• Mozart’s Greatest

    Dubai Opera

    You can't fault the UAENO's ambition in naming this programme – the title almost precludes discussion. It includes three admittedly classic works, but there must surely have been a strong case for others (we'd have gone for the Symphony No.41 [... more]

    AED 200
  • Ali Al Sayed

    Social Distrikt The Pointe, Palm Jumeirah, Dubai

    Dubomedy’s main man is always good value, though the ticket price here does reflect his growing stature. Expect an evening of probably inappropriate jokes, lots of banter with the audience, and a general feel-good vibe. All seats must be pre-booked [... more]

    AED 175
  • Barcelona Flamenco Ballet: Romeo and Juliet

    New Covent Garden Theatre Mall of the Emirates, Dubai

    A Dubai date to follow its Abu Dhabi opener for the exciting Barcelona Flamenco Ballet – the iconic Prokofiev ballet reinterpreted as flamenco. This show is described as BFB’s “most ambitious and revolutionary project” to date, addressing universal themes like [... more]

    From AED 250
  • Heritage and Horizons

    Sorbonne University Abu Dhabi Reem Island, Abu Dhabi

    The AD’Art artist collective with an exhibition celebrating the Sorbonne’s 20th anniversary – new works exploring heritage, knowledge transmission, and cultural dialogue, through "diverse and personal artistic perspectives". The collective : Anne-Caroline Schoeller Anne-Marie Lacroix Raffy Annunziata Tricarico Camille Lamelliere [... more]

    Free
  • Cotton Queen: dir Suzannah Mirghani (2025)

    The Arts Center @ NYUAD NYUAD Campus, Saadiyat Island, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

    In a cotton-farming village in Sudan, teenage Nafisa is raised on heroic tales of British colonisers. But when a young businessman arrives from abroad with a new development plan and genetically engineered cotton, Nafisa becomes the centre of a power [... more]

    AED 31.50
  • Blue Heron (Egy nyár emléke): dir Sophy Romvari (2025)

    Manarat al Saadiyat Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

    A deeply personal portrait of childhood, family fractures, and the fragility of recollection from award-winning filmmaker Sophy Romvari, who drew on her own experiences for her feature debut – a deeply personal portrait of childhood, family fractures, and the fragility [... more]

    Free, but reservation recommended
  • The Comedy Lab @ Easy Tiger

    Al Ain Palace Hotel Corniche Road, Abu Dhabi

    Mad Cat’s standup team at their regular stop at the Easy Tiger bar in Abu Dhabi’s Al Ain Palace. The door price of AED 99 includes two drinks …

    AED 99
  • Fabian Philandrianos and Pascal Navarro: Beyond the Gaze

    La Galerie, Alliance Française Dubai Alliance Française Dubai, Dubai, United Arab Emirates

    "An exhibition exploring the perception and relationship between the viewer and the artwork ... an invitation to discover what may appear when we take the time to look beyond the surface." The two French artists offer a dialogue between the [... more]

    Free
  • Comedy Night

    Rush Bar W Abu Dhabi, Yas Island, Abu Dhabi

    Funeral Home Comedy, a newish name on the standup circuit, has added to the comedy options in Abu Dhabi – well, on Yas – with a a full night of laughs from top names (Roxy, Obaid, Ash Ahmed and Luca) [... more]

    AED 100
  • CLOSING TODAY Mohamed Monaiseer: 85 Seconds To Midnight

    Tabari Artspace Gate Village Level 2, DIFC, Dubai

    Monaiseer’s solo show examines history through cycles, repetition and flows, while testing the unstable boundary between imagination and reality. The title references the current status of the Doomsday Clock and its measurement of humanity’s proximity to catastrophe; notions of war, [... more]

    Free
  • You Don’t Need a Therapist Vol.1

    The Junction Unit H72, Alserkal Avenue, Dubai, United Arab Emirates

    ... not when you have three comedians on the stage, eager and willing to hear your problems and turn them into funny scenes and stories on the fly. Fully improvised, totally interactive. The first runout for this show a couple [... more]

    AED 90
  • CLOSING TODAY Global Positioning System

    Jameel Arts Centre Al Jaddaf, Dubai

    An ambitious large-scale group exhibition dedicated to mapping and navigation systems, "telling stories of fast cars and donkeys, spinning globes and street barricades, cosmic highways and broken bridges ... delves into topographies, transit lines and simulated landscapes to engage critically [... more]

    Free
  • CLOSING TODAY Phenomenological Alphabet

    NYUAD Arts Centre Project Space

    A group exhibition for six artists – Aya Afaneh, Sarah Afaneh, Sarah Brahim, Amir Hazim, Yoonsik Chico Park, and Andrew Riad – exploring how language is formed through the body, voice, gesture, and mark making practices. Each contributes a distinct [... more]

    Free
  • Juma Alhaj: Revelation

    421 Arts Campus Mina Zayed, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

    The first institutional solo exhibition by Emirati artist Juma Alhaj is the culmination of his participation in 421 Arts Campus' Artistic Development Program. Grounded in reading, journaling, and philosophical inquiry, it explores themes of reflection, solitude, and self-discovery; the exhibition [... more]

    Free
  • Archipelago of Whispers

    421 Arts Campus Mina Zayed, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

    A group show curated by Deniz Kirkali and Elham Puriya Mehr that brings together works in video, sound installations, and performance that explore “alternative infrastructures for knowledge-making such as whispers, murmurs, hums, gossip, and storytelling”. The artists include Aliaskar Abarkas, [... more]

    Free
  • Music and Sound Club: Session #2 AI and Music Technology

    SAF Photography Gallery Al Manakh, Sharjah

    Sharjah Art Foundation’s Music and Sound Club is a series of fortnightly hands-on workshops and meetup sessions form anyone interested in music and sonic arts. This second workshop is a two-parter – on 4 and 18 October – that introduces [... more]

    Free, but pre-register
  • Wednesday Night Impro: Maestro

    Courtyard Playhouse Street 4B, Al Quoz 1, Dubai, United Arab Emirates

    The Courtyard’s popular evening of elimination improv. Ten actors converge for a night of scenes, songs and games based on audience suggestions. After each round you score the players on a scale of 1 to 5, and the one with [... more]

    Free
  • Fellow Travellers

    Tabari Artspace Gate Village Level 2, DIFC, Dubai

    An exhibition conceived and curated by Prof Omar Kholeif, featuring Sonia Balassanian, Jai Chuhan, Luísa Correia Pereira, Lalitha Lajmi, Irene Scheinmann and Omar Kholeif himself. Developed from nearly two decades of Kholeif’s research, writing and relationships with artists, the exhibition [... more]

    Free
  • The Amy Winehouse Band

    Dubai Opera

    It’s 20 years since Back to Black was released, so there’s a reasonable hook for this performance by “the original musicians who performed alongside Amy on stages around the world and helped shape her distinctive sound both live and in [... more]

    From AED 300
  • CLOSING TODAY Hamad Almuzaini: Precarious Beings

    Tashkeel Studio and Gallery Nad Al Sheba, Dubai, United Arab Emirates

    “What is the ultimate goal of a city?” asks architect/artist Hamad Almuzaini: “Governance and the streamlining of lived experience – an impossible task – or something more open, broken, and constantly reinvented?” The exhibition looks at placemaking within the context of [... more]

    Free
  • CLOSING TODAY Golden Harvest, Lasting Bloom

    Andakulova Gallery Unit 18, P4 Level Damac Park Towers, DIFC , Dubai, United Arab Emirates

    An exhibition dedicated to the natural maturity, abundance, and fullness of autumn, including works by Rimma Gagloeva, Javlon Umarbekov, Timur Akhmedov, and Vera Nechaeva. Because each artist approaches the theme of autumn in their own way, discovering a personal language [... more]

    Free
  • CLOSING TODAY Sara Masinaei: Boundaries and Breaches

    Dom Arts Projects Warehouse 40, Al Khayat Avenue, Dubai

    Sara Masinaei’s solo show explores how urban spaces shape memory, movement and lived experience: "through walking, collecting found objects and recording traces of overlooked surfaces, she treats the city’s ground as an active part of how we experience and navigate [... more]

    Free
  • CLOSING TODAY Heritage and Horizons

    Sorbonne University Abu Dhabi Reem Island, Abu Dhabi

    The AD’Art artist collective with an exhibition celebrating the Sorbonne’s 20th anniversary – new works exploring heritage, knowledge transmission, and cultural dialogue, through "diverse and personal artistic perspectives".

    Free
  • CLOSING TODAY Artist Residency Exhibition: Lynn Issa, Yang Lan, Yara Chaalan

    Fann à Porter The Workshop, Villa 45, St. 23b, off Al Wasl Road (opposite Box Park), Jumeirah 2, Dubai

    An exhibition of the works created by the first cohort of residents from Fann à Porter’s Summer 2026 artist residency in Dubai – Lynn Issa, Yang Lan and Yara Chaalan. Working across sculpture, painting, collage, and charcoal drawings on paper, [... more]

    Free
  • CLOSING TODAY Fabian Philandrianos and Pascal Navarro: Beyond the Gaze

    La Galerie, Alliance Française Dubai Alliance Française Dubai, Dubai, United Arab Emirates

    "An exhibition exploring the perception and relationship between the viewer and the artwork ... an invitation to discover what may appear when we take the time to look beyond the surface." The two French artists offer a dialogue between the [... more]

    Free
  • Wednesday Night Impro: Maestro

    Courtyard Playhouse Street 4B, Al Quoz 1, Dubai, United Arab Emirates

    The Courtyard’s popular evening of elimination improv. Ten actors converge for a night of scenes, songs and games based on audience suggestions. After each round you score the players on a scale of 1 to 5, and the one with [... more]

    Free
  • 100 Years of Paul Guiragossian

    Bassam Freiha Art Foundation Cultural District Saadiyat Island, Abu Dhabi

    A landmark retrospective for one of the key modernist painters to emerge from the Levant in the twentieth century. Alongside significant works drawn primarily from the artist’s estate, many travelling outside Lebanon for the very first time, the exhibition – [... more]

    Free
  • Roots Before Petals

    Bassam Freiha Art Foundation Cultural District Saadiyat Island, Abu Dhabi

    An exhibition that brings contemporary UAE-based artist Lana Khayat into dialogue with Lebanese modernists Etel Adnan and Helen Khal, linking distinct practices across generations of Lebanese artists. Says the gallery: "Their work differs in scale and sensibility, yet each built [... more]

    Free
  • Alfred Basbous: Sculpting the Line

    Bassam Freiha Art Foundation Cultural District Saadiyat Island, Abu Dhabi

    A selection of work by a pioneering figure of modern sculpture in Lebanon, presented in collaboration with the Alfred Basbous Foundation. Basbous worked across stone, marble, wood and bronze, responding closely to the particular qualities of each material rather than [... more]

    Free
  • CLOSING TODAY MONOCHROMA 2

    Manarat al Saadiyat Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

    You don’t see enough ceramic art outside the interiors business, and then it just tends to be bowls; so this show by Double J Collective (“the first project based in Dubai exclusively dedicated to exhibit, promote and sell fine craft [... more]

    Free
  • Wednesday Night Impro: Maestro

    Courtyard Playhouse Street 4B, Al Quoz 1, Dubai, United Arab Emirates

    The Courtyard’s popular evening of elimination improv. Ten actors converge for a night of scenes, songs and games based on audience suggestions. After each round you score the players on a scale of 1 to 5, and the one with [... more]

    Free
  • CLOSING TODAY Private World

    Green Art Gallery Dubai, United Arab Emirates

    A group show for Lulua Alyahya, Rami Farook, Sohrab Hura, and Khaled Jarada that promises to take the viewer into “intimate, elusive worlds … Modest in scale, invite a form of looking that is closer and more inward, creating encounters [... more]

    Free
  • Dubai Bibliophiles: Poetry Session – Vote for Your Favorites

    The Coffee Club Times Square Center, 4B Street, Dubai

    Discuss the top seven poems (from a list of 50) that have received the most votes by members. As with any such list, it's highly debatable – way too many US poets, way too few from MENASA (including the UAE, [... more]

    Free
  • MAWASIM: 20 Years of Modern and Contemporary Middle Eastern Art

    The Abu Dhabi Edition Al Bateen Marina, Abu Dhabi

    Christie’s first live auction of fine art in Abu Dhabi takes place on 1 November, preceded by two viewing days open to all. There will be more than 70 works from six decades of museum-quality art that traces the evolution [... more]

    Free
  • Hisham Sharif: Allusive Veil

    Ayyam Gallery B11, Alserkal Avenue, Dubai, United Arab Emirates

    Sharif’s first solo exhibition in the UAE presents an autobiographical and very personal series of works about the struggles of private and artist life in a closed society – "a vulnerable, nuanced presentation of life”. The Bahraini artist uses colour [... more]

    Free
  • CLOSING TODAY Stephan Kaluza: From Dust to Bloom

    JD Malat Gallery ACT 2 Tower, Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Blvd 13A ,Downtown Dubai, Dubai

    Stephan Kaluza’s practice is fundamentally concerned with depictions of nature, either as hyper-realistic oils or near-abstract renderings. These two modes of painting should be seen as different stages of the same subject in a process of transformation: disruptions creep in, and [... more]

    Free
  • CLOSING TODAY Oussama Diab: Reimagined

    Artbooth Gallery Centro Capital Center, Al Khaleej Al Arabi Street, Abu Dhabi

    A solo show for the Palestinian-Syrian-Dutch artist that reinterprets celebrated masterpieces from Western art. Diab revisits iconic works by artists including Picasso, van Gogh, Michelangelo and van Dyck, applying his own distinctive visual language to allow the images to speak [... more]

    Free
  • CLOSING TODAY Artists’ Rooms: Kamruzzaman Shahdin

    Jameel Arts Centre Al Jaddaf, Dubai

    A monumental one-room installation that restages the Bangladeshi artist's The River Remembers. Originally commissioned by the Diriyah Biennale Foundation and created in 2023, this large-scale textile work has handcrafted threads mapping the colour of the water of the Teesta and [... more]

    Free
  • Salah Elmur

    Jameel Arts Centre Al Jaddaf, Dubai

    Bringing together paintings, archival photographs, sketches and ephemera produced after 2018, this exhibition promises an immersive encounter with Salah Elmur’s world – "where memory, landscape and identity merge and ripple through time", exploring the artist’s shifting sense of belonging and [... more]

    Free
  • CLOSING TODAY Alaa Itani: A Momentum for the Horizon

    Gallery Isabelle Unit 17, Alserkal Avenue, Dubai, United Arab Emirates

    A visual meditation on the horizon as both boundary and promise, a visible line that remains perpetually distant. Alaa Itani's solo show brings together reverse glass paintings of horizons, blurred landscapes, and moving cloud formations; he explores landscape as acts [... more]

    Free
  • CLOSING TODAY Tirdad Hashemi and Soufia Erfanian: I Bloom Where You Hold Me

    Gallery Isabelle Unit 17, Alserkal Avenue, Dubai, United Arab Emirates

    Collaborative works from Tirdad Hashemi and Soufia Erfanian’s ongoing Flower series, unfolding across gallery walls covered with hand-drawn graffiti; rooted in the artists’ shared and individual experiences, the works consider what it means to care for, sustain and grow alongside [... more]

    Free
  • CLOSING TODAY Bénédicte Gimonnet: What We Carry Becomes the Terrain

    Aisha Alabbar Gallery Warehouse C19, Alserkal Avenue, Dubai

    Aisha Alabbar Gallery’s newly renovated space reopens with a solo exhibition by the UAE-based French artist that features paintings, screen prints, drawings and textile works. The theme is a pivotal journey to Peru and a renewed engagement with the roots [... more]

    Free
  • CLOSING TODAY Bashar Khalaf: The Field of Dreams

    Zawyeh Gallery Warehouse 27, Alserkal Avenue, Dubai

    Two series of works, Junk Garden and Protective Shield, from the Ramallah-born artist. “The Field of Dreams is an exploration of formations of ‘steel’ in the public space from the perspective of the relationship between the self, the object, and [... more]

    Free
  • CLOSING TODAY Rana Begum: Taking Form

    The Third Line Alserkal Avenue, Dubai, United Arab Emirates

    Rana Begum brings her textile works to The Third Line for the first time. Her fifth solo exhibition at the gallery features a new body of large-scale wool tapestries presented alongside works on linen, paper and MDF, all reflecting the [... more]

    Free
  • CLOSING TODAY Ahmad Tallaa: The Living Archive

    Firetti Contemporary Unit 29, Alserkal Avenue, Dubai

    A solo exhibition by the Syrian artist that includes large-scale portraits, a tile installation, sculptures, artist books, and works on paper. At the centre of Tallaa's practice is the face, not as portrait or likeness, but as witness; this exhibition, curated [... more]

    Free
  • CLOSING TODAYAhmad Tallaa: The Living Archive

    Firetti Contemporary Unit 29, Alserkal Avenue, Dubai

    Built from layers of sand collected in the UAE, chalk powder, pigments, and acrylic, the surfaces of Ahmad Tallaa's large-scale portraits at the centre of this show are dense and almost sculptural – as the gallery puts it, "Faces do [... more]

    Free