Author: Rosi Ross
RAMADAN IN DUBAI: THE BEST IFTAR EXPERIENCES OF THE YEAR
The cannon fires at sunset. Or the call to prayer begins. What follows is consistent: across the city, in thousands of homes and hundreds of restaurants and hotel ballrooms and garden tents erected for the month, people who have been fasting since before sunrise sit down together to eat. The date arrives first. Then the soup. Then the spreading abundance of a meal that has been prepared with the knowledge that it will feed people who genuinely need it. Ramadan Iftar in Dubai is understood, by those who have experienced it, as the most significant cultural event the city produces — and the Iftar table as its most moving expression. This evergreen editorial explores the best Iftar and Suhoor venues in Dubai, the spiritual and cultural significance of the breaking of the fast, the etiquette of attending as a guest, and why the meal whose authority comes not from what it costs but from what it means is the one that no restaurant concept can manufacture and no year of dining in Dubai should pass without.
SOIGNÉ MIDDLE EAST: THE MODEST FASHION MAGAZINE THE REGION HAS ALWAYS DESERVED
The most significant publications are not those that arrive at the right time — they are those that arrive to fill a space that the industry had not fully acknowledged was empty. Soigné Middle East arrived to fill a very specific space: the absence of a print publication that could hold the full complexity of modest fashion in the Middle East with the editorial intelligence it deserves. This is not a local edition of an international fashion title. It is an independent modest fashion publication built entirely from the specific creative needs and cultural identity of its community — one whose inaugural print issue launched at Babel in Dubai Mall’s Fashion Avenue with cover star Ameni Esseibi, an editorial framework grounded in inclusivity, diversity and sustainability, and the founding conviction that fashion media becomes powerful when it reflects the people reading it back to themselves with honesty and intelligence.
THE NEW GEOGRAPHY OF EXPERIENTIAL LUXURY DINING IN DUBAI
In Dubai’s next luxury cycle, restaurants are not places you visit — they are environments that curate who you become within them. The most considered dining destinations in the city have been constructed around a single understanding: that the food is the anchor and the experience is the destination. From the structured intimacy of Bastion at Jumeirah Beach Hotel to the waterfront slow sociality of Nuska Beach, the hybrid nightlife intelligence of ATTIKO Dubai and SUSHISAMBA’s 51st-floor panoramic dining, to the character-led intimacy of Eugene Eugene and the transnational culinary identity of Gatopardo — each of these spaces proposes a different answer to the same fundamental question: what should a significant evening feel like?
DUBAI FASHION WEEK: WHY GLOBAL BRANDS NOW TREAT DFW AS A MARKET ACTIVATION ENGINE
Paris, Milan, London, and New York remain the symbolic centres of global fashion authority. But symbolic capital no longer guarantees commercial conversion, and brands operating under increasing pressure to demonstrate ROI on cultural participation are evaluating the global fashion calendar with a different set of criteria. Dubai Fashion Week answers this question differently from any other event on the global fashion calendar — because Dubai itself is structured differently: not as a market that luxury brands serve, but as a market-making infrastructure that luxury brands enter. This evergreen editorial analyses the structural evolution of Dubai Fashion Week from regional showcase to global commercial platform — the GCC luxury market dynamics, The Showroom’s B2B function, the hybrid luxury consumer profile, and why the most strategically intelligent luxury brands now treat Dubai Fashion Week participation not as cultural investment but as the most direct available path to GCC market activation.
AUTHENTICS IZAKAYA AT ATTIKO DUBAI: WHEN TOKYO’S MOST DEMOCRATIC DINING RITUAL BECOMES SKYLINE LUXURY
In Tokyo, the Izakaya is unremarkable — the restaurant you end up in rather than choose, with colleagues who stayed past the working day, ordering another sake and another yakitori because nobody is ready to return to the rest of the evening. At ATTIKO Dubai, perched above Dubai Harbour with the city’s illuminated skyline as its permanent backdrop, this tradition arrives in the most different possible context. Chef Ikegami Takahiko — the visionary behind Tokyo institution Zekkocho Teppen — brings his robatayaki mastery and Izakaya philosophy to an environment of curated lighting, designed acoustics, and panoramic vertical drama. What emerges is not a replication of Tokyo’s Izakaya culture but a reinterpretation of its emotional logic: one where informality itself becomes a luxury object, and dining is defined not by what is served but by how familiarity is architected, staged, and experienced at altitude.
INSIDE THE FORBES MIDDLE EAST SUSTAINABILITY LEADERS SUMMIT
The Forbes Middle East Sustainability Leaders Summit reflects a broader transformation in how global influence is structured. Leadership is no longer exercised solely within boardrooms or institutions — it is increasingly shaped within curated ecosystems where capital, narrative, and sustainability strategy converge in real time. Chaired by H.E. Dr. Thani bin Ahmed Al Zeyoudi, UAE Minister of State for Foreign Trade, the summit gathers the corporate leaders, sovereign capital networks, technology executives, and policy architects whose collective authority over the Gulf’s sustainability trajectory makes it the most significant gathering of environmental and economic leadership the region produces. This evergreen editorial explores the summit’s institutional architecture, the UAE’s Net Zero strategic commitment, the role of AI and blockchain in sustainable transformation, and why the Gulf is not merely participating in the global sustainability transition but actively designing the frameworks through which it accelerates.
INSIDE THE WIKI FINANCE EXPO DUBAI: THE INFRASTRUCTURE OF TRUST IN THE AGE OF DIGITAL CAPITALISM
In the digital finance era, trust is no longer granted by institutions — it is negotiated in live ecosystems. The Wiki Finance Expo Dubai, drawing over three thousand professionals from fintech, blockchain, Web3, cryptocurrency, and institutional finance, is the most complete expression of this convergence model available in the Gulf’s digital finance calendar. It is not simply documenting the future of finance. It is actively participating in its construction — where every interaction between founders, investors, regulators, and institutional capital allocators becomes a micro-mechanism in the evolution of global capital infrastructure. This evergreen editorial provides the institutional analysis of why serious fintech market participants treat the Wiki Finance Expo not as an optional conference but as an essential component of Gulf digital finance strategy.
MAISON DE LA PLAGE AND HARVEY NICHOLS: WHEN THE BEACH BECOMES LUXURY RETAIL
Traditional retail hierarchies are dissolving. Harvey Nichols Dubai’s collaboration with Maison de la Plage at West Beach, Palm Jumeirah, is the most complete available expression of this structural shift: a runway show featuring Jacquemus, Alaïa, Missoni, Oseree, and Paco Rabanne in the specific quality of Palm Jumeirah’s coastal light, where private cabanas, a branded gelato cart, and a DJ’s lounge programming constitute a coherent sensory luxury environment in which encountering beautiful things feels like self-expression rather than consumption. This is what happens when the beach becomes luxury retail — and Dubai is where it is happening most completely.
INSIDE THE DUBAI AI & WEB3 FESTIVAL: THE NEW INFRASTRUCTURE LAYER OF INTELLIGENCE, CAPITAL, AND DIGITAL SOVEREIGNTY
AI, blockchain, and data infrastructure are no longer separate domains. The capital that once flowed into vertically specialised technology sectors is increasingly following interoperability — the capacity of systems to function together, to share intelligence across protocols, to enable the compound intelligence that isolated technology sectors cannot produce. The Dubai AI & Web3 Festival — organised by the Dubai AI Campus in strategic partnership with the DIFC — is the most significant single environment in the Gulf where those intersections are being navigated by the people with the authority and the capital to determine their direction. This evergreen editorial provides the systems-level institutional analysis: the tri-layer digital sovereignty stack, Dubai’s regulatory architecture, the Festival’s function as a compressed investment pipeline, and the specific conditions that make Dubai not merely a host for AI and Web3 innovation but the jurisdiction actively structuring the frameworks through which the next digital economy will operate.