The most quoted number in Dubai real estate this summer was a fall: off-plan launches dropped by roughly 90% between the first and second quarters of 2026, the sharpest contraction in the current cycle. For a market where off-plan still accounts for about 73–74% of all transactions, a launch freeze of that size is not a footnote — it is the story. What is worth paying attention to now is that the freeze is thawing. Through late July and into August, the largest developers have started putting new phases back on the market, and the shape of what they are launching tells you as much as the fact that they are launching at all. If you want to look at live stock while you read, you can browse off-plan Dubai projects by community, developer and payment plan.
Why the Q2 freeze happened — and why it was always temporary
The pause was a supply-side decision, not a demand collapse. Dubai closed the first half of 2026 with 86,005 property sales worth AED 286.43 billion — down about 12% on H1 2025's AED 326.6 billion, but still the second-strongest first half on record. At the same time, more than 80,000 units are due to hand over across 2026, with roughly 27,000 completing in the second quarter alone, the highest quarterly figure in five years. Faced with that much finished stock arriving at once, developers did the rational thing and slowed new launches rather than pile inventory onto inventory. Our buyer's-market breakdown covers what that shift handed to buyers in the interim — the return to 80:20 mortgage financing, DLD-fee waivers and longer payment plans.
A freeze built on that logic was never going to last, because the demand underneath it did not go anywhere. Prices per square foot rose 6.5% through the same quarter that volumes fell — a market thins at the speculative margin while end-user and long-horizon demand holds. Once the first wave of completions clears, the incentive flips back toward launching, and that is the turn now underway.
The marquee reopening: DAMAC Islands 2, Phase 2
The clearest signal is DAMAC's. Its DAMAC Islands 2 — the sequel phase to the Islands masterplan in Dubailand, a 20-million-square-foot community organised into eight island-themed clusters — has moved into an active, cluster-by-cluster release. Through the first half of August the individual clusters started appearing as their own releases: Mauritius, Bermuda, Barbados, Tahiti, Maui, Cuba, Bahamas and Antigua, each with its own layouts and pricing.
DAMAC paired the rollout with a time-boxed incentive aimed squarely at partners and end-users: a limited August release of 3-bedroom townhouses from AED 3.55 million on a 16% down payment, marketed as "Pay Like 4, Live in Five." Townhouses across the wider phase start from around AED 2.75 million, with handover positioned for 2029. The structure is the tell. Rather than cut headline prices — which would reprice every unsold unit in the community — DAMAC is competing on entry cost and payment terms, exactly the playbook the majors leaned on through the Q2 slowdown. It sits alongside DAMAC's other active master communities such as Portofino at DAMAC Lagoons and Violet at DAMAC Hills 2. By 2025 sales value DAMAC was Dubai's second-largest developer at roughly AED 35.9 billion, behind only Emaar.
Emaar, Meraas and Sobha are re-engaging too
DAMAC is the loudest, but not alone. Emaar — Dubai's blue-chip developer, which led all builders in 2025 with about AED 65.8 billion in sales and whose launches routinely clear in hours — has fresh stock moving at Dubai Creek Harbour, including Valia Tower, one-bedroom-and-up apartments from around AED 1.92 million with handover toward 2030. Creek Harbour is precisely the kind of established, amenity-anchored district where launch-phase pricing tends to hold, because the demand is end-user rather than speculative.
Meraas has re-entered with Cherrywood villas and townhouses, a lower-density community play from the developer that commanded the highest average sale price of any builder in Dubai in Q1 2026 — its thesis is lifestyle scarcity rather than yield, and it prices accordingly. Sobha, meanwhile, continues to release within its towers such as Sobha One; Sobha is the delivery-reliability leader among the majors, with an estimated 85–90% on-time completion rate across 2020–2024 — the single most important variable when you are buying something that does not yet exist. You can see the full set of active builders on our developers page.
What a launch-led second half means if you are buying now
A reopening pipeline changes the calculus in three concrete ways.
Choice is returning, but selectively. The Q2 freeze meant a buyer waiting for the perfect new release was largely waiting in vain. That is easing — but the launches coming back are concentrated in the master communities the majors are most confident in, not spread evenly across the city. If your shortlist is a specific community, the odds it sees a fresh phase in the next quarter are materially better than they were in the spring.
Incentives, not discounts, are where the value sits. The DAMAC structure is the template for the whole market right now: developers are moving on down payment size, DLD-fee treatment and payment-plan length far more readily than on headline price. A DLD-fee waiver is worth 4% of the price in cash you do not have to find at registration — on an AED 3.5 million unit, roughly AED 140,000 — and unlike a price cut, it lands immediately rather than at resale. Our guide to DLD fees and transaction costs sets out what else stacks on top.
The handover wave is still the risk to underwrite against. New launches are exciting, but they arrive into the same market that is absorbing 80,000-plus completions this year. If you are buying to let, model your rent against the pool that will exist at handover in 2029–2030, not today's. If you might sell before completion, remember you would be exiting into heavy supply. And whatever you buy, check the developer's escrow position first — softer, supply-heavy markets are exactly when balance sheets get tested, and the protection is structural. Our explainer on escrow accounts and deposit protection covers what is and is not ring-fenced.
The bottom line
Read the reopening for what it is: the majors judging that the first completion wave has cleared enough room to sell again, and competing on terms rather than price to do it. That is a healthier signal than a launch spree at any cost would be — it means new stock is coming to market with the discipline the Q2 pause imposed still intact. For a buyer, the window that matters is the one where launches are back but the incentives built during the slowdown have not yet been withdrawn. Right now, both are true at once. Browse the latest off-plan launches by developer and payment plan, and weigh the terms as carefully as the address.
