For travellers, Dubai holds a special appeal—it’s luxurious, glamorous, and grounded with diverse cultural experiences and historic sights that will take your breath away. Visiting the city is like stepping into an all-inclusive resort—but with far more room to play and explore. Increasingly, Dubai’s appeal is extending beyond travellers looking for a luxury getaway and is growing to include entrepreneurs ranging from founders of startups to freelancing digital nomads.
While places like London, Beijing, Silicon Valley, and Tel Aviv are globally recognised for their startup-friendly work cultures, experts who study startup trends are increasingly seeing that Dubai is showing signs of becoming a global powerhouse. It’s a dominant player in the Middle East, and its international reputation is growing rapidly. The reasons for this are multifaceted, like its tax system and digital infrastructure. But there is significantly more at play. We’ll divulge the reasons below, starting with an examination of Dubai’s business-friendly environment.
The Business-Friendly Policies, Tax Systems, & Free Zones
The headline appeal of Dubai is that the corporate income tax rate is 0%. Until businesses exceed AED 375,000 in annual profit, they don’t need to worry about paying income tax. Once they surpass this, the tax rate is still remarkably low at just 9%. For business founders, this is a significant draw; it provides the opportunity to establish a business while keeping as much funding as possible to maintain and grow operations. However, the low tax rate is hardly the only system in place supporting entrepreneurs.
Across the UAE, and not just Dubai, setting up a business is streamlined. Within minutes, founders can obtain the commercial licenses and regulatory approval they need, allowing them to register a company with minimal delay. The Global Bank cites 10 days as the norm for setting up a company in most high-income countries. In the UAE, this is reduced to just four days due to its streamlined structure.
The government has put significant effort into making setting up a business as simple and frictionless as possible. Everything can be done online, with resources that clearly explain systems and policies, such as clarifying the legal structures required for different business types.
Dubai offers these streamlined policies and systems alongside another appeal: its free zones. These free zones are free trade areas with their own regulations for businesses operating within them. Free zones exist across the UAE, but Dubai holds the highest number, making it an alluring destination for businesses of all types. They specialise in specific industries, allowing for concentrated growth, development, and innovation. Among the best-known free zones are the Dubai Multi Commodities Centre (DMCC) and Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC).
The Allure for Digital Nomads and Remote Founders
Beyond the lure of tax-free zones and low income tax, Dubai appeals to digital nomads and remote founders with its virtual work visas, co-living hubs, and robust internet infrastructure. There are very few barriers to digital nomads and remote workers obtaining visas to work in the UAE. For the Remote Work Visa, all that’s required is proof of employment, with a minimum monthly income of AED 16,000, a passport, and health insurance. With these items, it’s easy to get a one-year, renewable visa providing access to utilities, banking, and everyday essentials. There are also options for longer stays, including a five-year Green Visa.
The rise of co-living spaces in Dubai appeals to digital nomads looking to connect with others. These places are built around the idea of community, building in features like private apartments, shared living spaces, and community hubs. Through these features, professionals can build connections with ease, as communal living is integrated into the design. At the same time, the private spaces allow for privacy and individuality. These living spaces are integrated into the free zones of Dubai, further adding to their allure for remote entrepreneurs. They allow entrepreneurs to enjoy the benefits of a business-friendly environment with a fulfilling personal life.
A prominent selling feature of Dubai for remote workers is the quality of the internet in the city. It’s a global leader for its mobile and broadband internet speeds. The speed of the internet stems from the UAE’s investment in local data transmission, which, just over ten years ago in 2012, would have had to be channelled through international data pathways. This focus has had a rippling effect, allowing international networks to thrive, making it simple for digital nomads working abroad and remote founders with clients across the globe to maintain reliable and consistent communication.
The Lifestyle Where Ambition and Luxury Meet
Dubai doesn’t just excel as a business startup space: everything it does, it does with high quality in mind. The city delivers luxurious living like fine dining and designer shopping experiences, but that’s just the beginning of the work-life balance found there. For entrepreneurs bringing their families, world-class international schools offer a well-rounded, high-level education. The city is also known for its safety and cleanliness, and it lives up to the reputation.
But where Dubai truly shines for entrepreneurs is in its entertainment options that invite hard-working people to unwind and relax in luxury. Dubai is a destination with endless resorts and activities like desert safaris, theme parks, beaches, and aquariums—ideal for unwinding without leaving the city. In 2023, the UAE added gambling to this list of entertainment options. Since gambling had not been legal in the country in the past, this was a landmark decision that led to the development of the General Commercial Gaming Regulatory Authority (GCGRA).
The legalisation began with a UAE lottery available in select regions, including Dubai, and has grown to encompass internet gaming, sports betting, and land-based gaming like casinos. The Wynn Al Marjan Island, currently under construction and scheduled to open in 2026, is expected to become the first licensed casino in the country. Other resorts in the city, such as Atlantis Dubai and MGM Dubai—both connected to global casino resort brands—may also receive gaming licenses. If they do, they could become the leading UAE casinos as the laws continue to evolve.
These updates to gaming and entertainment shape an environment that provides a healthy work-life balance and myriad opportunities to display wealth, an important status signal in the UAE for networking and business.
What the Global Shift Means for the Rest of Us
As Dubai’s reputation for its entrepreneurial support grows abroad, it’s showing the possibility of having a profound impact in many ways. Dubai is creating ripple effects by setting an example of how to promote economic prosperity and resilience through policies and infrastructure development.
By looking at what the UAE government has embraced and streamlined, governments that are looking to build a similarly effective model for economic growth can find actionable insights, like setting up a streamlined business registration system that’s intuitive and user-friendly. Emulating the user-friendly approach can encourage new startups, driving innovation across industries. The UAE also shows that putting resources into building digital infrastructure can shape a future where people can effectively work from anywhere, even as a global enterprise.
More than anything, however, Dubai points to the growing demand for work-life balance that entrepreneurs seek, and it is showing innovative ways of achieving this. Dubai is setting remote workers up with the tools they need for success, like business-friendly policies, robust internet infrastructure, and industry-specific hubs for networking and innovation. It’s matching these tools with conveniently located housing options in its urban development that support not just an entrepreneur’s work life, but also their personal life by providing places where they can build community.
In a post-pandemic world, Dubai embraces what we missed—genuine in-person connection—and what we embraced—flexibility and remote work. Its approach is one that other countries can take note of. If other countries do so successfully, people won’t have to choose between ambition and lifestyle.
