Dubai is in the middle of the largest coordinated retail construction cycle in its history. Emaar is investing AED 1.5 billion to expand Dubai Mall with 198 new retail units and 81 F&B outlets, while Dubai Square at Dubai Creek Harbour — a 2.6 million m² indoor city roughly three times the size of Downtown Dubai — is set to open around 2028 as the world’s first drive-through mall. For brands, this is not simply more floor space. It is a fundamental shift in what a physical store must do to earn attention.
What exactly is the Dubai Mall expansion?
The Dubai Mall expansion is an AED 1.5 billion development by Emaar that adds 198 new retail outlets and 81 food and beverage venues to what is already the world’s most visited shopping destination. Rather than a peripheral extension, the project deepens the mall’s offer at the premium and experiential end — the segment where footfall, dwell time and spend per visit are concentrated.
The scale matters. Nearly 280 new units create a fresh leasing cycle: hundreds of brands will fit out flagships, regional debuts and concept stores within a compressed window, and competition for design talent, joinery capacity and approval timelines will intensify accordingly.
For the wider market, the signal is clear: Dubai’s largest landlord is betting on physical retail expansion precisely when global commentary predicts its decline. That bet rests on the emirate’s fundamentals — 19.59 million international visitors in 2025, up 5 per cent according to Dubai’s Department of Economy and Tourism, and hotel occupancy of around 80.7 per cent.
What is Dubai Square at Dubai Creek Harbour?
Dubai Square at Dubai Creek Harbour is a 2.6 million m² retail, entertainment and residential district scheduled to open around 2028. At three times the size of Downtown Dubai, it is conceived as an indoor city rather than a conventional mall, and is billed as the world’s first drive-through retail destination — vehicles will move through parts of the retail environment itself.
The drive-through concept deserves attention from designers. It collapses the boundary between arrival sequence and shopfront: when a customer can encounter a brand from a car, the hierarchy of façade, threshold and interior is reordered. Sightlines lengthen. Signage becomes architectural. The storefront must perform at multiple speeds and distances simultaneously.
Dubai Square also extends the pattern established by Dubai Mall: retail as a full-day destination layered with hospitality, entertainment and residences. A store within such a precinct is no longer competing with the shop next door. It is competing with every other experience in a 2.6 million m² environment.
What else is opening across Dubai’s retail landscape?
Beyond the two headline projects, Dubai’s retail pipeline includes Ghaf Woods Mall by Majid Al Futtaim, a forest-integrated development set among more than 30,000 trees; Nad Al Sheba Mall, opened in April 2025; and significant flagship debuts at Mall of the Emirates, including the region’s first SKIMS flagship in December 2025 and COS in January 2026. Each opening raises the design baseline for the next.
Ghaf Woods is particularly instructive. A mall built around a living forest commits its tenants to a biophilic context from the outset; sealed boxes with generic finishes will read as failures against the architecture. Brands entering such environments need designers who can work with landscape, daylight and natural material rather than against them — we unpack what survives that climate in our guide to biophilic design in the desert.
The market context supports the construction. UAE retail sales are projected to reach US$139.1 billion by 2028, according to Statista. And the discovery mechanism has shifted decisively: 78 per cent of Middle East consumers discover brands through social media, per PwC research. The store is now the physical confirmation of a digital first impression — which changes what it must deliver.
What does this retail wave mean for store design?
The new scale of Dubai retail means experiential design is no longer a differentiator but table stakes. When a customer can choose between hundreds of new units at Dubai Mall, a drive-through encounter at Dubai Square or a forest-side flagship at Ghaf Woods, a store that merely displays product has already lost. The interior must justify the visit itself.
Three implications follow. First, attention is the scarcest resource in the precinct, and it is won in the first three metres of the façade. Threshold design — lighting, material contrast, a single decisive gesture — carries more commercial weight than ever.
Second, the social-media discovery loop demands interiors designed for the frame as well as the body. This is not about gimmick walls. It is about spatial compositions that photograph with depth: layered materials, sculptural focal points, considered sightlines. In our retail work, such as the Momentum watch store in Dubai, an edited material palette has given a compact footprint the presence of a much larger space.
Third, sustainability and material honesty are moving from preference to expectation. The 2026 trend outlook from practices such as Wimberly and Gensler identifies material honesty, wellness woven into architecture and hyper-localisation as defining directions. In a forest mall or a sustainability-conscious precinct, surface-level greenwashing will be conspicuous.
What should brands ask of their retail designers?
Brands entering Dubai’s new retail wave should ask designers for strategy before imagery: an analysis of the precinct, its footfall, its competing tenants and its architectural context, followed by a concept that answers those conditions. A render-led process that starts with a mood board is no longer sufficient at this level of competition.
Practical questions matter. Can the designer evidence experience with UAE mall landlord approvals and technical submissions? Do they understand the operational realities of retail back-of-house? Can they design a façade that reads from twenty metres and from a moving vehicle? Can they specify materials that survive Dubai’s footfall while ageing with character?
The strongest briefs we receive now treat the store as a brand instrument with a measurable role: dwell time, conversion, social reach. Designers should speak to those outcomes, not only to aesthetics. The AED 1.5 billion at Dubai Mall is a commercial wager; every unit within it deserves the same rigour. For more on how we read this market, see luxury retail design in Dubai.
Dubai’s retail expansion rewards brands that treat store design as strategy. Studio By Three is a boutique interior design studio in Al Quoz, Dubai, working across hospitality, F&B and luxury retail in the UAE and Oman. If you are planning a store in Dubai’s next retail wave, we would be glad to talk — visit us at Warehouse N.7, Al Quoz 3, or write to [email protected].