Does UAE law require your website to be in Arabic? The articles, and what is still only a draft

Search this question and you get two kinds of answer. One says there is no general legal requirement to publish a website in Arabic in the UAE. The other says Article 26 of the Consumer Protection Law applies and quotes fines "up to AED 200,000", usually without naming the instrument the number sits in. Neither camp cites article numbers you can check.

Everything below is taken from the texts the Ministry of Economy and Tourism and the Dubai Legislation portal publish themselves, with the article number next to each statement, so you can open the documents and read the sentence yourself.

Federal sources checked 27 August 2026, the emirate-level and draft-law sources on 28 August 2026. This is a summary of published text, not legal advice. What follows applies differently to a restaurant, a clinic and a B2B software licence, and that difference belongs with a UAE lawyer, not with a web agency.

The short answer

• In the two instruments read for this article, there is no article that says "your website must be in Arabic". That is a statement about Federal Law 15/2020 and Cabinet Decision 66/2023, not about UAE law as a whole. See the scope note below for what was not read.
• What those two texts do contain are articles that attach a language obligation to specific things a website does: consumer-facing information, advertisements, contracts, and invoices.
• The clearest of them is not about websites at all. Article 8(4) of Federal Law No. 15/2020 says the invoice must be in Arabic, and Cabinet Decision No. 66/2023 puts an administrative fine of AED 100,000 on failing to issue it that way.
• Article 26 covers "data, advertisements, and contracts related to the Consumer". A commercial website aimed at consumers in the UAE is data and advertising, so an English-only site that sells to consumers is inside the wording of Article 26. The matching fine in the schedule is AED 100,000, not AED 200,000.
• The Arabic Language Law announced in April 2026 is, as of 28 August 2026, still a drafting project. No law number, no published text, no penalty table. Anyone quoting its fines is quoting nothing. What the reporting does say is set out further down, because the sectors it names include business and advertising.

What this article does not cover

Worth stating plainly, because a negative finding drawn from two documents is only as wide as those two documents.

Emirate-level law. Each emirate legislates on top of the federal layer. The closest instrument in Dubai is Decree No. (6) of 2020 Regulating Advertisements, issued 14 February 2020. Article 11(7) requires an advertiser to "use the Arabic language in the Advertisement", adding that a foreign language may sit beside it "provided that Arabic is the main language of the Advertisement and that the Arabic text occupies at least fifty percent (50%) of the size of the Advertising Medium, occupies the upper section or the right-hand side of the Advertising Medium, and is free from grammatical and spelling mistakes".

That is a real Arabic-first rule with a measurable ratio, and it is worth knowing if you print anything. It does not reach your website. The Article 1 definition of "Advertising Medium" ends with an exclusion list: it "does not include newspapers, magazines, periodicals, websites, radio, television, and cinema theatres". So Dubai's 50 percent rule governs your shopfront sign, your vehicle wrap and your leaflet, and leaves your site to the federal consumer-protection layer. Signage and print are outside what we build; the rule is here so you do not read the federal answer as the whole answer.

Advertising and media law beyond that decree, sector regulators, and the rules attached to specific licensed activities such as healthcare, education, financial services and real estate brokerage. Those layers carry their own language and content conditions.

Tax law. Invoice language under consumer protection is a different obligation from the tax invoice fields the Federal Tax Authority requires. The two overlap on the same document. The tax side is covered separately in VAT on your UAE online store.

What Federal Law No. 15/2020 actually says

Federal Law No. 15 of 2020 on Consumer Protection was issued on 10 November 2020, published in Official Gazette issue 690, and amended by Federal Decree-Law No. 5/2023 of 8 August 2023. The English text quoted below is from the PDF the Ministry of Economy and Tourism publishes at moet.gov.ae (HTTP 200 on 28 August 2026). One thing to know about that file: the English in it is a LexisNexis translation the ministry hosts, not an official English enactment. The Arabic Official Gazette text is the one that governs, and a lawyer arguing a point will argue from the Arabic.

It applies inside free zones

Article 3, on applicability:

The provisions of this Law shall apply to all Goods and Services within the State, including free zones, and operations related thereto and carried out by the Supplier, the Advertiser, or the commercial agent, as well as those carried out by means of electronic commerce if the Supplier is registered inside the State, without prejudice to international treaties and agreements to which the State is a party.

Two consequences. A Meydan, DMCC or IFZA licence does not put you outside this law. And for e-commerce, the hook is registration inside the UAE, not where the server is.

Article 26, in full

The whole article is one sentence:

The data, advertisements, and contracts related to the Consumer shall be made in Arabic, and other languages may be used in addition to Arabic.

It does not say "in Arabic only". English is allowed alongside; what is not allowed is Arabic being absent. And note what the duty attaches to: data, advertisements and contracts related to the consumer. Not "the website" as an object. That distinction is the whole answer to the question in the title.

Who counts as a Consumer is defined in Article 1, and the definition is wider than the European one:

Consumer: Every physical or juristic person who obtains a Good or Service - with or without charge - to satisfy his personal needs or the needs of others, or for which transactions or contracts are concluded therewith.

A juristic person is inside the definition. Do not assume a B2B site is automatically out of scope on the strength of "we only sell to companies".

Article 25, for online sellers

Suppliers registered in the State and who work in the field of electronic commerce shall provide Consumers and the Competent Authorities in the State with their names, legal status, addresses and licensing bodies, as well as adequate information in Arabic about the product or Service provided, its specifications, and the terms of contract, payment, and Warranty, in accordance with what is specified by the Implementing Regulation of this Law.

"Adequate information in Arabic" is the operative phrase for an online shop. Product data, specifications, contract terms, payment terms and warranty terms. Not the whole site, not the marketing copy, but the part a buyer relies on to decide. The identity half of that sentence, names and legal status and addresses and licensing bodies, is a separate build list that also sits in the e-commerce decree-law; it is worked through element by element in UAE e-commerce website requirements.

The invoice rule is Article 8, not Article 27

Article 27 of this law is about prohibiting, seizing or withdrawing hazardous goods. It has nothing to do with language, and if you see it cited for the Arabic invoice rule, the citation is wrong. The invoice sits in Article 8, clauses 3 and 4:

The Supplier shall provide the Consumer with a dated Invoice that includes his trade name, address, type of Good, its Price and quantity, or the type of Service, its Price and details, and any other data specified by the Implementing Regulation of this Law.

The Invoice shall be in Arabic, and the Supplier may add any other language he specifies.

This is the sharpest language obligation in the text. It is unconditional, it has its own clause number, and it is the one with a dedicated line in the fine schedule.

The criminal range

Article 30 sets the court penalty:

A penalty of imprisonment for a period not exceeding six months and a fine not less than (3,000) three thousand dirhams and not exceeding (200,000) two hundred thousand dirhams, or either of these two penalties, shall be inflicted on whoever violates any of the provisions of Articles (18,19,20,26) and the provision of clause (4) of Article (8), of this Law.

Keep that number in mind for the section after next.

Where the fines are written down: Cabinet Decision No. 66/2023

The Executive Regulation is Cabinet Decision No. 66 of 2023, issued 3 July 2023. Article 43 says it "shall be published in the Official Gazette, and shall come into force (3) three months after the date of publication". Law firm commentaries reporting on it give the date it took effect as 14 October 2023; the Decision itself states the three-month rule rather than the date. Quoted from the Ministry PDF at moet.gov.ae (retrieved 27 August 2026).

Article 41 lets the Ministry impose sanctions from Addendum 1, which is a ladder: notice; administrative fine, doubled on repetition; temporary closure of not less than 24 hours and not more than 90 days; suspension of the activity for the same range; revocation of licence and striking off the commercial register. The fine is one rung, not the ceiling.

Addendum 2 is the table of financial penalties. Four rows matter here. Rows 1 to 14 cite articles of Federal Law 15/2020; rows 15 onward cite articles of the Decision itself.

Row	Offence	Reference	Fine
3	Invoice not issued in Arabic	Law 15/2020, Art. 8(4)	AED 100,000
14	Particulars, advertisements, contracts not in Arabic	Law 15/2020, Art. 26	AED 100,000
18	No invoice given at all	Decision 66/2023, Art. 6	AED 100,000
46	E-commerce particulars missing	Decision 66/2023, Art. 40	AED 100,000

Two supporting articles of the Decision are worth reading if you run a shop. Article 6(1) lists what the invoice must contain, and item (f) is "Price of commodity or service, in the local currency", which is a separate obligation from the language one and catches a lot of USD-only checkouts. Article 40(1)(c) requires an e-commerce supplier to attach a detailed statement of the ingredients and specifications of the commodity "in its original language in addition to Arabic language".

Where the AED 200,000 figure comes from

The number is not invented, but it does not mean what the pages quoting it say it means.

It appears in the primary sources in three unrelated places. First, Article 30 of Law 15/2020, quoted above, sets a court penalty range of AED 3,000 to AED 200,000 with up to six months imprisonment, and Article 26 is one of five provisions in its list. So AED 200,000 is the statutory ceiling of a criminal range that a court can impose, with a floor of AED 3,000, and it is shared with articles about promotions, monopoly and standard specifications. It is not a fixed fine for an English-only website.

Second, in Addendum 2 the amount AED 200,000 sits at row 12, against Article 20 of the Law, which is about conformity of goods with standard specifications and health and safety conditions. Nothing to do with language.

Third, and this is the likely mechanism behind the confusion, Addendum 2 contains two different rows citing "Article 26". Row 14 cites Article 26 of the Law, the Arabic language provision, at AED 100,000. Row 31 cites "Article 26 para. 1" of the Decision, which is about advising the consumer of repairs and modifications, at AED 200,000. A reader scanning the table for "Article 26" finds both, and the larger number is the one that gets published.

The correct administrative figure for the language obligations, in the current schedule, is AED 100,000 per row, doubled on repetition under Addendum 1.

We make no claim at all about how often any of this is enforced, against whom, or with what outcome. There is no primary source for that, and we are not going to invent one.

Three levels, three different obligations

This is the part that decides what you actually have to build.

The public website. Marketing pages, service descriptions, prices shown to consumers, terms of sale, warranty and returns policies. Article 26 covers "data, advertisements, and contracts related to the Consumer", and Article 25 requires "adequate information in Arabic" about the product or service, its specifications and the terms of contract, payment and warranty. In practice this means an Arabic version of the pages a buyer relies on: what you sell, what it costs, on what terms, who you legally are, and how returns and warranty work. It does not mean your blog, your careers page or your case studies have to be translated. Get the transactional layer into Arabic first, and treat the rest as optional.

The order, booking or contract confirmation. The moment a consumer agrees to something, you are in the "contracts" limb of Article 26. If the confirmation email, the booking summary or the terms accepted at checkout exist only in English, that is the exposure. It is also the cheapest item on this list to fix, because it is a handful of templates rather than a website. Whatever language the customer used on your site, the confirmation should exist in Arabic as well.

The invoice. Article 8(4) is unconditional and does not care what language the rest of your business runs in. The invoice must be in Arabic; you may add English next to it. Article 6(1) of Decision 66/2023 tells you the fields, including price in local currency, and the tax invoice fields sit on top of that. A bilingual invoice template is a one-off piece of work, and it is the single item on this page with its own numbered line in the fine schedule.

If you sell to businesses only and never issue a consumer invoice in the UAE, most of this narrows considerably. That judgement is exactly the one to put to a lawyer rather than to us. The bilingual site and operations package we build is described on our website package page, and the wider service list sits under solutions. Both exclude legal drafting and legal advice for the reason above: we build the structure, you or your lawyer supply the text.

What "real Arabic" means in the source code

An Arabic version that a regulator, a customer or a search engine treats as a version has four properties. None of them is expensive, and all of them are skipped by translation widgets.

A separate URL for each language. English at /solutions, Arabic at /ar/solutions. A widget that rewrites the English page in the browser produces no second URL, so there is nothing to link to, nothing to index, and nothing to point a regulator at. Google's own documentation is direct about what happens when the versions are not really separate: "Localized versions of a page are only considered duplicates if the main content of the page remains untranslated."

dir="rtl" on the document, not a stylesheet hack. Right-to-left is a document direction, not a text alignment. Set it on the <html> element of the Arabic pages and the layout mirrors properly: navigation, form labels, icons, table columns, list markers. Flipping text-align alone gives you an English layout with Arabic words in it.

Reciprocal hreflang for en, en-AE, ar, ar-AE and x-default. Reciprocal is the word that matters. Google: "If two pages don't both point to each other, the tags will be ignored." And on the fallback: "The reserved x-default value is used when no other language/region matches the user's browser setting."

Separate content files per language. If the Arabic text lives in the same file as the English and is produced at render time, it cannot be proofread, corrected or signed off independently. Ask any supplier whether they can hand you the Arabic as its own file for a native speaker to correct before go-live. If the answer involves a plugin, the answer is no.

Running the check on this site

Do not run it on this page. Measured on 28 August 2026 against our own server, this article emits no hreflang links at all, because no Arabic translation of it exists, and the language switch in the header sends you to the Arabic home page rather than to an Arabic version of this text. The site only emits hreflang where a genuine counterpart exists, which is the correct behaviour but means an article page is the wrong place to look.

The pages that do have a counterpart are the five page pairs: / and /ar/, /mirror and /ar/mirror, /solutions and /ar/solutions, /about and /ar/about, /contact and /ar/contact. On 28 August 2026 each of those ten URLs returned HTTP 200, each carried five <link rel="alternate" hreflang="..."> lines covering en, en-AE, ar, ar-AE and x-default, each pointing at the other member of the pair, and each /ar/ page opened with <html lang="ar" dir="rtl">.

So the check takes about a minute. Open /mirror, view source, count five hreflang lines and note the ar line points at /ar/mirror. Open /ar/mirror, view source, confirm dir="rtl" on the html element and that its en line points back. If a site sold to you as bilingual fails that on its own key pages, you are looking at a widget. The same check is written down as one of the tests on how we prove quality before you pay, because it is a check you can run on us rather than a claim you have to accept.

An Arabic version is a compliance and reach decision. We are not going to tell you it will lift your rankings, because that depends on whether anyone searches for what you sell in Arabic, which is a question for keyword data on your own market. The general shape of that work is in SEO in Dubai 2026.

What is still only a draft: the Arabic Language Law

In April 2026 the Ministry of Culture presented a plan for a federal Arabic Language Law to the Federal National Council. Khaleej Times reported on 29 April 2026 that a feasibility study was complete, with drafting and executive regulations to follow and a rollout targeted for 2026 to 2027.

A follow-up explainer in Khaleej Times on 30 April 2026 set out the intended scope as ten sectors: government transactions; economy and business; education and research; culture and media; translation and Arabisation; support and motivation mechanisms; family and society; technology and digitisation; governance; and customer service and internal work policies. On advertising, that report states that the Arabic language "must be present in all visual, audio, or written advertisements, as well as promotional campaigns directed at the public". It also describes mandatory Arabic translation at conferences and official meetings held in another language.

Read plainly, an intended scope covering business, technology and public advertising is a scope that reaches a company's marketing website, not only its staffing. The National reported on 28 May 2026 that institutions showing commitment "may benefit from support programmes and recognition initiatives, while also, gradually, penalties may apply in cases of non-compliance."

Now the part that matters more than the scope. As of 28 August 2026, checked on that date: there is no law number, no published legal text, no executive regulation, no penalty table and no entry-into-force date. The sector list above comes from press reporting on a drafting decision, not from a statute you can cite. Nothing in it is in force, so nothing in it can be complied with yet, and nobody can tell you today what compliance will require. Treat it as a reason to keep the Arabic side of your site in a form you can extend, not as a deadline. If you are reading this months after the review date, check the status again before acting on it.

Checklist

Work down it. Each line has its article next to it.

• Is your entity registered in the UAE and selling goods or services here? Then Law 15/2020 applies to you, free zone included. (Art. 3)
• Does anyone in your buyer set fall under the Article 1 definition of Consumer, including juristic persons buying for their needs? (Art. 1)
• Is your invoice issued in Arabic, with English optional alongside? (Art. 8(4); fine row 3, AED 100,000)
• Does the invoice carry every field in Article 6(1), including the price in local currency? (Decision 66/2023, Art. 6; fine row 18)
• Do your consumer-facing terms, warranty, returns and prices exist in Arabic? (Art. 26; fine row 14)
• If you sell online: are product particulars, specifications and the terms of contract, payment and warranty available in Arabic? (Art. 25; Decision Art. 40, fine row 46)
• Does your order or booking confirmation exist in Arabic? (Art. 26, contracts limb)
• Do you print signage, wraps or leaflets in Dubai? Then check the 50 percent Arabic rule separately. (Dubai Decree 6/2020, Art. 11(7))
• Does the Arabic version have its own URL, dir="rtl", reciprocal hreflang and its own content file?
• Has a native speaker read the Arabic and signed it off in writing?
• Have you re-checked the status of the draft Arabic Language Law since the review date on this page?

If you want the structural half of that list built and kept running while your lawyer handles the text, tell us what you sell and to whom.

Sources

• Federal Law No. 15 of 2020 on Consumer Protection, English text published by the Ministry of Economy and Tourism: moet.gov.ae, Law_15_2020_pdf.pdf. Retrieved 27 August 2026, URL re-checked 28 August 2026. The English in that file is a LexisNexis translation; the Arabic Official Gazette text governs.
• Cabinet Decision No. 66 of 2023 concerning the Executive Regulation of Federal Law No. 15/2020, English text published by the Ministry of Economy and Tourism: moet.gov.ae, CabinetDecision_66_2023_pdf.pdf. Retrieved 27 August 2026.
• Ministry of Economy and Tourism, consumer protection legislation index: moet.gov.ae/en/consumer-protection-legislations. Retrieved 27 August 2026.
• Decree No. (6) of 2020 Regulating Advertisements in the Emirate of Dubai, Dubai Legislation portal: dlp.dubai.gov.ae. Retrieved 28 August 2026.
• Khaleej Times, 29 April 2026, on the planned Arabic Language Law: khaleejtimes.com. Retrieved 28 August 2026.
• Khaleej Times, 30 April 2026, explainer on the draft law and its ten sectors: khaleejtimes.com. Retrieved 28 August 2026.
• The National, 28 May 2026, on the same draft: thenationalnews.com. Retrieved 28 August 2026.
• Google Search Central, localized versions of a page: developers.google.com. Retrieved 27 August 2026.

Reviewed 28 August 2026. The draft Arabic Language Law is the part of this article with a short shelf life.