Dubai Shopping Festival, and what makes a sale legal

The published calendar, and where it stops

From the Government of Dubai Media Office’s 2026 Retail Calendar, published 25 November 2025:

The 2025 calendar was issued 17 December 2024, the 2026 one on 25 November 2025. That is the publication pattern; the 2027 calendar is not yet due. Every “DSF 2027 dates” page we found belonged to a visa agency, a tour operator or a package seller, publishing speculative dates with no source.

Two stale official pages worth naming. Visit Dubai’s own live DSF landing page serves no dates at all — only “December to January” — while its image and video asset paths still reference “2025” and “2025-26”, and no update date is served. And Dubai DET’s raffles press release, dated 9 January 2025, still describes the 30th edition, two seasons out of date, with no superseded marker. The catalogue.

The rule that makes a Dubai sale different

Federal Law No. 15 of 2020, Article 18: “The Supplier is prohibited from promoting Goods or Services…except after obtaining a prior licence from the Competent Authority.” Cabinet Resolution No. 66 of 2023, Article 31, restates it: the provider shall, “upon making and announcing discounts in any means, obtain a prior licence” — wording broad enough to capture window signage, in-store, online and social.

Dubai’s own published rules then add the substance, from the Dubai Economy FAQ:

Three things follow that are worth carrying into a shop. First, the was-and-now price is not merely required to be honest in the abstract — it must be compatible with a price list lodged with the regulator, which is a harder standard than most jurisdictions apply. Second, a “special offer” tag in Dubai is not a claim about a former price at all, which is precisely why some tags show a struck-through price and some do not. Third, a single-ended “up to 70%” does not meet the published standard for a discount range.

And there the authorities collide. Dubai Economy’s published FAQ says two percentages are required — while the Media Office’s own retail calendar advertises “up to 90%” and “up to 95% off”. We print both rather than reconciling them: the FAQ rule governs a retailer’s permitted discount advertising, the calendar is festival-level marketing, and no authority states how the two relate.

The provenance of those rules is itself a finding. They are served from dubaided.gov.ae, branded “Dubai DED” — a department superseded by the Department of Economy and Tourism under Law No. (20) of 2021, with consumer protection reorganised again into the Dubai Corporation for Consumer Protection and Fair Trade by Law No. (5) of 2023. The FAQ carries no copyright year and no last-updated date. The only place Dubai’s promotion rules are published in plain language is an undated FAQ on a legacy regulator’s domain, under a defunct brand. DET’s current service page for the promotion certificate serves nothing at all to a non-JavaScript client — only the literal string “Loading component…”.

The raffles, with real terms

From Dubai Festivals & Retail Establishment’s own terms for a 2025 Shop, Scan & Win promotion — the fullest published terms we could retrieve:

• Eligibility: “only individuals (and not companies or other entities) that are a national of, legal resident or tourists in the United Arab Emirates”, aged 18 or over. Tourists are explicitly eligible.
• Mechanic: “For every AED 300 or more spent at a participating outlet, the customer is eligible to receive one digital raffle coupon”.
• Prizes in that promotion: AED 1,000,000 and one Nissan Patrol.
• Prior-season scale, per the Media Office: DSF awarded “over AED 50 million in prizes” across 295 raffles; DSS prizes worth AED 20 million.

Notable absence: that official terms document for a public raffle run by a DET affiliate carries no permit or licence number and cites none, in a regime whose own rule is that promotions require a prior permit.

Returns: there is no cooling-off right in the UAE

Nothing in Federal Law No. 15 of 2020 or Cabinet Resolution No. 66 of 2023 creates a right to return non-defective goods because you changed your mind. Every published return right is tied to a defect, a fault or a breach of warranty. Shop return policies in Dubai malls are commercial goodwill, not law.

• Article 12: the supplier shall “repair or replace the same, return the Good and refund its Price, or re-perform the Service without charge” — note the choice of remedy is not expressed as the consumer’s.
• Article 13: after three malfunctions in the first year, the supplier “shall replace it at no cost with a new one of the same type” or refund it.
• CR 66/2023 Article 25, the only clear time limit: goods without a warranty must be returned and refunded where “the defect or fault is discovered within a period of (30) thirty days”. Thirty days to discover a defect, not thirty days to change your mind.
• CR 66/2023 Article 34(10) bans the sign “goods sold are neither returned nor exchanged” — with exceptions: where the consumer knew of the defect, where the goods cannot be returned without damage, and where they are perishable, custom-made, or printed. The ban is on the blanket sign, not on a restrictive policy. A shop that takes the sign down and simply declines a change-of-mind return is doing nothing unlawful.

The custom-made carve-out matters at the Gold Souk in particular: bespoke or made-to-order jewellery sits squarely inside the published exception. Gold Souk prices

Complaining, with the one published response time

Dubai’s consumer channel is Dubai DET’s, at consumerrights.gov.ae. It accepts “defective or unsafe products, poor service quality, misleading advertising, breach of warranty or unfair business practices” and publishes a target: “The resolution timeframe is usually within five working days” — note “usually”, and note there is no published escalation route if it is missed. Federally, the Ministry publishes hotline 800-1222 and no response time at all.

The legal basis is Law No. (5) of 2023, whose Article 9.3 gives the express mandate to “monitor, and verify the credibility of, promotional events, offers, sales, and raffle draws”. That is the authority behind the was-and-now rules above.

One flag worth publishing: u.ae, updated 2 September 2026, directs Dubai complainants to consumerrights.ae — a domain that returns 403, while the working portal is consumerrights.gov.ae. A current official page pointing consumers at a dead address.

Questions no authority answers

• When is the next Dubai Shopping Festival? Not published. DET’s own live DSF page serves no dates.
• Am I guaranteed any discount? No. The published language is uniformly “up to”; no minimum is regulated or guaranteed anywhere.
• Which shops participate? No public participant list is published, and the retailer application page serves no content.
• How do I check a sale is permitted? No permit-number display is required and no public register of promotion permits exists. The shopper has no published way to verify.
• How do I know a “was” price is real? The regulator holds the reference list — and publishes neither the list nor a route to query it. The rule protects you; you cannot invoke it.
• Can I claim the difference if it goes on sale days after I buy? Article 31 appears to provide for exactly that within 30 days. No consumer-facing authority page publicises the right or explains how to exercise it, and we quote no wording for it here because the served English text was not clean enough to reproduce.
• Can I complain after I have left the UAE, and in what language? No published guidance on either. Invoices are required to be in Arabic, with other languages optional.
• Is there a consumer complaints app? None confirmed on any official page.

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