Dubai to revive international film festival in 2027 after 10-year break
Dubai will bring back its international film festival after a decade away.
The revived Dubai International Film Festival is set to start on 8 December 2027. Mona Ghanem Al Marri announced the return at the Arab Media Summit, Deadline reported on 17 September 2026.
Al Marri is Vice Chairperson and Managing Director of the Dubai Media Council and President of the Dubai Press Club. The new festival will be organised under the Dubai Films and Games Commission, which sits within the Dubai Media Council.
The original festival ran for 14 editions from 2004. It closed in spring 2018.
This version will be different. “Today we bring back the festival, but we don’t bring the past,” Al Marri said. Sources told Deadline the aim is for a family-friendly and apolitical selection of films.
The news follows the announcement of a second edition of the privately backed Golden Dunes Festival in Dubai in November. That reveal came only weeks earlier.
Attention now turns to December in the Gulf. The Red Sea International Film Festival is scheduled for 3 to 12 December in Jeddah. There are questions over whether the 2026 edition will go ahead amid regional conflict, including the threat of Iranian missile strikes.
Saudi Arabia lifted its 35-year ban on cinemas at the end of 2017. The Red Sea festival launched in the years after that change and has become a fixture for Arab and international cinema.
The 2026 Red Sea edition would be the sixth. Film submissions are now closed, according to the Red Sea International Film Festival. Its industry market, the Red Sea Souk Project Market 2026, will present 32 feature film projects, the festival’s project market page says.
For audiences, this means two December festivals are now on the map in the region. Dubai is looking forward to 2027. Jeddah is focused on this winter.
