Dubai’s Eid ritual: going away – and coming back

Virtually everyone I know in Dubai is flying out this weekend – to Bangkok, London, Dublin, Moscow and other destinations.

The departure lounges at DXB will be doing the kind of business that even in a difficult year reminds you what this city does better than almost anywhere: move people.

I will not be among them. Work commitments are keeping me here over Eid Al Adha, which I like to think gives me a vantage point in a city that will, temporarily, exhale.

Here is the thing that strikes me about the great Eid diaspora of 2026: everyone I know who is leaving, is planning to come back.

That may sound unremarkable, but it is, in fact, extraordinary.

Consider what they are returning to. The Strait of Hormuz remains closed, and the longer it stays that way, the more profound economic challenges become. Speculation about renewed US and Israeli military action is growing. And any fresh escalation carries with it the near-certain prospect of Iranian retaliation – retaliation that has been aimed disproportionately at the UAE.

Against that backdrop, booking the return flight requires an act of will, even of courage. So why are they doing it?

Partly, it is the simple weight of lives and livelihoods built here: mortgages or rental commitments in Dubai’s expensive market; school places and examination timetables; business and professional commitments.

All these amount to the infrastructure of a real life that is based in a permanent residence, rather than in a hotel or a suitcase.

But I think there is something more than pragmatism at work. Going away and coming back is one of the quintessential rhythms of Dubai life. It is, in its own way, a definition of what it means to live here.

Dubai is not a city where people stay put, even in peacetime. They travel constantly – for holidays, for work, for family – and for the simple reason that the flight connections make everywhere feel accessible.

The return is not an afterthought, but is part of the ritual. Coming back to Dubai, rested and recuperated, is as much a part of life in the city as the departure.

That’s what resilience looks like at the individual level. It is not bravado, nor denial, just the simple decision – made on thousands of flight booking screens over the past few weeks – to come back.

Eid Al Adha is a festival of commitment and sacrifice – themes that feel less abstract than usual this year. Even for the non-Muslims of Dubai, there is something fitting about marking it with a return ticket already booked.

But I would be less than honest if I did not point out what comes next. The Eid rentrée will be brief, and within weeks, schools will close for summer, and the real annual exodus will begin: the long, hot, empty stretch that Dubai endures every year, intensified this time by everything that has happened since February 28.

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For those who stay, by choice or necessity, it will be a testing few months. The heat, the reduced social life, the background noise of geopolitical uncertainty – none of this will make for an easy summer.

And then September, the moment that will tell us something genuinely important about Dubai’s future. September is when the new school year begins, when contracts restart, when the city reconstitutes itself after the summer.

It is when new migrants arrive – or decide not to do so. When families who have been abroad since June make the decision: go back, or stay put.

The September return will be the real vote of confidence, rather than the Eid long-weekend booking made in a mood of holiday optimism. The autumn will be a cooler, harder calculation made after three months away, weighing up the prospects after a summer when, surely, there will be some kind of resolution to the slow-burn crisis since February.

I believe they will come back. Dubai has earned that loyalty, over decades of delivering on its promises to the people who chose it.

The Eid ritual of departure and return is a reassuring thing – but the real test is yet to come.

Frank Kane is Editor-at-Large of AGBI and an award-winning business journalist. He acts as a consultant to the Ministry of Energy of Saudi Arabia