Government permits and licences in the UAE
We will work out which permissions your activity needs here, which authority issues each of them, and what your existing licence does not already cover.
Who licenses you
Кто выдаёт лицензию
eight authorities
восемь ведомств
Federal list
Федеральный перечень
six kinds
шесть видов
Out of the zone
Выход из зоны
three documents
три документа
That licence lasts
Срок такой лицензии
one year
один год
When you need permits and licences here
The activity is new to your licence
You are about to do something the licence does not name. The category printed on it is what every invoice you raise has to fit.
You are in a zone, selling outside
The zone licence does not carry the domestic market with it. Reaching customers there is a separate authorisation with paper of its own.
The date is fixed, approvals are not
An event, a shoot or an opening has a day. Each approval behind it has its own authority and its own queue.
Advice was given for another emirate
The categories, the authority and the procedure are not the same across the country, and there is no single national list to fall back on.
Something was refused and nobody says why
A refusal usually points at a mismatch between the activity, the category and the entity. Finding which of the three is the fix.
What is required for a permit or a licence here
Permissions here come in layers. Underneath sits the licence that says what the company may do at all; above it sit the approvals a particular activity, place or date needs. A licence that covers the business does not automatically cover the thing you are about to do with it.
Checking that what you already do matches the rules is a regulatory compliance audit; putting the entity on a register in the first place is registering a company in the Emirates.
What the authority needs from you
- The activity described the way the register describes it: the category chosen there is the one your invoices have to fit.
- The entity in a form that authority accepts, together with the papers showing who owns and manages it.
- The place: a lease, a venue agreement or a site, matched to what you are asking permission to do there.
- The sector approval where the activity has its own regulator, obtained before the licence and never after it.
- The dates, because an approval that arrives after the day it was needed for is the same as a refusal.
Who issues what
There is no federal registrar of economic activity. Eight authorities license it: the economic development departments of six emirates and two municipalities in one of them. The number of licence categories is not national either — six in the federal classification, seven from the economic department of Abu Dhabi, eight from Dubai — so «there are six licence types here» is one of three answers presented as the only one.
Working outside the zone
A zone entity does not carry the domestic market with it. Reaching customers there goes through a distributor on the mainland holding the right licence, or through a branch or a company opened there. In Dubai the economic department may instead authorise the entity itself, by one of three documents.
| The route | What it is |
|---|---|
| A branch in the emirate | Licence, valid one year |
| A branch working out of the zone | Licence, valid one year |
| Named activities only | Permit for those activities |
That is one emirate’s rule and it does not travel: the resolution does not apply to financial establishments licensed in the Dubai financial centre, and other emirates answer the same question their own way. Whichever route is used, the activity outside the zone is kept in separate financial records.
The approvals that sit on top
An event, a venue, filming, music, prizes, temporary staff or imported equipment each answer to their own authority, and their conditions are published by that authority itself, and never in one common place. We confirm each one against the body that issues it before a date is promised to anyone, because none of them can be read off the licence you already hold.
In Dubai the event permit comes from the Department of Economy and Tourism (DET) through its ePermits service, and it is required for entertainment, sport, charity, religious and business events alike. No single fee and no single processing time can be quoted: the department publishes both by permit type, so the figure follows the permit the event needs.
Sources: the eight licensing authorities are listed by the ministry of economy and tourism; the six, seven and eight categories and the mainland route are on the government portal for the mainland and for free zones; the three documents and the one-year term are in Dubai Executive Council Resolution 11 of 2025.
Stages of work
What you are actually going to do — 1 week.
The activity is written the way a register would write it, because the whole chain follows the category and not the description on your website.
Which authority owns the answer.
We identify the licensing authority for your place and the sector regulator, if the activity has one, and say which of them has to move first.
What your current licence already covers.
Half of this work is finding that a permission is unnecessary. The other half is finding that the licence names something adjacent to what you do.
The file, in the authority’s own form.
Entity papers, ownership, the place and the activity are assembled the way that authority asks for them, with sector approvals obtained in the right order.
Filing, and what comes back.
We submit, answer the queries and keep the dates visible, because an approval that arrives after the day it was for has failed even if it was granted.
Renewals and changes.
Licences expire, activities get added and addresses move. You get the calendar and the list of changes that require telling somebody.
This sits inside our Licensing & Compliance practice.
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