Almost every substantial contract signed in the UAE contains an arbitration clause, and most are copied from an older contract without much thought. Since 2021 that is risky: the institutional landscape for arbitration in the UAE was restructured, one major centre disappeared, and a new one opened in the capital. Here is the current position.
The federal law
Federal Law No. 6 of 2018 on Arbitration was issued on 3 May 2018 and came into force one month after publication. It runs to 61 articles and abrogated Articles 203 to 218 of the old Civil Procedure Law, which had governed arbitration until then. It was amended by Federal Decree-Law No. 15 of 2023.
Two provisions are worth knowing even if you never read the rest. Article 2 applies the law to any arbitration carried out in the UAE unless the parties agree to apply another arbitration law, provided that does not offend public order. And Article 48 makes awards confidential — they may not be published in whole or in part without the written approval of the parties.
The 2023 amendment also modernised Article 28, which now lets parties conduct arbitration “whether on site or virtually, through modern technical means” — putting remote hearings beyond argument.
What Decree 34 did in Dubai
This is the change that makes old clauses dangerous. Decree No. 34 of 2021, issued in Dubai on 14 September 2021, abolished exactly two bodies: the Emirates Maritime Arbitration Centre, and the DIFC Arbitration Institute.
A precision point that most summaries get wrong: the Decree names the DIFC Arbitration Institute. The DIFC-LCIA was the joint venture that Institute operated with the LCIA. Law firms describe the practical effect as abolishing the DIFC-LCIA, and that is a fair description of the outcome — but it is not the Decree’s own wording.
The Decree then provided that existing agreements to arbitrate at the abolished centres remain valid, with DIAC replacing them unless the parties agree otherwise. Both the Dubai Courts and the DIFC Courts continue to hear claims and appeals relating to awards from those centres.
If you have a contract with a DIFC-LCIA clause, take advice. Courts have split on whether such clauses survive: the DIFC Court of First Instance and the Abu Dhabi Court of Appeal have upheld validity, while Singapore’s courts and a US federal court have declined to substitute DIAC without the parties’ consent. This is genuinely unsettled and is not something to resolve from an article.
DIAC
The Dubai International Arbitration Centre was established by Decree No. 10 of 2004 as a non-governmental, non-profit centre with legal personality and financial and administrative autonomy. Its head office is in Dubai — at the Dubai Chambers building in Deira — with a branch in the DIFC.
Its current rules, the 2022 DIAC Arbitration Rules, were approved on 25 February 2022 and came into effect on 21 March 2022, governing all new requests filed after that date regardless of when the underlying contract was signed.
Two rules shape most cases:
| Rule | Effect |
|---|---|
| Article 20.1 — default seat | Absent agreement on seat or venue, the initial seat is the DIFC, with the tribunal empowered to determine it finally |
| Article 32.1 — expedited | Applies where claims and counterclaims total AED 1,000,000 or less, unless the parties agree otherwise |
Where the parties have not agreed how many arbitrators, the default is a sole arbitrator.
arbitrateAD
Abu Dhabi Chamber of Commerce and Industry launched the Abu Dhabi International Arbitration Centre (arbitrateAD) on 20 December 2023. From 1 February 2024, its governance structure and rules replaced those of the Abu Dhabi Commercial Conciliation and Arbitration Centre (ADCCAC). ADCCAC arbitrations registered before that date continue under the existing team until they conclude.
The leadership signalled the ambition: Abdulla Mohamed Al Mazrui as Chairman, Gary Born of WilmerHale as Vice Chairman, Maria Chedid of Arnold & Porter as President of the Court of Arbitration, and Kristin Campbell-Wilson, formerly Secretary General of the SCC Arbitration Institute, as Executive Director. The Court’s mandate for administered cases is independent from the board.
On the rules, law firm analyses report an expedited procedure for disputes below AED 9 million decided by a sole arbitrator with an award within four months, emergency arbitrator appointment within one day and a decision within ten, plus provisions on confidentiality and third-party funding disclosure. Notably, the same analyses report that arbitrateAD’s default seat is ADGM rather than onshore Abu Dhabi where the parties do not specify — which, if it applies to your contract, changes the supervising court entirely.
Seat versus venue — the distinction that decides cases
This is the most consequential idea in the article and the most commonly misunderstood. DIAC’s own definition: “Seat means the legal place of the arbitration (which may or may not be the same as the location/venue of the arbitration).” And any award “shall be deemed to have been issued at the seat of the arbitration, regardless of where it has been signed by the Tribunal.”
The seat determines which court supervises the arbitration and hears any challenge. The venue is merely where people sit in a room. A clause naming Dubai as the “place” without saying “seat” can produce a different supervising court than the parties assumed.
ADGM adds a further option: under its Arbitration Regulations 2015, if parties agree the seat is ADGM, no other connection with ADGM is required for the regulations to apply. That makes ADGM available as a common law seat to parties with no other link to it — one reason it features in international contracts, as our guide to Abu Dhabi Global Market explains.
How to choose
Three practical questions. Where are your counterparty and its assets — enforcement is easier where they sit. Do you want an onshore or offshore seat, and therefore which supervising court? And is your dispute small enough that the expedited threshold matters, since the two centres set it very differently.
Above all, write the seat expressly. Most of the difficulty described here arises from clauses that did not.
For the wider commercial-law context, see our guides to DIFC versus ADGM, to business setup in the UAE and to employment law compliance.
This article is general information, not legal advice. Primary sources: Dubai Decree No. 34 of 2021, the DIAC Arbitration Rules 2022, the arbitrateAD launch announcement and the ADGM Arbitration Regulations on seat.
