Every few years Dubai Airports puts out fresh figures for Al Maktoum International (DWC), and the gap between the numbers and the ground has always been the interesting part. The set released at the Government of Dubai Media Office briefing on 11 September 2026 is worth logging because it comes with dates attached, not just capacity targets.
The core figures: second runway by end of 2027, phase 1 sized for 150 million passengers a year and targeted for the early 2030s, and flydubai basing 5 to 6 aircraft at the site as early as next year. The finished layout is 8 passenger nodes of about 32 million passengers each, 5 runways with 4 active and 1 on standby, and a stated eventual capacity of 260 million passengers a year. For comparison, Dubai International logged 6.3 million passengers in July, up 26 per cent month on month, on a run rate toward roughly 70 million for 2026.
What this dataset is good for
Treat the schedule as a hypothesis, not ground truth. DWC has been redrawn more than once since the site opened in 2010, so the useful exercise is tracking Dubai South asking prices and rents against these specific milestones as they land or slip: runway completion, the flydubai move, and progress toward the 150 million mark. A schedule with dates is testable in a way that a capacity target alone is not.
Originally published on Doment, Dubai property intelligence.
