Will Dubai end up with an office glut? 2026 supply is about 2% of the market

The most common argument against entering the Dubai office segment runs like this: the shortage is visible to everyone, construction has started, and in a couple of years the market will be flooded. Worth testing against numbers rather than impressions.

What arrives in 2026

• ~230 000 m² — roughly 2.48 million square feet — is the estimate for 2026 completions.
• 122–123 million sq ft is the current office stock.
• That is about 2% of the existing market in a year.

What arrives by 2030

• 24.2 million sq ft is the pipeline for 2026–2030.
• Roughly 4.8 million sq ft a year if it lands evenly.
• About 3.9% of stock annually — a pace the market absorbs.

Why 4% a year is not oversupply

For comparison: office take-up in Dubai in a single half of 2025 exceeded one million square feet, so annual demand is measured in the same millions as planned delivery. And no pipeline is ever delivered in full or on time — schemes slip, some never start. Actual completions almost always come in below announced ones.

An office market becomes oversupplied when new space substantially exceeds absorption for several consecutive years. Neither the 2026 figure nor the run-rate to 2030 describes that.

Where the real risk sits

Not in the total but in the distribution. New supply is concentrated in specific clusters — principally Business Bay — and a building competing with three new towers on the same road faces a different market from one in a cluster with nothing under construction. The question for an investor is not "will Dubai be oversupplied" but "what is being built within a mile of this building".

The second real risk is quality rather than quantity. New stock is efficient, and older towers with poor floor plates and dated services lose tenants to it even in a tight market. Age is a bigger threat to a specific asset than the pipeline is to the market.