Dubai Office Market: The Listed-Landlord Read (2025-2026)

The Dubai office market is effectively full at the institutional end, and the landlords' own filings prove it without a single survey. TECOM Group, the emirate's largest listed business-park landlord, reports 98% occupancy across its commercial and industrial portfolios as of 31 March 2026; Emirates REIT closed 2025 at 96%; ENBD REIT held 95%, with its flagship Dubai Internet City office at 99%. On the demand side, DIFC ended 2025 with 8,844 active companies, up 28% in a year, and its newest office building handed over 98.45% committed. This page reads the Dubai office market the way we read Riyadh's: occupancy from audited disclosures rather than private surveys, demand from company registries, supply from the operators' own pipelines. Every figure carries a source and an as-of date. Where a number exists only in private brokerage surveys, we say so plainly and publish a labelled estimate instead of borrowing theirs.

Key figures at a glance

Metric	Value	Scope	As of	Source
TECOM occupancy	98%	Commercial + industrial, blended	Q1 2026	TECOM
TECOM commercial-only occupancy	90%	Office parks (DIC, DMC, D3...)	FY2024	TECOM
Emirates REIT occupancy	96% (from 94%)	Full portfolio, 1.8M sq ft NLA	31 Dec 2025	Emirates REIT
ENBD REIT occupancy	95%; The Edge at 99%	Portfolio 72% office by value	31 Mar 2026	ENBD REIT
DIFC active companies	8,844 (+28% YoY)	Financial free zone	31 Dec 2025	DIFC
DIFC commercial space under construction	1.7 million sq ft	Gate District expansion	end-2025	DIFC
DIFC new office pre-leasing	98.45% at handover	600,000 sq ft Grade A delivery	Mar 2026	DIFC via press
Dubai real estate transactions	AED 917 billion, 270,000+ deals	All property types, not office-split	FY2025	DLD via MoF

How full is the Dubai office market?

Three listed landlords answer from their own accounts: TECOM at 98% blended occupancy (Q1 2026), Emirates REIT at 96% (December 2025), ENBD REIT at 95% with The Edge at 99% (March 2026). No Dubai government body publishes a citywide office vacancy rate. The filings are the market read.

Start with the caveat that matters. TECOM's headline 98% covers commercial and industrial portfolios together (TECOM Q1 2026 results); its last disclosed commercial-only figure was 90% at end-2024, against 94% blended at the time (TECOM FY2024). Warehouses flatter the average. The office-only number has tightened since, on the evidence of the blended climb from 94% to 98% and a 94% commercial customer retention rate in Q1 2026, but TECOM has not published it, so we will not quote the blend as an office rate.

The REITs are cleaner. Emirates REIT, which holds Index Tower and other Dubai office and education assets across 1.8 million sq ft of net lettable area, moved from 94% occupancy at end-2024 to 96% at end-2025, with the portfolio revalued 20% higher to USD 1,172.7 million (Emirates REIT FY2025 fact sheet). ENBD REIT, now 72% office by portfolio value, held 95% overall for the year to 31 March 2026 and took The Edge in Dubai Internet City to 99% (ENBD REIT FY results).

Omran occupancy proxy (from listed-landlord filings). Across the three listed Dubai landlords with meaningful office exposure, stabilised occupancy clusters at 95-98% as of Q1 2026, December 2025 and March 2026 respectively. Read it as a floor for institutional-grade, professionally managed stock, not a citywide vacancy rate: these are three specific portfolios, prime-skewed, and the only current commercial-only print (TECOM's 90%, FY2024) sits below all three headlines. On what counts as institutional grade here, see what Grade A means in the Gulf.

One more filing-grade signal points the same way. When DIFC handed over its newest 600,000 sq ft Grade A building in early 2026, occupancy commitments already stood at 98.45% (DIFC, March 2026). Prime space in Dubai is being absorbed before it opens.

What is driving demand: registry counts, not surveys

Dubai's office demand is legible in company registries. DIFC added 2,525 active company registrations in 2025, a 39% rise, taking the total to 8,844 active companies with a 50,200-strong workforce, up 9% (DIFC 2025 results).

The centre's own economics show what that does to a landlord-regulator. DIFC Authority revenue rose 20% to AED 2.13 billion in 2025 and net profit 28% to AED 1.48 billion (same release). Outside the financial district, DMCC registered 2,300 new companies in 2025 for a total above 26,000 in the JLT cluster (DMCC annual report), and JAFZA hosts over 11,000 businesses supporting 130,000+ jobs, though that base is logistics-weighted rather than pure office (JAFZA).

The macro backdrop carries it. Dubai's GDP reached AED 355 billion in the first nine months of 2025, up 4.7%, with financial and insurance activities at 12% of GDP growing 8.5% and real estate at 8.2% of GDP growing 6.7% (Dubai Department of Finance). Both office-occupying sectors are outgrowing the 4.7% economy-wide rate.

The supply answer: concentrated, and pre-let before delivery

Publicly documented office supply is narrow. DIFC has 1.7 million sq ft of commercial space under construction in its Gate District expansion, delivered its first 600,000 sq ft Grade A phase ahead of schedule in early 2026, and aims to hand over 1.6 million sq ft across 2026 and 2027 (DIFC; delivery announcement). Beyond that sits the Zabeel District expansion, 17.7 million sq ft of mixed office, residential, hospitality, retail and cultural space, announced in 2025 with no office-only split published.

Landlords are buying as well as building. TECOM acquired two operational Grade A buildings in Dubai Internet City for AED 420 million, adding 334,000 sq ft of GLA, disclosed with its FY2024 results (TECOM, Feb 2025). Paying up for standing stock is what a landlord does when its own parks are near full and new build takes years.

No primary source publishes a citywide office pipeline. DIFC's numbers are DIFC's; TECOM's are TECOM's. Any "Dubai office supply 2026" total in circulation is a private survey figure, and headline pipelines overstate what actually arrives in any case, once slippage and withdrawals are netted off.

What DLD's transaction data shows, and what it hides

Dubai publishes transaction flow at a scale no other Gulf market matches: AED 917 billion across 270,000+ transactions in 2025, up 20%, alongside 3.11 million total procedures (DLD via UAE MoF). The pace held into 2026: AED 252 billion in Q1, up 31%, with foreign investors placing AED 148.35 billion across 48,445 investments (DLD, April 2026).

None of it is office-specific. Every DLD release blends sales, mortgages, gifts and leases across all property types; no published breakout isolates offices or commercial. The rental side is the same story: DLD's Smart Rental Index covers residential leases only, and no office rent index is live. The raw DLD open-data transaction set does carry a property-usage field: that filter is the honest route to an office-only read, and the kind of extraction we build for clients. From the filings themselves, the one confirmed rent-direction print is Emirates REIT's disclosure of a 17% year-on-year increase in commercial and retail rental rates in Q1 2025 (via Khaleej Times). That is one landlord's number for one year, a direction signal rather than a market level.

Where Dubai differs from Riyadh

Same method, different market. Our Riyadh office analysis leans on Saudi REIT disclosures where occupancy often reflects single government tenants on long leases, and its demand story runs through one policy programme. Dubai gives the method more to work with. TECOM is a listed operator running a 22.6 million sq ft blended commercial and industrial leasing book (31 March 2026, investor relations) with quarterly prints; the two REITs are multi-tenant and office-heavy. The demand evidence is also structurally different: free-zone registries publish audited annual company counts, so you can watch demand arrive as 2,525 DIFC registrations and 2,300 DMCC incorporations rather than infer it. What the two markets share is the gap: neither government publishes office vacancy, office rents or absorption, and both transaction machines report blended totals. How the Saudi filings side works is covered in our guide to Saudi REIT disclosures.

The numbers Dubai still does not publish

Four metrics an occupier strategy or an investment committee turns on exist only in private brokerage surveys, and we will not launder them:

A citywide office vacancy rate. We publish the 95-98% listed-landlord proxy above, labelled as three portfolios, not a market.
Grade A rents in AED per sq ft by submarket. Not published by DLD, DIFC or any free zone. We decline to fake one by dividing REIT rental income by area, because those portfolios mix office, retail and education assets at different rates.
Net absorption. TECOM's blended occupancy rising from 94% (FY2024) to 98% (Q1 2026) and Emirates REIT's 94% to 96% imply positive take-up in those books, but nobody publishes the citywide flow (see absorption rate).
Total office GLA. No primary source states how much office space Dubai has (on the measurement itself, see gross leasable area).

Omran estimate (TECOM commercial-only leasing area). TECOM disclosed 22.6 million sq ft of combined commercial and industrial leasing area and a revenue mix of 51% commercial leasing against 15% industrial (31 March 2026, investor relations). If area followed revenue, commercial space would be 51 / (51 + 15), about 77% of the blend, or roughly 17 million sq ft; land leasing (23% of revenue) and services (11%) are excluded from the ratio because the 22.6 million sq ft base already covers leasing area only. Offices rent for more per sq ft than warehouses, so the true commercial area is likely below that share. An order-of-magnitude anchor, not a disclosed figure.

This is the boundary line of the public record, and it is where our work starts: DLD open-data extractions filtered to office usage, filing-by-filing occupancy tracking, and labelled estimates with the derivation shown. Scope a Dubai office data briefing or ask us for the underlying source table behind this page.

FAQ

What is the Dubai office occupancy rate? No official citywide rate exists. The listed landlords' own filings show TECOM at 98% across commercial and industrial portfolios (Q1 2026), Emirates REIT at 96% (December 2025) and ENBD REIT at 95%, with The Edge at 99% (March 2026). Treat those as an institutional-grade floor: TECOM's last commercial-only print was 90% at end-2024.

What is the Dubai office vacancy rate? It is not published by any government body or listed landlord. Inverting the disclosed occupancy figures gives roughly 2-5% vacancy across the three listed portfolios as of Q1 2026 (the same Omran occupancy proxy derived above), but that covers prime-skewed institutional stock only, not older multi-tenant buildings.

How much is office rent in Dubai? No primary source publishes a Dubai office rent level; DLD's Smart Rental Index is residential-only. The one filing-grade direction signal is Emirates REIT's disclosed 17% year-on-year rise in commercial and retail rental rates in Q1 2025. Per-sq-ft submarket figures exist only in private brokerage surveys.

Is DIFC running out of office space? The pressure is visible in its own releases: 8,844 active companies at end-2025 (up 28%), a new 600,000 sq ft building 98.45% committed at handover in early 2026, 1.7 million sq ft under construction and 1.6 million sq ft targeted for delivery across 2026-2027, plus the 17.7 million sq ft mixed-use Zabeel District expansion announced in 2025.

What did the Dubai office market show in 2025? Tightening on every primary indicator: TECOM's blended occupancy climbed toward 98%, Emirates REIT rose from 94% to 96%, DIFC added 2,525 companies and DMCC 2,300, while Dubai real estate transactions hit a record AED 917 billion. No office-only transaction split was published.

Sources

DIFC Authority, 2025 annual results (8,844 companies; 50,200 workforce; AED 2.13bn revenue; 1.7M sq ft under construction; Zabeel 17.7M sq ft): link
DIFC 600,000 sq ft Grade A delivery, 98.45% committed, 1.6M sq ft 2026-2027 (via Dubai Standard): link
TECOM Group PJSC, Q1 2026 results (98% occupancy; 94% commercial retention; AED 755M revenue): link
TECOM Group PJSC, FY2024 results (90% commercial occupancy; AED 420M DIC acquisition, 334,000 sq ft): link
TECOM Group investor relations (22.6M sq ft leasing area; 51%/15% revenue mix): link
Emirates REIT, FY2025 fact sheet (96% occupancy; 1.8M sq ft NLA; USD 1,172.7M portfolio): link
Emirates REIT Q1 2025 (17% rise in commercial and retail rental rates), via Khaleej Times: link
ENBD REIT, full-year results to 31 March 2026 (95% occupancy; The Edge 99%; 72% office by value): link
Dubai Land Department via UAE MoF PDMO, FY2025 transactions (AED 917bn; 3.11M procedures): link
Dubai Land Department, Q1 2026 transactions (AED 252bn; foreign AED 148.35bn): link
DMCC annual report 2025 (26,000+ companies; 2,300 new): link
JAFZA (11,000+ businesses; 130,000+ jobs): link
Dubai Department of Finance / PDMO, 9M 2025 GDP (AED 355bn, +4.7%): link