Before you travel to Dubai: fees, formalities and what is closed

Money and formalities

What is charged, by whom, and under which published instrument.

• Visa fees & overstay finesTwo authorities disagree
• Hotel fees & taxesTourism Dirham, 7%, VAT
• Street parking & finesThree fine tables

When to come, and what will be shut

Season dates as each operator publishes them, and the closures that have no date at all.

• Seasonal closuresNo two operators agree
• What is closed right now11 venues, 6 with no date
• Hatta: season and pricesTwo opening dates

Outdoors and public spaces

Where the Municipality publishes a rule, and the much larger set where it does not.

• Public beachesThree flags, no green one
• Park entry feesAED 3–5 on foot, gate hours
• Mall opening hoursNo two use the same week

Also in Before you travel

The rest of this section, each page carrying its own sources and its own verification date.

• Events calendar 2026–27 — Dubai events October 2026 to April 2027 with dates read twice on organisers' pages: Global Village 14 Oct, Dubai Fitness Challenge 31 Oct-29 Nov, Dubai World Cup 27 Mar 2027
• SIM cards & mobile data — du tourist bundles AED 199/299/499 read by hand from shop.du.ae; e& publishes plan names but not prices; TDRA's app list still names an app removed in 2019
• Souks & traditional markets — No authority sets hours for Dubai's souks; Visit Dubai only describes Gold and Spice Souk timings. The gold law behind 'government regulated' is Federal Law 11 of 2015
• Accessibility — Dubai's published provisions for People of Determination, the tourist Sanad card, and five widely repeated claims with no official source
• Hospitals & healthcare — Dubai healthcare for a visitor: 998 for ambulance, 5 Dubai Health and 13 private hospitals stating 24-hour emergency departments, and a 2018 Dubai resolution under which an uninsured person is carried free; no authority publishes what an emergency visit costs
• Weather by month — Dubai monthly climate normals from the WMO 1991-2020 series, station 41194 at Dubai International Airport: August mean maximum 41.9C and 0.003 mm of rain; the normals contain no relative humidity element and no authority publishes monthly sea temperature
• Money & payments — No UAE bank publishes a fee for a foreign card at its ATM and the AED 2 cap covers only a bank's own customers; the card surcharge ban names credit cards and goods only, and displayed prices must include 5% VAT
• Tap water — DEWA never publishes a potability statement; its meter sits before the building tank and the enforced standard is paywalled
• Desert & camping — The Conservation Reserve is closed to the public; Al Marmoom publishes no hours and the camping fee is stated two ways
• Remote work visa — One instrument, two official income thresholds (USD 3,500 and USD 5,000) and three fee schedules that do not reconcile
• Solo & women travellers — No published restriction on a woman travelling alone; the metro cabin has no named fine and no published boys’ age limit
• Lost property — The lost-passport route is published at AED 241 and 48 hours; holding periods, fees and any route from abroad are not
• Emergency numbers — The federal list of emergency numbers gives no language of service and no revision date, and still carries COVID-19 hotlines; the purpose of Dubai Police 901 is set out only in a press release
• Prayer times & mosques — The authority’s prayer-times page serves no times without JavaScript and its timetable stops at 2024; mosque visitor terms are operator-published only
• School holidays & crowds — The ministry prints fixed Gregorian Eid dates while the portal says the same holidays follow moon sighting; monthly arrivals are published by nobody
• Where to stay — Dubai awards star ratings and keeps a statutory register with no public interface; the classification criteria are unpublished against an order to publish them
• Holiday homes — A licensed listing must carry its permit number in the advert, and no lookup exists to check it; utilities charges and room-only lets are published offences

A note on what this page is not

These pages transcribe what Dubai's authorities publish, with the source and the date attached. They are not legal, tax or immigration advice, and no figure here is universal — visa costs depend on nationality and on which authority issues, and tax treatment depends on definitions that are not always published in English. For a decision that turns on any of them, go to the authority itself; every page links its sources in full.

Where an authority contradicts itself, we say so instead of choosing. The pattern, catalogued. And where it publishes nothing where a rule plainly exists, that is catalogued too.

Several pages in this section transcribe fees, fines and visa conditions. Where two federal authorities publish different figures for the same thing — the overstay fine, the VAT refund formula — both are printed, attributed, and left unreconciled.

Common questions