Selling tickets in the United Arab Emirates: permits and VAT

Selling tickets in the United Arab Emirates doesn't start with pricing: it starts with a permit system that, in both Dubai and Abu Dhabi, also controls the issuing of the ticket itself. Anyone who opens sales without that approval commits an offence with a set fine.

This guide covers what's required in the two jurisdictions where most of the activity is concentrated — Dubai and Abu Dhabi — the federal 5% VAT charged on tickets, and the refund deadlines when an event falls through. All figures come from official texts linked where they're used.

What permits does an organiser need to sell tickets in Dubai?

Dubai regulates events and tickets under the same law. Decree No. 25 of 2013 created the Event eLicensing and eTicketing System and defines a "Ticket" as "any free or paid paper-based or electronic pass which authorises its bearer access to an Event". That covers free invitations too, not just paid tickets.

The scope is broad. Article 3 applies the decree to "all areas within the Emirate, including Special Development Zones and free zones such as the Dubai International Financial Centre". No free zone is exempt, not even the DIFC.

The obligations sit in Article 8. Any public or private entity that organises events, or that holds a licensed venue for holding them, must register with the eLicensing System and install the necessary equipment (point a), and must also register with the eTicketing System (point b). Point e closes the loop: no premises is licensed unless it is registered with one or both systems. Article 10.3 requires subscribers to issue and distribute tickets through the system.

One naming detail worth noting when filling in forms: the decree refers to the DTCM, the former Department of Tourism and Commerce Marketing. Law No. 20 of 2021, dated 2 November 2021, merged the DTCM and the Department of Economic Development into the Department of Economy and Tourism (DET), which "succeeds to the rights and obligations" of both. The 2013 law still applies; only the counterparty's name has changed.

How much do Dubai's eLicensing and eTicketing cost, and what are the fines?

The figures aren't in the decree itself but in Executive Council Resolution No. 1 of 2015, dated 3 February 2015, which approves the fees and fines for the system. These are the numbers to budget for before sales open.

Schedule 2 sets out the fines. Selling tickets without an electronic code, or selling them through an entity not registered with eTicketing: 10,000 dirhams. Reselling tickets that have already been used: 10,000. Issuing or distributing free tickets while charging for them: 10,000. Holding the event before entering the data into eLicensing and obtaining approval: 10,000. Entering incorrect data into either system: 5,000. Failing to refund a ticket on time when the event is cancelled: 2,000.

Article 2.b adds that the fine doubles if the offence is repeated within the same year, up to a cap of 100,000 dirhams, and that the department may also suspend the activity for up to six months or revoke the trade licence.

There's one point worth looking at closely, and this is our own reading of the two texts, not a statement from the authorities. Article 13 of Decree No. 25 of 2013 sets the fine range between 100 and 20,000 dirhams, while the 2015 resolution allows up to 100,000 for repeat offences. The base amounts in Schedule 2 fit within the decree's range; the cap for repeat offences doesn't. If a case involves a repeat offence, it's worth asking the DET which limit applies before assuming the worst.

What does Abu Dhabi require from ticket sellers?

Abu Dhabi centralises everything in the Event Licensing System (ELS), processed through the TAMM platform. The DCT Abu Dhabi licensing handbook, version 1 of 2024, is the document that sets out the rules, and the licensing system lists six permit categories: exhibition, conference, training and workshops, speakers, entertainment and e-ticketing.

Access isn't open to everyone. Registration with the ELS is restricted to owners of galleries, facilities, malls and venues, and to organisers holding a DED trade licence whose activity includes "Event Management". Without that licence, there's no permit.

The deadlines are short and fixed. No application is accepted less than three working days before the event date; below that margin, an "urgent services" fee of 500 dirhams applies, which the handbook itself warns does not guarantee approval if visas from other entities are required. The speaker permit must be requested at least fourteen days in advance. And the handbook warns that permits obtained through TAMM are not final approvals if other authorities are involved.

On ticketing, the handbook is unusually specific:

• Using the electronic ticketing system is mandatory for all entertainment and business-sector events where tickets are issued, and every ticket, whether paid or free, must be printed through the system.
• A 10% charge on total ticket sales is levied in favour of the DCT (section 4.2).
• The per-ticket fee "must not be less than AED 1 per ticket issued through the Event Ticketing System", and that minimum expressly includes complimentary invitations.
• The price must be "clear and readable" in Arabic or English on every ticket, regardless of the sales channel: physical box office, website or app.
• The seller cannot offer or sell a ticket "with a price different than the price specified by the Event Organiser and printed on the Ticket". Intermediary mark-ups have no place here.
• For single-day events, the fee must be settled no later than thirty days after the event date.

Complimentary tickets are capped by event type: 75% of the total for business-sector events, 25% for sporting events and 10% for entertainment events. They must carry the printed word "مجاناً" in Arabic or "complimentary" in English.

Access control is also written into the rules. The handbook requires venues to control entry so that every attendee presents "a valid Ticket issued by the Electronic Ticket System with an electronic code that has not been previously used". It's the same single-use validation discipline we recommend in our guide to access control at festivals, here turned into a regulatory requirement.

After the event comes the audit: the DCT's revenue assurance team can visit venues and attend events, and the organiser must provide the requested documentation within three months of the event date at the latest. Fines paid within sixty days of the offence can be reduced by 25%, and claims must be filed within sixty days and are resolved within thirty.

Who refunds the money if the event is cancelled?

In Abu Dhabi, the ticket seller does. Section 4.8 of the DCT handbook is explicit: in the event of cancellation for any reason, "the Ticket Seller is responsible for the full refund of the Tickets sold to the Ticket Buyers within ten (10) days of the cancellation date of the Event". The organiser bears the costs associated with the payment method, and tickets for cancelled events do not incur a fee.

There's a second scenario: enforced cancellation. If the DCT or the competent authority halts activities due to a natural disaster or a government decision — official mourning, pandemic rules, precautionary measures — the permit dates are treated as void, the licence fees are refunded, and the DCT resolves those applications within thirty working days. The handbook adds, on the same page, that organisers "shall ensure refunding all the sold Tickets to Ticket Buyers".

Dubai approaches this through fines rather than deadlines: Schedule 2 of Resolution No. 1 of 2015 fines 2,000 dirhams for failing to refund a ticket "within the prescribed time frame" when the event is cancelled. The resolution doesn't publish that time frame; the department sets it. That's the practical difference between the two emirates: Abu Dhabi gives you the number of days, Dubai tells you that missing it costs money.

Above both sits Federal Law No. 15 of 2020 on consumer protection, amended by Decree-Law No. 5 of 2023, which requires suppliers to issue a dated invoice stating the type of service, the price and the quantity, and prohibits advertising misleading prices. If you're used to a European market, it's worth not automatically carrying over the reflexes from Spain's ticket refund policy: the right of withdrawal for distance sales doesn't work the same way here, and what governs is the UAE's own cancellation rules set out above.

How does the 5% VAT apply to a ticket in the UAE?

The rate is 5%. Article 3 of Federal Decree-Law No. 8 of 2017 on Value Added Tax, in the consolidated version published by the Federal Tax Authority, imposes "a standard rate of 5% Tax" on all supplies and imports.

What places the tax in the UAE isn't where the company is based, but where the event is held. Article 30.6 states that "for the supply of any cultural, artistic, sporting, educational or any similar Services, the place shall be where such Services were performed". A concert in Dubai is taxable in the UAE even if the promoter is based in Madrid or London. It's the same logic that governs VAT on live entertainment across most European systems, which is why the split of responsibilities resembles what we cover in VAT on ticket sales in Spain.

The second article that changes how things work in practice is Article 25. The tax point is the earliest of a list of dates, and point 7 includes "the date of receipt of payment or the date on which the Tax Invoice was issued". Events are typically paid for months before the service is delivered: VAT on a ticket sold in November for a festival in March becomes due in November. That gap between cash received and tax due needs planning before pre-sale launches, not when filing the return.

And one article directly shapes how the price is displayed: Article 38. "In the case of a Taxable Supply, the advertised price shall include the Tax". The price shown to the buyer on the website must already include VAT. Combined with Abu Dhabi's rule that sellers cannot charge a price different from the one printed on the ticket, there's very little room left to add charges further down the funnel.

When do you need to register for VAT in the UAE?

It depends on residency. For those resident in the State, Article 7.1 of the VAT Executive Regulation — Cabinet Decision No. 52 of 2017 and its amendments — sets the mandatory threshold at 375,000 dirhams, and Article 8.1 sets the voluntary threshold at 187,500. Article 7.2 allows thirty days to submit the application from when the obligation arises.

For non-residents, there's no threshold at all. Article 13.2 of Decree-Law No. 8 of 2017 requires "every Person, who does not have a Place of Residence in the State or an Implementing State (…) if he makes supplies of Goods or Services, and where no other Person is obligated to pay the Due Tax on these supplies in the State" to register. The first ticket sold already triggers the obligation, and Article 7.6 of the Regulation adds that the Authority registers the non-resident with effect from the date they started making supplies, whether they notified it or not.

That raises the question that decides whether a foreign promoter must register: is anyone else liable to pay the tax in the UAE on that sale? If you sell directly to end consumers through your own website, no one else is. If the sale is made by a platform established in the UAE acting in its own name, Article 9.2 of the Decree-Law treats the transaction as a direct supply by the agent. It's one of the things worth putting in writing in the contract before signing with a platform, alongside the points we list when choosing a ticketing platform.

9% corporate tax, e-invoicing and content permits

UAE corporate tax arrived after VAT and is simpler to summarise. Cabinet Decision No. 116 of 2022, dated 30 December 2022, sets the rate at 0% for the portion of taxable income up to 375,000 dirhams and 9% above that. The same decision warns that artificially splitting a business between several persons to repeat the 0% bracket is treated as an arrangement to obtain a tax advantage.

E-invoicing is the front that's moving right now. Ministerial Decisions No. 243 and No. 244 of 2025 set up the system and its timetable, and Ministerial Decision No. 244 currently excludes Business-to-Consumer transactions: a ticket bought by an individual doesn't enter the system until the minister decides otherwise. What an event invoices to businesses — sponsorship, venue hire, production, platform commission — does fall within scope, and the deadlines for appointing an accredited service provider are already running. We break this down in our piece on the UAE's e-invoicing deadline. Anyone also running events in Europe will recognise the pattern from VeriFactu in Spain and Germany's E-Rechnung: B2B first, the rest to follow.

One permit that foreign organisers often discover too late is the content permit. Article 10 of Federal Decree-Law No. 55 of 2023 on Media Regulation gives the Media Council authority over permits relating "to the showing of cinematographic films and the showing of other artistic works", in line with the content standards in Article 17. Its Article 7 makes this clear: "The licence or permit issued by the Council or the Competent Authority does not substitute for obtaining the necessary permits or approvals from the Concerned Authorities". A content permit doesn't exempt you from the event permit, nor the other way round.

Checklist before opening ticket sales in the UAE

Seven checks, in the order they're likely to block a sale.

Confirm the trade licence first. In Abu Dhabi, no one registers with the ELS without a DED licence covering event management, or without owning a venue. In Dubai, Article 8.e of Decree No. 25 of 2013 makes the premises licence conditional on registration with the systems. This is the requirement that delays timelines the most.

Count back from the event date. Three working days is the absolute minimum in Abu Dhabi, fourteen for speaker permits, and below three there's a 500-dirham urgency fee with no guarantee of approval. For an event with many performers, the handbook itself recommends wider margins.

Don't publish a price or open the cart before approval. Holding an event without eLicensing approval and selling tickets without an electronic code are each fined 10,000 dirhams in Dubai.

Build Abu Dhabi's 10% into the financial model. And the one-dirham minimum per ticket issued, which also applies to complimentary invitations. If you distribute a lot of accreditations, that minimum stops being marginal.

Advertise the price with VAT included. Article 38 of Decree-Law No. 8 of 2017 requires it. And in Abu Dhabi, the price printed on the ticket is the only one you're allowed to charge.

Write the cancellation process before you sell a single ticket. Ten days for a full refund in Abu Dhabi, from the cancellation date. Define who processes the refund, through which payment method, and who bears the costs.

Decide VAT registration based on who's liable. If you're a non-resident and no one else is liable to pay the tax on your sales in the UAE, Article 13.2 requires you to register with no threshold, and registration takes effect from the first supply.

When comparing platforms for this market, the useful questions are operational: can the system connect to Dubai's eTicketing or Abu Dhabi's equivalent, does it print the price and electronic code on the ticket, does it stop a used code being resold, can it flag invitations as free, and can it process bulk refunds within the deadline? Futura Tickets is a Spanish SaaS ticketing platform for professional organisers, and on a UAE project, integration with the emirate's public system needs planning just like the rest of the permit timetable; it's worth putting that in writing before signing, the same way you'd check any other requirement when comparing platforms.

Anyone already operating in Europe will recognise the mechanics: a mandatory public register, a code per ticket and a fee per ticket issued are exactly the scheme we describe in selling tickets in Italy with SIAE. The figures and the authority change; the design of the control doesn't.

Sources

• Decree No. (25) of 2013 Concerning the Event eLicensing and eTicketing System in the Emirate of Dubai — Dubai Legislation, accessed 3 October 2026.
• Executive Council Resolution No. (1) of 2015 Approving the Fees and Fines Prescribed for the Event eLicensing and eTicketing System — Dubai Legislation, 3 February 2015.
• Law No. (20) of 2021 Establishing the Department of Economy and Tourism in the Emirate of Dubai — Dubai Legislation, 2 November 2021.
• Event Licensing Manual – User Guidelines, Version 1, 2024 (PDF) — Department of Culture and Tourism – Abu Dhabi.
• Events Licensing System — Department of Culture and Tourism – Abu Dhabi, accessed 3 October 2026.
• Federal Decree-Law No. 8 of 2017 on Value Added Tax and its amendments (consolidated PDF) — Federal Tax Authority.
• Executive Regulation of Federal Decree-Law No. 8 of 2017, Cabinet Decision No. 52 of 2017 and its amendments (consolidated PDF) — Federal Tax Authority.
• Cabinet Decision No. 116 of 2022 on the Annual Taxable Income Subject to Corporate Tax (PDF) — Ministry of Finance.
• Ministerial Decision No. 244 of 2025 on the Implementation of the Electronic Invoicing System (PDF) — Ministry of Finance.
• Federal Decree-Law No. (55) of 2023 Concerning Media Regulation (PDF) — official text published by the Dubai Development Authority.
• Consumer protection — Federal Law No. 15 of 2020 and Decree-Law No. 5 of 2023 — official portal of the Government of the United Arab Emirates.