Shop lease registrations across Dubai's 40 highest-volume areas increased 2.9% year on year, from 39,731 to 40,896 contracts.
Naif remains Dubai's largest retail leasing market by volume, with 5,481 registered shop contracts, around 8.7 times Business Bay's 631.
The fourteen areas in the Deira cluster account for 47.9% of all shop leases across the top 40 areas. Their combined volume grew 4.6%, ahead of the wider market.
Dubai Marina (Marsa Dubai) declined on both measures: contract volume fell 3.4%, while median annual rent dropped 7.1% to AED 260,075.
Dragon Mart (Al Warsan First) recorded the clearest contraction in the data, with volume down 12.2% and median rent down 10.3%.
The median registered shop rent is AED 75,000 a year in Naif, compared with AED 222,651 in Business Bay.
Read most Dubai retail reports and you will see a familiar picture: strong mall occupancy, rising prime rents, record visitor numbers, more spending and continued demand for the city's best retail space.
None of that is necessarily wrong.
But it tells us surprisingly little about where most shop leasing activity actually happens.
We looked at registered shop lease contracts across Dubai in 2025 and 2026, using the same calendar period in both years. The results show a retail market that looks quite different from the one usually described in brokerage and consultancy reports.
Business Bay recorded 631 shop leases.
Dubai Marina recorded 518.
Downtown Dubai, the area that includes The Dubai Mall, did not even make the top 40 by contract volume.
Naif recorded 5,481, around 8.7 times Business Bay's total.
A caveat worth stating up front: short leases re-register more often than long ones, so a raw count favours areas where tenants sign annually. That affects the size of the gap. It does not explain a gap of this magnitude, and it has no bearing on the year-on-year figures below, which compare each area against itself.
And Naif is not an isolated case. Al Suq Al Kabeer registered 3,673 shop leases, Al Mararr 2,827 and Al Karama 2,345. Al Buteen, Al Dhagaya, Hor Al Anz, Eyal Nasser and Al Ras each recorded more than 1,000.
By volume, much of Dubai's everyday retail leasing activity remains concentrated in the older parts of the city.
That side of the market receives far less attention because it is difficult to measure through traditional brokerage data. Many of these shops are never publicly listed and many transactions take place without the kind of institutional landlord or broker relationship that feeds conventional market reports.
Registration data makes that market visible.
The 15 highest-volume areas for registered shop leases in 2026 year to date:
The contrast is striking.
A median shop in Naif rents for roughly one-third of the median shop in Business Bay, yet Naif records almost nine times as many lease contracts.
The more useful comparison is not Naif against Marina or Satwa against Business Bay. These are very different markets.
What matters more is how each area is performing compared with itself one year earlier.
On that basis, the historic core looks remarkably steady.
Naif's median rent increased 4.2%. Al Suq Al Kabeer rose 6.3%. Al Buteen was up 4.0%, and Al Dhagaya increased 4.8%.
There is no dramatic surge. It looks more like a large, established market continuing to absorb demand and population growth.
Several premium areas tell a different story.
Dubai Marina is particularly notable because both activity and pricing weakened. Lease registrations fell 3.4%, while the median annual rent declined 7.1%.
Nadd Hessa also fell on both measures.
Business Bay has held up better. Registrations increased 11.1%, although median rent growth was just 1.9%, considerably below areas such as Al Satwa at 9.7% and Al Bada at 7.1%.
One clear exception among the higher-priced markets is Al Barsha First, where volume increased 6.5% and median rent rose 9.8%. With the Mall of the Emirates expansion underway, it is an area worth continuing to watch.
Al Warsan First deserves separate attention.
The area, dominated by Dragon Mart and its immediate surroundings, recorded a 12.2% decline in lease registrations and a 10.3% fall in median annual rent.
That represents roughly 558 fewer registered shop leases than during the equivalent period last year.
What makes the result unusual is not simply that one number went down.
Across most of the top 40 areas, volume and rent move in different directions, or both rise together. Al Warsan First is the only major, high-volume market where both measures fell sharply at the same time.
And this is not a tiny sample. There were 4,010 registered contracts, making it the second largest retail leasing market in the dataset.
The data tells us something changed.
It does not tell us why.
Rather than guess at the explanation, we will continue tracking it over the coming quarters.
Three areas deserve extra caution because their headline numbers can easily be misread.
Lease volume fell 22.0%, while median rent jumped 39.2%.
It would be tempting to conclude that rents suddenly increased by almost 40%. The underlying contract mix suggests otherwise.
Hor Al Anz contains a significant number of small shops leasing at around AED 15,000 annually. Fewer of these low-cost units appeared in this year's registrations.
When a large portion of the cheapest contracts disappears from a dataset, the median of the remaining contracts rises even if landlords did not materially increase rents.
In this case, the mix changed more than the market price did.
Here the opposite happened.
Contract volume increased 56.8%, while median rent fell 38.6%.
A large increase in smaller, lower-rent units entering the dataset can pull the median down sharply. The figures should not be read as evidence that rents across Al Nahda Second collapsed by nearly 40%.
Volume rose 25.3% and median rent increased 60.0%, based on 289 contracts.
Both measures moved strongly in the same direction, but the result is unusual enough that we would rather see another quarter of data before treating it as a genuine market shift.
These examples matter because transaction data can produce impressive-looking percentages that tell the wrong story when the composition of the sample changes.
The percentage is only the beginning of the analysis.
There is no real contradiction between this analysis and reports from firms such as CBRE, JLL or Cushman & Wakefield.
They are measuring different parts of the market.
Large consultancies typically have strong visibility into prime malls, super-regional centres and institutional retail assets. Their information often comes directly from landlords, leasing teams and major occupiers.
That is exactly the right approach if you want to understand what a flagship tenant is paying in a major mall.
It is much less useful for understanding thousands of smaller shops scattered across Naif, Deira, Karama, Satwa and the rest of Dubai.
Registration data works almost in reverse.
It captures contracts across the wider market, including many transactions that never pass through a major brokerage or institutional landlord.
But it also has limitations.
Turnover rent, where a tenant pays a percentage of sales on top of base rent, is not captured. This matters most in large malls, where it can form a substantial share of what a retailer actually pays, so mall figures in this analysis should be read as base rent only.
Confidential structures and master leases can also make headline contract amounts difficult to interpret.
So the two datasets answer different questions.
For the economics of prime mall space, consultancy data remains valuable.
For understanding where tens of thousands of Dubai shop leases are actually being registered, transaction records provide a much broader view.
Both matter.
The numbers do not support assuming that rents will automatically keep climbing.
Dubai Marina recorded both lower leasing activity and a 7.1% decline in median rent. When volume and pricing weaken together, landlords should pay attention.
The negotiating environment appears better than it was a year ago in areas such as Dubai Marina, Jabal Ali First and Nadd Hessa.
The opposite appears true in Al Satwa, Al Bada and Al Barsha First, where rents have continued to move higher.
A large part of the growth is taking place well below Dubai's headline prime-retail price points.
Across several historic-core areas, annual shop rents generally sit in the AED 55,000 to AED 105,000 range, with both lease activity and rents continuing to grow.
It is not the part of Dubai retail that attracts the most headlines, but it represents a very large share of actual leasing activity.
The second largest retail leasing market in the dataset has recorded double-digit declines in both contract volume and median rent.
That does not prove a long-term decline, but it is significant enough to warrant closer attention.
It varies significantly by location.
The median registered annual shop rent is AED 75,000 in Naif, AED 55,000 in Al Mararr, AED 222,651 in Business Bay and AED 260,075 in Dubai Marina.
Across much of Dubai's historic core, median registered shop rents range from roughly AED 55,000 to AED 155,000 a year.
Naif ranks first, with 5,481 registered shop lease contracts in 2026 year to date.
Al Warsan First follows with 4,010 contracts, while Al Suq Al Kabeer ranks third with 3,673.
It depends on the part of the market.
Many mass-market and historic-core areas are recording rent growth of roughly 4% to 6%.
Several premium areas are weaker. Dubai Marina's median fell 7.1% year on year, while Nadd Hessa declined 6.3%.
Across Dubai's 40 largest retail leasing areas, total contract volume increased 2.9%.
Registered shop leases in Al Warsan First fell 12.2% year on year, while median rent declined 10.3%.
It is the only high-volume retail area in this dataset where both indicators fell sharply together in 2026.
That makes it worth monitoring, although the registration data alone does not establish the reason for the decline.
The datasets cover different parts of the market.
Consultancy reports typically focus on achieved rents in prime malls and major retail assets, drawing heavily on landlord, broker and leasing-team information.
This analysis uses registered shop lease contracts across Dubai.
Neither approach is inherently better. They answer different questions.
Yes.
Mall units appear under the geographic area in which the mall is located. The Dubai Mall falls under Downtown Dubai, for example, while Mall of the Emirates falls under Al Barsha First.
Large mall leases may be underrepresented when comparing contract counts because many run for several years and therefore do not register again every year. Turnover rent is also not captured, so mall figures should be read as registered base rent rather than the retailer's total occupancy cost.
Source. Dubai Land Department rental contract registrations. The analysis uses registered shop lease contracts during the selected period rather than a survey or broker sample.
Period alignment. Both comparison windows run from 1 January to 22 August, meaning 2026 year-to-date activity is compared with exactly the same calendar period in 2025. No annualisation is used, and a partial year is never compared with a full year.
Scope. The analysis covers the 40 areas with at least 30 shop contracts in both years. Smaller areas are excluded because medians based on thin samples can be misleading. These 40 areas account for 40,896 of the 53,994 shop leases registered in Dubai so far in 2026, or 75.7% of the market. Unless stated otherwise, totals in this article refer to these 40 areas rather than the entire emirate.
Medians, not averages. All rent figures shown are medians. Simple averages are unreliable in this dataset because some whole-building or master leases are recorded against multiple individual units, creating extremely large repeated values. Medians are much less affected by these records. Contracts where the same amount above AED 1,000,000 appeared ten or more times within a single building were identified as replicated master leases and treated accordingly.
What is being measured. This analysis measures leasing activity through registered contracts. It does not measure total retail floor area, property value or aggregate rent roll.
Known limitations. Contract duration affects registration volume. An area dominated by one-year leases will naturally generate more registrations than an area where tenants commonly sign five-year leases. This makes raw contract counts between different areas imperfect comparisons.
For that reason, the most important comparisons in this analysis are year on year within the same area.
Confidential base-rent structures under some master leases are also not fully visible.
In 2026, 1,411 shop leases, or 2.61% of all 53,994 registered shop leases, were recorded without a building name. They are concentrated in Muhaisanah, Jebel Ali Industrial, Al Quoz Industrial and Ras Al Khor Industrial. They remain included in all area-level figures but are excluded from any building-level figure.
The equivalent share in 2025 was 2.45%, so building-name coverage is stable year on year and does not contribute to the volume growth reported here.
Corrections. If you identify an error in this analysis, let us know. We will verify it and publish a correction together with the number of affected records.
Built for investors, analysts, and professionals who need market clarity and actionable insights.
Your request has been successfully submitted. Our team will review your access and notify you shortly with next steps.
