Dubai Racing Club

Nad Al Sheba, 1992

The club was formed in 1992 and spent its first eighteen years at Nad Al Sheba, the old dirt track on the edge of the city. The event that made its name arrived four years later: the Dubai World Cup, created in 1996 by Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum and won at the first attempt by Cigar, the American horse who went on to the United States Hall of Fame. The race was built as a deliberate lure for stables that had no other reason to send horses to the Gulf, and it worked by paying more than anything else on the calendar.

In 2010 the whole operation moved to Meydan, a grandstand with room for more than 60,000 and a 285-room hotel built into the structure. The World Cup itself was switched to a Tapeta synthetic surface for the Meydan opening, then reverted to dirt in 2015 after the synthetic track proved costly to maintain and unpopular with the American yards the race depends on. It has been run over 2,000 metres on dirt ever since, and is still the richest single race in the world at $12 million.

The season rebuilt as a carnival

The structural change that defines the club's current programme came in May 2023, when it announced a prize-money rise of AED 11 million — 27 per cent on the previous season — and rebranded the entire winter as the Dubai Racing Carnival rather than a short festival bolted on to ordinary fixtures. Major General Dr Mohammed Essa Al Adhab, the club's executive director, put it plainly at the time: the carnival had become the whole season.

The shape set then is the shape now. Fourteen meetings ran outside World Cup day, each a Friday evening of seven to nine races run back to back, with Super Saturday and the World Cup itself the two Saturday exceptions. Non-stakes races were floored at AED 165,000 and Group 1s put above AED 1 million. Three feature nights carried the weight of the extra money: a December card at AED 4.7 million, a January card at AED 10 million and Super Saturday in March at another AED 10 million. World Cup night stayed where it had been, at $30.5 million, or AED 112 million.

Alongside the money came the paperwork that makes shipping viable. A July 2023 release set out 90-day temporary imports for British-trained horses with flexible movement in and out, and an expanded import certificate covering travel within the Middle East — the unglamorous half of attracting foreign runners for a single race.

The thirtieth World Cup

The most recent World Cup night, on Saturday 28 March 2026, was the thirtieth running and carried $30.5 million across nine races. The feature went to Magnitude, trained by Steve Asmussen for Winchell Thoroughbreds and ridden by Jose Ortiz, who made the running and held off the heavily backed Japanese favourite Forever Young through the final furlong, with Meydann third. Ortiz, in his third attempt at the race, said afterwards that it was a dream come true and that he was happy for Asmussen, who had stayed at home.

The rest of the card followed the pattern the club has spent a decade engineering: European and Japanese stables taking the turf races. Calandagan won the $6 million Sheema Classic by three-quarters of a length under Mickael Barzalona for Francis-Henri Graffard, who admitted to relief at getting a reputation horse's season started. Ombudsman took the $5 million Dubai Turf by two lengths for John and Thady Gosden under William Buick, his trainers noting a five-year-old now fully furnished.

General admission for the night was Dh40, with the Apron Views area at Dh450; the dress code was smart or decent casual with flip-flops refused. Racing finished into a concert headlined by Jason Derulo, and the Style Stakes fashion competition ran through the afternoon.

Where the club stands now

The 2026-27 carnival opens on Friday 6 November 2026 and runs to 12 March 2027, with the 31st Dubai World Cup on Saturday 27 March 2027 — sixteen carnival meetings and seventeen race nights in all. The World Cup card again holds AED 112 million ($30.5 million), with AED 44 million ($12 million) on the feature.

In October 2026 the club replaced its ticketing provider Vivaticket with Ticketmaster for the whole season, carnival and World Cup together, with general admission to carnival meetings starting at AED 10. Chief executive Ali Al Ali framed it as making entry easier for overseas visitors as much as for residents, and the deal sits alongside Ticketmaster's recent Middle East sports work for the 2027 FIBA World Cup in Qatar and Gulf Cup 27.

Racing policy is run by Erwan Charpy, head of racing operations and international relations, a French former trainer who arrived in Dubai in autumn 1994, won 11 Group 1s, was champion trainer in 2001 and moved into the executive side in 2022. His account of last season puts 47 international trainers from ten jurisdictions and more than 130 overseas-trained horses at the carnival, the highest foreign participation it has recorded. For 2026-27 the club has tied the UAE Derby into the Kentucky Derby qualifying route through an alliance with Churchill Downs, agreed collaborations with York Racecourse and Fasig-Tipton, and widened its Purebred Arabian programme. Charpy's own summary of the commercial logic is that racing remains the foundation but racegoers now expect more than watching horses compete.

A Friday at Meydan

Most of what the club has added lately is food and enclosure, not racing. A release on 28 September 2026 set out Alba Street x Himitsu as a new Trackside venue pairing Japanese street food with cocktails and a happy hour running to midnight, and Silks on the third floor of The Meydan Hotel, where a reserved table buys a five-hour buffet with wine and a children's play area attached. The MAINE returns for the three biggest nights only — Festive Friday on 18 December, Fashion Friday on 22 January and Emirates Super Saturday on 27 February. The Paddock Garden takes the overflow with a row of small operators: Flip Smash Burger, Chapos Tacos, Pull Me Pizzeria, Berry Dip, The Ship, N&Co, alongside Little Fox by Rowley's and Ration'd. Sophie Ryan, the club's head of corporate communications, describes food and beverage as central to the season's race-day plan.

The seasonal calendar carries two fixtures that do not look like racing anywhere else. During Ramadan the club runs Iftar At The Races — three such nights last season, on 20 February, 6 March and 13 March 2026 — where the card is timed around breaking the fast. And on the Thursday before the World Cup it opens the track at dawn for The Morning Gallop, from 6am to 9am, which puts the public next to trackwork rather than racing.