Dubai has approved the updated designs and timelines for its largest construction project, the $35bn expansion of Al Maktoum International Airport.

“Today, we approved the designs for the new passenger terminals at Al Maktoum International Airport, and commencing construction of the building at a cost of AED128bn [$35bn] as part of Dubai Aviation Corporation's strategy,” UAE Vice President and Prime Minister and Ruler of Dubai Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum said in a social media post on X (formerly known as Twitter) on 28 April.

Covering an area of 70 square kilometres in the south of Dubai, the airport will have five parallel runways and five terminal buildings with a total of 400 aircraft gates. It will be five times the size of the existing Dubai International airport, and it will have the world’s largest passenger handling capacity of 260 million passengers a year. For cargo, it will have the capacity to handle 12 million tonnes a year.

The government of Dubai said that the plan is for all operations from Dubai International airport to be transferred to Al Maktoum International airport within 10 years.

The government statement added that the project will create housing demand for 1 million people around the airport.

Project history

The expansion of Al Maktoum International airport is a long-standing project. Also known as Dubai World Central (DWC), it was officially launched in 2014, with a different design to the one approved in April 2024. Back then it involved building the biggest airport in the world by 2050, with the capacity to handle 255 million passengers a year.

An initial phase, which was due to be completed in 2030, involved taking airport’s capacity to 130 million passengers a year. Altogether, the development will cover an area of 56 square kilometres.

Progress on the project slipped as the region grappled with the impact of lower oil prices and Dubai focused on developing the Expo 2020 site. Tendering for work on the project then stalled with the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic in early 2020.

Al-Maktoum airport is needed because Dubai International can not be expanded significantly. One of the key challenges is runway capacity. It only has two runways, and with built-up urban areas on either side of the airport, there is no available land to build new runways on.

Another driver for the project is regional competition. Dubai International is the region’s largest airport, and Emirates is the region’s largest airline. Plans in Saudi Arabia now challenge that position.

At the end of 2022, the kingdom launched the masterplan for King Salman International airport in Riyadh, which aims to accommodate up to 120 million passengers by 2030 and 185 million by 2050. Contractors in Saudi Arabia are forming joint ventures to bid for construction work on that project.