Dubai rules for tourists: the dress code, alcohol and what to avoid

Dress code, by setting

On the beach and at a pool, ordinary swimwear is fine. Walking away from the beach, cover up, swimwear in a shop, a mall or a taxi is not acceptable. In malls and public places, shoulders and knees covered is the safe standard, and it is enforced more by signage and social pressure than by anything else.

Mosques require more: covered arms and legs for everyone and a headscarf for women. The mosques that admit visitors provide what you need at the door.

Alcohol, and where it is legal

Alcohol is served in licensed venues, which in practice means hotels and a limited number of licensed clubs and restaurants. Drinking there is entirely normal. Drinking in public, or being drunk in public, is not, and the consequences are more serious than a caution.

Never drive after any alcohol at all, the limit is effectively zero and the penalties are severe. Take a taxi, which is cheap enough that there is no argument for the alternative.

Photography, public behaviour and medication

Do not photograph people without asking, and particularly not women or families. Government buildings, military sites, ports and airports are off limits. This is the rule visitors break most often and most casually.

Public displays of affection beyond hand-holding are best avoided, and swearing or rude gestures (including in traffic) are treated as offences, not as bad manners. Medication is the one to check in advance: several drugs sold freely elsewhere, including some codeine-based painkillers and some sleep and anxiety medications, are controlled here and need documentation. Check the current list before flying, not at the airport.

Money, debt and the rules that carry real consequences

A handful of offences carry consequences out of proportion to what visitors expect, and they are worth knowing precisely. Any alcohol before driving is treated as drink-driving, the limit is effectively zero, and the penalties include custody. A bounced cheque or unpaid debt is a criminal rather than civil matter, which matters mostly to residents but has caught visitors who signed for something.

Drugs carry severe penalties, and the threshold is trace quantities. Some prescription medicines fall under the same regime, which is why the medication check before flying is the one item on this page that can go wrong before you arrive.

Photography of people without consent, and of government, military, port and airport facilities, is the rule most casually broken. Filming an argument or an accident and posting it is itself an offence under the country's privacy and cybercrime laws.

Where the rules are actually published

Everything on this page is a summary of law that exists in full elsewhere, and it changes. The federal government publishes its own plain-language guide for residents and visitors on the official UAE portal, which is the right place to check anything that matters to you before you travel.

For anything enforced at the emirate level, municipal rules, beach and park regulations, licensing: Dubai Municipality is the authority. Where this page and an official source disagree, the official source is right.

Ramadan, and what changes

If your visit falls during Ramadan, a few things change and none of them prevent a good trip. Eating, drinking and smoking in public during daylight is not done, and that applies to visitors as well as residents. Most restaurants close during the day, hotel restaurants continue to serve guests, and everything reopens after sunset.

The evenings are the compensation. The city stays up late, the food is better than at any other time of year, and iftar is genuinely worth arranging once. Live music and loud entertainment are wound down, which is worth knowing if the trip was built around them.

The dates move each year with the lunar calendar, so check them against your own before assuming a trip does or does not overlap.