-wide programme of workshops, panels and networking hosted across Dubai, including a session hosted by the DIFC Courts on 11 November 2026.^1,3,10

What is Dubai Arbitration Week?

Dubai Arbitration Week is an annual, not-for-profit week of arbitration workshops, panels and networking across Dubai that brings the city’s arbitration community together with practitioners and institutions from other countries. Arbitration is private dispute resolution where the parties agree that a neutral, an independent decision-maker rather than a court, will decide their case. An institution, here, is an arbitral body that runs cases under its own rules. The official site describes the week as “not-for-profit, community led and shaped by a dedicated committee”.¹

This guide covers the event, not the law of the place it is held. The law of the Dubai and wider UAE seat, meaning the place whose courts supervise an arbitration and whose law frames it, including the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC) and the Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM), is in our guide to arbitration in the UAE. For the other weeks on the same circuit, from Paris in the spring to London in December, see arbitration weeks around the world.¹

Who organises Dubai Arbitration Week?

A dedicated, community-led Dubai Arbitration Week Organising Committee runs the week, with DIAC providing the organising team and strategic support. It is not run by any single institution alone.^1,10

DIAC is the Dubai International Arbitration Centre, the arbitral institution at the centre of the week’s organising team. In its 2024 annual report, DIAC says it “again supported Dubai Arbitration Week by providing strategic support to the organising committee in planning, promoting, and executing the week”. In its 2023 report it says it “helped the DAW Organising Committee to co-ordinate over 100 events”. The official site gives the week’s contact as events@diac.com.^1,6,10

So the common idea that DIAC runs Dubai Arbitration Week is only half right. DIAC supports the week and staffs much of its organisation, but the programme is assembled by the committee and by the many hosts who put on their own sessions. We do not name committee members or officers.^1,10

When is Dubai Arbitration Week 2026?

Dubai Arbitration Week 2026 runs 9 to 13 November 2026 in Dubai, and registration is open as of 10 November 2026.¹

One session inside that window is already confirmed on an official page. The DIFC Courts list their own Dubai Arbitration Week 2026 session for Wednesday 11 November 2026, 10:00 AM to 12:30 PM Gulf Standard Time, at the Samaya Ballroom, The Ritz-Carlton, DIFC. The DIFC Courts are the courts of the Dubai International Financial Centre. Their published agenda runs a morning of registration, welcome remarks, a panel discussion and a question-and-answer session.³

As of 10 November 2026, the official Events page still shows the 2025 programme, and the full session-by-session 2026 schedule is not yet posted. We treat two things as confirmed: the 9 to 13 November 2026 span, and the DIFC Courts session. For the rest of the programme we point readers to the official calendar, rather than set out a day-by-day agenda we cannot source.^1,2

What happens during the week?

The week is a mix of workshops, panel sessions and networking, put on by institutions, law firms and others across Dubai and the DIFC. There is no single flagship conference, meaning no one main set-piece event that the whole week is built around; the week is many separate sessions held in parallel.^1,7

Sessions run at venues across the DIFC, for example the Ritz-Carlton DIFC, the Waldorf Astoria DIFC and the Capital Club DIFC. The 2025 programme included an official opening reception, held on Monday 10 November 2025. The 2026 reception is not yet posted.²

Some hosts put on their own set-piece event inside the week. DIAC reports that one of its 2024 highlights was a symposium it co-hosted with the Hong Kong International Arbitration Centre during the week, titled “Shaping the future of dispute resolution: how technology is changing arbitration”. That is one session among many, not the week as a whole, and it shows how the programme is built from what institutions choose to host.¹⁰

The DIFC Courts’ 2026 session is titled “The Evolving Relationship Between Arbitration, Mediation and the Courts: Strategic Pathways to Resolution”. The official site frames the 2026 edition around “the latest thinking on artificial intelligence” set against “a sense of humanity” in the disputes of the future. What institutional rules and courts say about AI in arbitration is in our guide to AI in arbitration.^1,3

How big is Dubai Arbitration Week?

On the organisers’ own figures, Dubai Arbitration Week is one of the largest arbitration gatherings in the world. The official site calls it “one of the largest and most widely attended arbitration gatherings in the world” and says over 10,000 practitioners and professionals have attended across its editions since 2011. That figure above 10,000 is cumulative, counted over the years, not a single edition.¹

The year-by-year figures come from DIAC’s annual reports and a 2025 event listing. DIAC reported over 81 events and more than 500 participants for 2022, over 100 events and more than 1,000 delegates for 2023, and over 140 events and over 1,500 delegates for 2024. A non-official 2025 listing gave over 140 events planned for that edition, which we treat as unconfirmed. The DIAC counts are the organisers’ own, phrased as rounded minimums. They count events and attendance differently from one year to the next, so read them as a rough trend rather than an exact series.^4,6,7,10

When did Dubai Arbitration Week start?

Dubai Arbitration Week launched in 2011 and has run every year since. It is now one of the field’s largest gatherings.¹

The week takes its character from Dubai’s first recorded name, Al Wasl, which the organisers translate as “the connection” in Arabic. The name points to what the week is for, bringing arbitration communities from different countries together.¹

The official site dates the launch to 2011 and does not mention the former DIFC-LCIA Arbitration Centre. The one official point on that history is a change in the institutions, not in the week itself. Dubai Decree No. 34 of 2021, issued 14 September 2021, abolished the DIFC Arbitration Institute, which with the LCIA had run the DIFC-LCIA Arbitration Centre, and moved its work to DIAC. The safe reading is that the week launched in 2011 and is now supported by DIAC, which took over the abolished DIFC Arbitration Institute’s work under Decree 34 of 2021.^1,9

How do you attend Dubai Arbitration Week?

There is no single central ticket. Each session is hosted and registered separately, and the official site’s calendar links to the individual events and their registration. Cost is not set week-wide. The week is not-for-profit, but each session is priced by its host, so whether a given event is free or ticketed, and how to register, is shown on that event’s own listing on the official site.^1,2

A “registration now open” status is per edition and per event, so the official site is the place to check the current programme and sign up for a given session. For how Dubai’s week sits alongside the rest of the circuit, see arbitration weeks around the world, and the city guides to New York Arbitration Week and Hong Kong Arbitration Week.¹

What do these weeks tell us about where arbitration is heading?

In our view, Dubai Arbitration Week is a yearly snapshot of what the arbitration field is arguing about. There is no single conference at its centre. The programme is rebuilt each year from workshops and panels, and the same questions keep returning: cost, delay, access, the competition between seats, and now, in the 2026 framing, the place of artificial intelligence set against a sense of humanity in future disputes. The week’s own growth is part of the story. From over 81 events and more than 500 participants in 2022 to over 140 events and more than 1,500 delegates by 2024, the community gathering in Dubai has widened quickly. It is not alone. New York, London, Paris and Hong Kong each run their own arbitration week on the same circuit, and Singapore folds its arbitration events into a combined convention week. Read together, these gatherings show a field pushing to resolve more disputes, more consistently, and on a clearer record, across borders. Dubai’s week is one place to watch that happen.^1,7,10