09:00
First pour
Roasters open from seven and nine. Subko, Nightjar and Pekoe have the lane smelling of coffee before the galleries unlock.
Al Quoz 1 · Dubai · since 2007
Behind every shutter, a world.
Ninety-seven creative businesses, seventeen galleries and one long lane of roller doors in Al Quoz. Almost two million people a year come to see what’s behind them.97 creative businesses, 17 galleries and one long lane of roller doors in Al Quoz.
The Avenue
Dubai --:--
Al Quoz
Sunset
19 shows on the walls
Alserkal Avenue
Hard to define. Easy to lose a day in.
Cutting-edge art lives next to one-of-a-kind businesses here. The Avenue shape-shifts as artists’ commissions pop up, and everything from arts festivals to outdoor fitness keeps it bristling all year.
What began in 2007 as the transformation of a former industrial yard is now Dubai’s cultural district: a launchpad for homegrown ventures, a home for the region’s leading galleries, and a place where the city comes to look at things.
“I wanted to make a meaningful contribution to arts and culture in the UAE and in the region.”Abdelmonem Bin Eisa Alserkal · Founder
05:52 · DAWN0visitors a year, give or take a festival
09:00 · MORNING0creative businesses on the directory today
12:30 · NOON0leading galleries anchoring the regional scene
16:40 · GOLDEN HOUR0square feet of former industry, re-used
18:01 · SUNSET0public programmes delivered by Alserkal
18:40 · BLUE HOUR0institutions worked with worldwide
21:30 · NIGHT0entrances, and no cars inside the Avenue
SINCE 20070founded by Abdelmonem Bin Eisa Alserkal
Three doors
One family name. Three ways in.
A cultural district, a not-for-profit foundation and a strategy practice. Hover a door to raise it.
Cultural district
The Avenue
Galleries, makers, kitchens and stages behind the same roller doors. Open every day, ten till seven.
Walk it in 3D → Not-for-profitArts Foundation
Residencies, research grants and commissions, and a free Common Room for anyone doing serious thinking.
Meet the residents → Cultural consultancyAdvisory
Cultural strategy and place-making for public and private partners across the region.
How we plan culture →A day on the Avenue
Nine in the morning to nearly midnight.
11:00
Doors up
Most galleries open at ten or eleven, free to walk into. The season turns over every September; this one opened on 23 September.
16:30
The long lane
Late sun, olive trees in pots, shutters half up. The hour to wander without a plan, or with one from the composer below.
19:30
The yard fills
Food trucks on the Back Lane, long tables, music. This month it becomes What the Food, 31 October to 1 November.
21:30
Last show
Cinema Akil’s box office opens at six on weekdays and three at weekends. The arthouse runs until midnight.
The 3D Avenue needs WebGL. The directory and planner below work everywhere.
01 / The district schematic, not to scale
Half a million square feet of roller doors.
Every lit door is a business open right now on Dubai time.
Drag to turn · Tap a door
Scroll for the next chapter
Scroll for the next chapter
--:--Live, Dubai time
0 doors open0 shut
What’s on · dates live
On the walls this season.
Nineteen exhibitions and activations, written up the way a gallery would: as wall labels. Bring your own light.
Tap “find it” to fly to the warehouse on the 3D map. Programme from alserkal.online, 5 October 2026.
Plan a visit
Compose a Saturday.
Say when you’ll arrive and what you’re in the mood for. It routes you between real doors using each business’s own opening hours, then hands you a ticket.
Day
Arriving 11:00
Staying
In the mood for
Alserkal Arts Foundation
Making room for slower thinking.
Commissions, research grants, residencies and alternative learning, in sun-drenched studios designed by the UAE collective a hypothetical office. Peer-led, participatory, and open to methods that challenge institutional convention.
01
Residency & research
Two research-led cycles a year, by nomination, open to writers, researchers and artists in any discipline. Residents host public programmes while they’re here.
02
Programmes
Exhibitions, special commissions and projects that are socially engaged, collaborative, participatory and often ephemeral.
03
Common Room · WH 51
A free space for research, writing and group study. A desk, a pantry, a Mac with JSTOR’s twelve million articles.
Mon–Thu 10:00–20:00 · Sat 10:00–18:00
Closed Friday and Sunday ·
Research threads
Fifteen residents.
Nine threads between them.
Salt, sleep paralysis, drum machines, Deira’s markets, growing old in Dubai. Tap a name or a thread to follow it.
Drawn from the Foundation’s published residency notes.
Alserkal Advisory · since 2021
Culture is infrastructure. Plan it like it.
A multidisciplinary consultancy of alternative thinkers, researchers and specialists, headquartered in Dubai, building cultural strategies and programmes with public and private partners across MENA.
01Cultural strategy
What a city, a developer or an institution should mean culturally, written down so it can be funded, staffed and measured.
02Districts & place-making
Nearly two decades of running a creative district in Al Quoz, turned into method: tenant mix, public realm, a programming calendar and the economics of a creative cluster.
03Programmes & commissions
Festivals, public art and learning programmes designed with the network that has delivered more than five thousand of them.
04Research & audiences
Who comes, who doesn’t, and why, before anything is built.
5,000+public programmes
500+institutions
2Mvisitors a year
The year at the Avenue
Some weeks are louder than others.
Quoz Arts Fest
Every January the Avenue’s open-air festival takes over the lanes: art, music, food and a lot of people.
Alserkal Art Week
Twice a year, timed to the city’s key art and design moments, with late openings across the galleries.
Winter weekends
Through the cooler months the yard runs weekend activations, community events and outdoor programmes.
Alserkal Spaces
A stage for the unexpected.
Performances, dinners, fashion presentations, launches, symposiums and film premieres, in some of Dubai’s most alternative event spaces, from 320 to 1,400 square metres.
- Live performance
- Dinners
- Fashion
- Launches
- Symposiums
- Film premieres
Will it fit?
Guests180
Plan your visit
Open every day. Ten till seven.
Individual galleries and kitchens keep their own hours; the 3D map and the planner know them.
- Metro
- M1 to Onpassive (formerly Al Safa). Then RTA bus 110 from Al Safa Bus Terminus, every 12 minutes, or a five-minute taxi, or a thirty-minute walk.
- Taxi
- Careem code ALSERKALAVENUE takes 15% off rides between the metro and the Avenue.
- Car
- Sheikh Zayed Road, Al Manara exit (43). Al Manara Street to the lights facing Home Centre, right onto First Al Khail Street, right onto 17th Street, left onto 6A Street for the big car park.
- Parking
- 500+ RTA spaces around the Avenue, none inside. Pay with code
364C
Schematic · three entrances: 17th Street, 6A Street, First Al Khail Street