Gulf agencies often hear that UAE law requires all advertising in Arabic. We could not find a single rule that says so. What exists is a set of specific requirements, and an audience that, according to a survey published this year, wants more Arabic content but finds much of it outdated.
Where Arabic is required
- UAE consumer information. Under the Consumer Protection Law and its 2023 executive regulations, invoices, warranty information and mandatory labelling must be in Arabic, with other languages allowed alongside, according to Clyde & Co. CMS reads the same rules as covering advertisements too.
- Dubai shopfronts. The Outdoor Advertising Manual requires trade-name signs to show Arabic above English, according to Dubai Media Office.
- Ras Al Khaimah. The municipality's ad content approval service says at least 50% of advertising content must be in Arabic, and only Arabic and English are allowed.
- Saudi commercial data. Under the Commercial Data Law's implementing regulations, commercial data must be written clearly in Arabic, and if another language is added, the Arabic version is the reference.
- Saudi financial ads. The Saudi Central Bank's rules say financial institutions advertise in Arabic, except for ads aimed at non-Arabic speakers.
The UAE's 20 media content standards, in force since May 2025, do not mention Arabic. They require ads to respect UAE culture, identity and values. A 2013 National Media Council rule asked for Modern Standard Arabic or the Emirati dialect in ads, and we could not confirm whether it still applies.
What audiences say
- In the Arab Youth Pulse 2025, by the Abu Dhabi Arabic Language Centre with Ipsos, 71% of 4,092 young Arabs in 10 markets preferred media in Arabic, 67% said Arabic content feels outdated, and 77% said English was essential to their goals, as reported by The National in September 2026.
- The often-quoted figure that 56% of GCC youth use English more than Arabic comes from the 2015 Arab Youth Survey. It is more than a decade old.
Dialect and transcreation
Arabic has a formal standard, Modern Standard Arabic, and spoken dialects. Gulf Arabic is one of the main dialect groups, and Egyptian is the most widely understood, largely because so many Arabic films, series and songs are Egyptian. Transcreation, the creative reinterpretation of a text for its audience rather than a literal translation, is the usual approach for campaign lines, though academics note there is still no agreed definition.
Right-to-left mistakes
- Set the direction in markup, dir="rtl" on the page or email, and set the language separately.
- Mirror navigation and progress indicators, but not logos, checkmarks, clocks or photos, as Apple's interface guidelines put it.
- Never reverse the digits inside a number, such as a phone number.
- Choose numerals deliberately. Western digits are standard in the UAE locale, while browsers by default format numbers for Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain and Oman in Arabic-Indic digits unless the developer overrides it.
- Arabic beside all-caps Latin text often looks better about two points larger.
- Use Arabic punctuation. The Arabic comma and question mark differ from the Latin ones.
On the platforms
- Meta's multi-language ads can automatically translate between English and Arabic. Its AI translation and dubbing of Reels into Arabic, launched on Facebook in June 2026, is a creator tool, not an ads feature.
- Google Ads supports Arabic for both its interface and ad language targeting.
- TikTok leaves ad language in the UAE and Saudi Arabia to the advertiser and local law.
Arabic and search
For separate language versions, Google supports hreflang codes such as ar-AE and ar-SA, but not a country code on its own, and recommends an x-default fallback. Google detects a page's language from its content, not from hreflang or the lang attribute, so the Arabic page has to be genuinely in Arabic.
For Arabic-speaking audiences, write the Arabic first rather than translating an English master at the end. The caption and hashtag checker on this site helps review post copy before it goes out.
