Arabic and English branding in Dubai: what the law asks for and what buyers expect

Dubai Decree No. 6 of 2020 regulates advertisements across the emirate. It requires a business to display a sign on its facade stating its activity and trade name. For anyone holding an advertising permit, it then sets the language rule: Arabic is the main language of the advertisement, it occupies at least 50 percent of the advertising space, it sits in the upper section or on the right hand side, and it is free of grammar and spelling mistakes. Other languages are allowed beside it.

In May 2026 the Dubai Media Office set out how the Department of Economy and Tourism applies this to shopfronts. Arabic is positioned above English. Each shop shows one trade name. Signs are static and horizontal. And trade name signs are ruled out on facades above the ground floor for offices and clinics, which matters to any practice on an upper floor of a medical building.

The detailed sizes sit in the Outdoor Advertising Manual and in your landlord's or free zone's own guidelines. Get those from the sign contractor before the artwork is final, because a permit is issued against the drawing.

The federal Consumer Protection Law, No. 15 of 2020, reaches further than signage. It applies to all goods and services in the UAE, free zones included. An invoice to a consumer is issued in Arabic, and the supplier may add other languages. Data, advertisements and contracts related to the consumer are made in Arabic, with other languages allowed in addition. A UAE registered business selling online gives consumers adequate information in Arabic about the service, the terms, payment and warranty.

For a clinic, a therapy practice or a consultancy that serves individuals, this touches ordinary documents: the receipt, the booking terms, the package agreement. Most small businesses in Dubai produce these in English only. Ask your lawyer which of your documents count, and budget for a professional Arabic version of each.

The UAE Media Council's content standards, in force since 2025, add a duty to respect the country's culture and national identity in advertising. Press coverage of the standards lists fines from AED 10,000 to AED 1 million for breaches of the media law. None of the twenty published standards sets a language rule of its own.

A UAE trade name is carried into Arabic by sound. The DMCC free zone states it plainly: company names are rendered phonetically, and a translation of the meaning is refused. Khaleej Times reports the same approach for Dubai's mainland names.

So every business in Dubai already has an Arabic name on its licence. The open question is whether anyone designed it. Left alone, the Arabic name gets typeset by whoever makes the sign, in whatever font they hold, and the half of the sign the law gives to Arabic ends up as the half nobody planned.

The same check protects the name itself. A coined English name can land on an existing Arabic word once it is spelled by sound. Find that out at the shortlist stage. The guide to trade names and trademarks in the UAE covers the register searches that go with this.

The law leans toward Arabic, and the street leans toward English. The last nationality split published by the Dubai Statistics Center, for the end of 2016, counted about 91 percent of residents as expatriates. The city's population passed 3.8 million at the end of 2024. Most of the people reading your sign, site and profiles use English as their working language, and many read neither English nor Arabic as a first language.

That shapes the writing. Short sentences and common words carry across a mixed audience. Idioms and clever wordplay often fail for a reader working in a second language. The same holds in Arabic: Modern Standard Arabic is the safe register for formal documents, and a marketing line still has to sound like something a person would say.

Arabic speaking clients notice effort. A properly set Arabic name, a correct Arabic service description and an Arabic option at booking tell an Emirati or Arab expatriate family that the practice expected them. A machine translated page tells them the opposite.

In May 2026 The National reported that the UAE is drafting its first federal Arabic Language Law, due to be introduced in 2027. According to that report, the draft includes mandatory Arabic in public advertising campaigns and Arabic speaking customer service. It is at an early stage, with no number or start date, so treat the details as open.

The direction is clear enough to plan on. Each recent rule has moved Arabic toward the front of what a customer sees. A brand that already has a designed Arabic wordmark, a tested Arabic name and Arabic versions of its core documents will meet a new rule with small edits.

Decide the position and the name first, in one language, with the Arabic sound check done before the shortlist closes. Then commission the wordmark in both scripts as one job from a designer who draws Arabic letters, and judge the two together at sign proportions.

Write the core messages once and have them adapted by a native Arabic writer, with the brief and the audience in front of them. Keep a short list of fixed terms, such as the service names, so the Arabic stays the same on the sign, the invoice and the website.

Branding Tatva works in English. On a Dubai project, the positioning, naming direction and English messaging are scoped here, and Arabic lettering, Arabic copy and sign permits are scoped with Arabic specialists and your sign contractor.