Dubai Off-Plan Market Data: Q3 2026 Snapshot (1,601 Projects Tracked)

Executive summary — the five numbers that define Q3 2026

1) 1,601 active new-build projects are on sale across the UAE right now — 1,290 of them (81%) in Dubai — and 95.6% of the catalogue is pre-handover stock (off-plan, pre-launch or under construction). Only 71 tracked projects (4.4%) are ready today. Dubai's primary market remains, overwhelmingly, an off-plan market.

2) The median Dubai off-plan project now starts at AED 1.30 million (AED 1.38M UAE-wide). 37% of Dubai's off-plan projects still open below AED 1 million — but the sub-AED 500k entry ticket has all but disappeared (1.5% of projects).

3) 31% of Dubai off-plan projects (33% UAE-wide) start at AED 2 million or above — golden-visa territory from the first unit. Since the DLD's January 2024 rule change dropped the old 50%-equity requirement (a February 2026 federal circular reiterating it is widely reported but unconfirmed in primary sources), an off-plan purchase valued at AED 2M by DLD can anchor a 10-year visa application — and a third of the market's entry doors now open at that line.

4) Developers raised published entry prices on 95 projects in the last 50 days and cut them on just 16 — a 6:1 rise-to-cut ratio, with a median increase of +13.9%. The repricing is concentrated: Majan (22% of tracked projects repriced upward), Al Marjan Island (20%) and Dubai Islands (13%) lead the UAE.

5) 2027 is the wall of handovers: 34% of Dubai's off-plan pipeline is scheduled to complete in 2027, and 2027–2028 together account for 60%. Buyers entering in Q3 2026 are effectively choosing between a short 2026–27 runway at today's prices or 2029+ launches with longer payment plans.

Market backdrop, verified: Dubai closed H1 2026 with 86,005 sales worth AED 286.43 billion — the second-highest half-year on record — of which 58,800 were off-plan deals (68% of all sales) worth AED 139.8 billion (DLD data via Khaleej Times / Economy Middle East). In Q2 alone, off-plan took 76% of residential transactions (Springfield Properties analysis of DLD data).

1. Supply: where Dubai's 1,290 active projects actually are

As of July 18, 2026, Palmera's catalogue tracks 1,601 active new-build projects across all seven emirates: Dubai 1,290 (80.6%), Abu Dhabi 121 (7.6%), Ras Al Khaimah 86 (5.4%), Sharjah 55 (3.4%), Ajman 26 (1.6%), Umm Al Quwain 21 (1.3%) and Fujairah 1. By sales status: 1,124 off-plan (70.2%), 401 pre-launch (25.0%), 71 ready (4.4%), plus a handful under construction/upcoming.

JVC is still the single largest off-plan supply hub in the UAE with 127 active projects — but Dubai Islands is now #2 with 114, ahead of DubaiLand (96), Dubai South (65) and Al Marjan Island (58). That is the quiet story of 2026 supply: two waterfront reclamation districts (Dubai Islands and RAK's Al Marjan Island) sit in the top five alongside the three classic affordable land banks — a shift the Dubai 2040 master plan supply map helps explain.

Top 20 areas by active project count (with median entry price)

Quotable: the cheapest median entry among Dubai's volume hubs is International City (AED 550,812); the most expensive is Business Bay (AED 2,862,794) — a 5.2× spread inside one city. For the budget-belt trade-offs, see our JVC vs Arjan comparison.

2. Who is building: the developer league table

385 developers have at least one active project in the catalogue — but the top 8 control 373 projects, 23% of all UAE supply. Emaar leads with 85 active projects (entry from AED 950,000, median AED 2.68M), followed by Sobha Realty (55), Binghatti (52), Azizi (52), DAMAC (41), Imtiaz (31), Samana (30) and Ellington (27).

*GJ Real Estate's AED 172k entry is a garage/parking-type unit in a northern-emirates project; the median (AED 605k) is the representative figure.

Quotable: Azizi is the cheapest big-eight door into Dubai (entry from AED 515,000, median AED 797k); Emaar is the most expensive (median AED 2.68M) — a 3.4× median gap between the two largest private pipelines.

3. Prices: what "from" actually costs in Q3 2026

Across 1,335 pre-handover projects with a published starting price, the UAE median entry is AED 1,376,984; Dubai's is AED 1,303,297. The entry-price distribution for Dubai off-plan:

*rounding; UAE 1M–2M = 32.3%.

Three quotable facts from the distribution:

• Sub-AED 500k Dubai off-plan is nearly extinct: 16 projects out of 1,062 priced (1.5%). The genuine budget tier has migrated to Ajman (median entry AED 686k) and International City (AED 551k).
• A third of Dubai's off-plan market (37.1%) still opens under AED 1 million — concentrated in JVC, DubaiLand, Dubai South, JVT, Sports City and Production City, all with medians of AED 750–825k (see Dubai South vs DubaiLand for the sub-1M belt head-to-head).
• By emirate median entry: Abu Dhabi is now the most expensive primary market (AED 2.20M), ahead of Ras Al Khaimah (AED 1.80M), Sharjah (AED 1.45M) and Dubai (AED 1.32M). Abu Dhabi's catalogue skews to Saadiyat/Yas waterfront stock; RAK's to Al Marjan branded resorts — but the ordering surprises most buyers (full emirate comparison: Dubai vs Abu Dhabi vs RAK).

Market-price context (transactions, not asking): the average residential sale in Q2 2026 ran at AED 1,841 per sq ft (Springfield Properties / DLD), with citywide price growth decelerating from ~12% y/y in January to under 4% by May (Property Monitor / REIDIN data via Dubai Chronicle) — a normalizing market, not a correcting one. Our live price-per-sqft index by community tracks the asking side of the same picture.

4. Price movement: a 6:1 rise-to-cut market (May 29 → July 18)

We compared published starting prices for 1,327 identical projects across two catalogue snapshots 50 days apart (May 29 → July 18, 2026):

• 95 projects (7.2%) raised their entry price; 16 (1.2%) cut it; 91.6% held flat. That is a 5.9:1 rise-to-cut ratio.
• Median increase among risers: +13.9%. Median cut among fallers: −10.1%.
• The typical mover shifted +11.5% — in 7 weeks.

Where the repricing happened (share of tracked projects that raised entry prices, areas with 20+ matched projects):

Quotable: one in five projects on Al Marjan Island and in Majan repriced upward inside 50 days; not a single tracked project in either area cut. Samana (12 raises), Azizi (7) and Binghatti (7) repriced most aggressively among developers. The largest clean single-project moves: Beyond's Kanyon in Maritime City (AED 2.40M → 3.84M, +59.9%), Binghatti Etherea in JVC (+56.9%) and Samana Business Park in Majan (+56.8%) — typically driven by early phases selling through and cheaper unit types selling out. The two waterfront repricing leaders go head-to-head in Al Marjan Island vs Dubai Islands.

Two honest caveats: these are published launch/asking "from" prices, not DLD transaction prices; and the 91.6% "flat" share partly reflects how often developers refresh price sheets — treat 7.2% risers as a floor on true repricing, not the ceiling. We excluded 52 outlier swings above ±60% (mostly phase changes or a different cheapest unit type, e.g. Maybach 6 by Binghatti +240%) and one corrupt row.

Also new in the window: 21 new projects entered the catalogue in 50 days — roughly 3 launches a week — at a median entry of AED 1.30M, led by Dubai Islands, JVC and Al Reem Island. New supply is being priced at the market's midpoint, not below it.

5. Golden-visa mathematics: a third of the market starts at the threshold

472 of 1,407 priced active projects UAE-wide (33.5%) — and 330 of 1,062 in Dubai (31.1%) — have a starting price of AED 2 million or more. For those projects, every unit clears the UAE 10-year golden visa investment threshold from day one.

This matters more in Q3 2026 than it did a year ago. The federal rules (ICP) set the investor route at AED 2 million in property, and the old 50%-equity/AED-1M-cash interpretation is gone: the DLD scrapped the minimum-payment requirement in January 2024, and a February 2026 federal circular reiterating the change is widely reported — though unconfirmed in primary sources, which is why we date the rule to the DLD's documented decision. Qualification now rests on the DLD-certified value at application, mortgaged and off-plan purchases included (from approved developers, conditions apply — full mechanics in our golden-visa property guide). Practical read: in Business Bay (median entry AED 2.86M), Maritime City (AED 2.35M) and Dubai Islands (AED 2.08M), the median project is golden-visa-eligible at the cheapest unit — while in JVC or Dubai South a buyer must deliberately size up to reach AED 2M.

6. Handover pipeline: the 2027 wall

Of Dubai's pre-handover projects with a published completion date (982 with a 2026+ date):

2027 is the single biggest handover year in Dubai's current pipeline (34.4%), and 60.5% of everything now on sale is due in 2027–2028. UAE-wide the shape is identical (2027: 410 projects of 1,232, 33.3%). Two implications worth quoting: (a) buyers who need keys within ~18 months still have 230 Dubai projects to choose from; (b) the 2027–28 completion cluster is the supply wave every rental-yield forecast for those years must price in. A further 87 Dubai projects carry past-dated (pre-2026) completion labels — data lag and slippage; see methodology.

7. The demand backdrop: what the DLD numbers say (verified, sourced)

• H1 2026: 86,005 property sales worth AED 286.43 billion — Dubai's second-highest half-year on record, behind only H1 2025's AED 326.6B (DLD data via Khaleej Times, Economy Middle East, July 2026). Counting all registration types, H1 reached AED 419.94B across 112,850 transactions.
• Off-plan H1 2026: 58,800 transactions worth AED 139.8 billion — 68% of all sales by count (~49% by value; ready sales were AED 146.7B across 27,200 deals).
• Q2 2026: residential sales of AED 83.88 billion across 34,719 transactions, of which off-plan took AED 59.17B across 26,440 deals — 76% of residential transactions and 71% of value (Springfield Properties analysis of DLD data, July 6, 2026).
• Q1 2026 (DLD official): AED 252 billion in transactions, +31% y/y; 60,303 sales, +6%; foreign investment AED 148.35B (+26%); 29,312 first-time investors (+14%) (dubailand.gov.ae, April 9, 2026).
• Q3 to date: the summer is not slowing. In the week of July 6–10 alone, Dubai logged roughly AED 8.7 billion in sales, including AED 5.2 billion of off-plan across ~1,000 deals (DLD weekly data via Edwards & Towers). April 2026 set the year's monthly off-plan apartment record at AED 19.7B (Arabian Business); January–May saw 66,900 residential sales with off-plan at 74% of transactions (Arabian Business).

Read together with our catalogue: transaction demand (76% off-plan share) and supply behaviour (6:1 price-rise ratio, 3 launches/week at a AED 1.3M median) describe the same market — deep, launch-driven, and repricing upward selectively rather than across the board.

Methodology

What the catalogue is. Palmera maintains a continuously updated catalogue of new-build projects marketed in the UAE (palmera.realestate), sourced from developer launch materials and our brokerage pipeline. Each project row carries: starting ("from") price in AED, area/community, developer, sales status (pre-launch / off-plan / under construction / ready), and stated handover date. The unit of count is the project, not the unit; a 2,000-unit master phase and a 40-unit boutique building each count once.

Snapshots. Current-state figures use the catalogue snapshot generated July 18, 2026 (1,601 active projects, 1,407 with a published starting price). Price-movement figures compare it against the committed snapshot of May 29, 2026 (1,581 projects) — a 50-day window. We aimed for a ~90-day window, but our versioned snapshot history begins May 29, 2026; we report the 50-day comparison rather than extrapolate.

Filters and exclusions. Movement stats use the 1,379 projects present in both snapshots with a valid price at both ends; we excluded 52 outliers with |change| > 60% (typically a new phase or a different cheapest unit type rather than like-for-like repricing), leaving n = 1,327. One corrupted price row (< AED 100k) was screened from the price-distribution stats. Median-by-area figures are computed only where stated sample sizes allow (n shown in tables).

Caveats. (1) Prices are developer asking/launch "from" prices, not DLD transaction prices — they measure what the cheapest available unit is listed at, and are sensitive to cheap units selling out. (2) "Unchanged" prices partly reflect refresh cadence; riser shares are a floor. (3) Handover dates are developer-stated; 87 Dubai rows carry past-dated years (slippage/data lag) and are excluded from the pipeline table. (4) The catalogue covers actively marketed projects; fully sold-out projects leave the set. (5) Golden-visa share = projects whose minimum price ≥ AED 2M; many additional projects have qualifying units above the entry unit, so 31% is a strict lower bound. All aggregates are reproducible from the two dated snapshots on request (team@palmera.realestate).