Short answer: A brand identity in Dubai costs AED 2,000 to 18,000 from a freelancer, AED 15,000 to 150,000 from a small studio and AED 50,000 to 350,000 from a full agency, before 5% VAT. Under UAE copyright law a work created for your benefit is yours unless you agreed otherwise in writing, but the designer keeps every economic right not explicitly assigned, and keeps moral rights for ever. Registering the mark costs AED 6,500 in government fees per class.
This guide is for UAE founders, SME owners and marketing managers holding identity quotes that refuse to agree. As of 12 October 2026, almost every published answer here is an agency sales page: a price range, then silence on the two questions that decide whether the money was well spent, what transfers to you on delivery day and what it costs to protect. Every government fee below was read on the Ministry of Economy and Tourism's own pages on 12 October 2026.
What does a brand identity include, and what is just a logo?
A logo is one drawing. An identity is a system of rules that lets your team produce work that looks like you without asking a designer first. Hikmah AI's 2026 Dubai branding cost guide publishes a four layer checklist worth holding a quote against.
- Marks and assets. Logo in SVG, PNG, EPS and PDF, variants for dark, light, monochrome and favicon, an Arabic logo variant, colour values in HEX, RGB, CMYK and Pantone, type with font licences.
- Guidelines. Clear space, minimum size, incorrect usage, colour and type rules, tone of voice. GLDS, a French design studio in Dubai, publishes 20 to 40 pages for a standard identity, 60 to 100 or more for a premium system.
- Applications. Business cards, letterhead, email signature, social templates, a deck template.
- Ownership. Full copyright transfer of the design files, source files handed over, trademark guidance.
The fourth layer is the one quotes leave vague, and the only one you cannot buy back later at a known price. It is also the one this guide is mostly about.
What does a brand identity cost in Dubai in 2026, by scope?
| Who you buy from | What the fee usually covers | Logo only (AED) | Identity system (AED) | Full programme (AED) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Freelancer | One to three concepts, two revisions, files on request | 2,000 to 8,000 | 8,000 to 18,000 | Not offered |
| Small studio, 5 to 20 people | Three to five concepts, a guidelines document, some strategy | 8,000 to 20,000 | 15,000 to 45,000 | 60,000 to 150,000 |
| Full agency, 20 people or more | Research, positioning, identity, multi market rollout | 20,000 to 60,000 | 50,000 to 150,000 | 150,000 to 350,000 |
| An in house designer | A salary every month, whether or not identity work is running | Salary, not a project fee | About 87,000 a year | Software and fonts on top |
The supplier rows are from Hikmah AI's guide of 31 March 2026. GLDS's April 2026 guide tiers the same market by scope rather than supplier: AED 10,000 to 20,000 basic, AED 20,000 to 50,000 for a standard identity with strategy and guidelines, AED 50,000 to 120,000 premium, AED 120,000 upwards for an enterprise overhaul. The in house figure is Payscale's UAE average base salary for a senior graphic designer, AED 86,717 a year, from 56 profiles on 1 December 2025, so read it as an order of magnitude only. Fees from a VAT registered UAE supplier carry 5% VAT on top. A disclosure, once: 4AI sells identity design, and our published starting point for graphic design and brand identity is AED 4,500, indicative and quoted per project: one data point, not the benchmark.
Why do two quotes for the same brief differ by a factor of ten?
Because they are not quoting the same amount of work. Three things are usually missing from the cheaper one.
Strategy is priced separately. GLDS prices strategy alone, positioning and messaging with no visual design, at AED 8,000 to 30,000, the identity at AED 12,000 to 80,000, and guidelines standalone at AED 5,000 to 15,000. A quote covering only the middle item is a third of the job.
Arabic is treated as an add on. GLDS puts the uplift for genuine Arabic and English work at 15 to 25%, covering Arabic type selection, right to left adaptation, bilingual lockups and dual language templates, and warns this is where Dubai quotes surprise clients after signing. The cost is real because the type is a licensed product bought separately: TPTQ Arabic sells its families by the style and by the package, and its licensing charges again for desktop use, which is priced per user, for self hosted web use, which is priced on your monthly page views, and for a server licence, which is priced on how many production servers you run, with no figure published for any of the three. A designer who sets your Arabic lockup in a font you have not licensed has handed you a bill, not a file. Drawing both scripts from the first sketch costs less than mirroring a finished English identity, for the reasons Arabic cannot be an afterthought.
Speed is a line item. GLDS adds 20 to 40% for a full identity delivered in under four weeks.
Three things do not explain the gap: the number of concepts shown, the seniority claimed in the deck, and unlimited revisions, which Hikmah says usually means the agency expects you not to use them.
If I pay for it, do I own it?
Probably, and you should still get it in writing, because the same law carries two defaults that point in opposite directions.
The default favours you. Under Federal Decree-Law No. 38 of 2021 on Copyrights and Neighbouring Rights, Article 28 states that unless otherwise agreed upon in writing, if the author creates the work for the benefit of another person, the copyright belongs to the person in whose favour it was made. A commissioned identity is made for your benefit, which is the reading that favours you. Article 27 is the rival default, and it favours the studio that directed the work. No UAE ruling we could find settles which governs a commissioned identity, so the written assignment is what decides it.
Article 9 then narrows it. A transfer or licence of economic rights is valid only in writing, and must specify the transferred right together with the object of the transfer, its duration and its place of use. It also says the author owns all economic rights not explicitly assigned. So the default protects you until someone argues about a specific use, when the only reliable answer is a written assignment naming the right, the object, the duration and the territory. Four provisions shape what to ask for:
- Moral rights are not for sale. Article 5 gives the author perpetual moral rights that may not prescribe or be assigned: deciding first publication, claiming paternity over the work, and prohibiting a modification that distorts it or harms his reputation.
- Getting the files is not getting the rights. Article 13: unless otherwise agreed, the author's disposal of the original copy does not entail assignment of any economic right in it. A Figma invitation is a delivery, not a transfer.
- A studio, not a person, usually holds it. Article 27: unless agreed to the contrary, the person at whose initiative and under whose guidance a collective work is created may solely exercise its moral and economic rights. So your assignment should come from the studio entity, which should hold assignments from its own freelancers.
- You cannot pre buy next year's work. Article 15 makes any disposition by an author of his future intellectual output null and void, with a narrow exception under the implementing regulation. Assign per project.
One limit matters before planning a long life for the asset. Article 20 protects economic rights for life plus 50 years, but ends protection for works of applied arts 25 years after first publication, and Article 2 lists works of applied and plastic arts among protected works. Whether a commercial logo counts as applied art here decides which term applies, and we found no UAE ruling settling it.
On artwork made with generative models the position is unsettled, and we found no UAE ruling or amendment on it. Two firms take the same view in print, and it is a view, not law. Hadef & Partners wrote on 24 April 2025 that current UAE law does not recognise AI as an author, that creation rests on a natural person, and that wholly AI created elements will not fall under copyright protection. Al Tamimi lawyers write in the UAE chapter of Chambers' AI and Intellectual Property 2026 guide, last updated 2 September 2026, that the Decree-Law is human centred, that works created solely by AI may not qualify, and that in AI assisted work copyright protects the human created parts only.
What does it cost to register the trademark, and do I need to?
Copyright protects the artwork. A trademark stops a competitor trading under a confusingly similar name. Your trade licence name is neither: the UAE government portal states that the local department of economic development registers the trade name while the Ministry of Economy and Tourism registers the trademark.
| Official fee line | Amount (AED) | When it falls due |
|---|---|---|
| Examination, regular | 750 | With the application |
| Examination, expedited within one business day | 2,250 | Instead of the regular examination fee |
| Publication in the official bulletin | 750 | Within 30 days of the acceptance decision |
| Registration of a trademark | 5,000 | After the 30 day objection period ends |
Every line is from the Ministry's Register Trademark service page, which sets late penalties of AED 100 a month capped at AED 1,000 a year on publication and AED 1,000 a month capped at AED 10,000 a year on registration, and lists AED 7,500 instead of AED 5,000 to register a quality mark. The Ministry's Trademark Registration page adds the three standard lines and prints the total as AED 6,500. Three things that total leaves out. Each class is charged separately: the Ministry announced on 21 October 2025 that fees are collected separately for each category, even within a single application, and classes come from the Nice Classification, 34 for goods and eleven for services. An agent's charge is extra and unpublished, and an owner outside the country must file through an agent with a notarised, legally translated power of attorney. Renewal falls due every ten years: the renewal service adds no fresh examination and no objection round, at AED 5,750 in the final year plus AED 750 publication, or AED 6,500 within six months after expiry.
Published advice is weakest here. Hikmah's guide puts a UAE application at AED 750 to 1,000 in government fees plus AED 1,500 to 4,000 in agent fees, which is AED 2,500 to 5,000 per class on its own arithmetic. Against the Ministry's pages, that AED 750 is the examination fee only and the AED 5,000 registration fee is missing, so the government portion alone is about seven times the quoted figure. Where a sales page and a ministry disagree on a ministry's fee, take the ministry. Two concessions are published: National Programme for SMEs members get a 50% reduction, People of Determination a full exemption.
Do you need it? If your name is the business, yes, and early. The examination checks the mark is not identical or similar to one already registered, which is the reason to search before you commission artwork.
What files and rights should the handover include?
Ask at the quoting stage, while you still have leverage.
- A written assignment that mirrors Article 9, naming the rights, the object, the duration and the place of use, signed by the studio entity that directed the work, not only by the designer who drew it.
- Source files, not just exports. A supplier who will not hand over editable originals is building in future lock in, as Hikmah's guide puts it.
- Font licences named and transferred, or bought in your name, with desktop, web and server scope stated, because foundries price those separately.
- A written note, asset by asset, of what a model generated.
- The right to modify, and to appoint someone else to. Moral rights still bar modification that distorts the work, so agree what counts as normal extension.
- Trademark search results before approval. A clash found after launch costs the whole identity.
An identity also has to survive contact with real pages and ad formats, so the website build and the launch writing belong in the same scope: see what a website costs in Dubai, and keep the writing inside the same system.
How long does it take, and what makes it slip?
GLDS publishes two to three weeks for a basic package, four to six weeks for a standard identity including strategy, eight to twelve weeks for a premium system with research and testing, three to six months for an enterprise overhaul. Hikmah publishes six to sixteen weeks for a small studio, three to nine months for a full service agency.
The registration clock runs separately and is slower than buyers expect. The Ministry's steps: pay the examination fee, get a decision within 20 days, pay publication within 30 days of acceptance, wait out a 30 day objection period counted from the bulletin, pay the registration fee, then collect the certificate within 30 days of the objection period ending. The two Ministry pages disagree on the first step: Register Trademark says 20 days from submission, Trademark Registration still says 90 days from filing. Even on the faster figure a clean filing runs roughly three months, so start it alongside the design work.
What makes identity projects slip, in our experience running them: no single named approver, so rounds multiply; Arabic brought in after the English is signed off, which reopens the logo; a trademark clash found at launch; applications left out of scope; font licensing discovered at the handover. The first is the expensive one. If you are still choosing a supplier, the checks that protect you on any retainer apply here too: see how to choose a marketing agency in Dubai, or bring the brief to a consultation.
Frequently asked questions
Can I get a logo in Dubai for AED 500?
You can buy a drawing. Hikmah's 2026 guide puts the cheapest platform work at AED 150 to 1,500 and calls it template modification rather than original brand design; its freelance tier for an original logo starts at AED 2,000. A template mark may also be unregistrable because it is not distinctive, or because something close to it is on the register already.
Do I own the logo my agency designed?
By default yes, and you should still hold a signed assignment. Article 28 of Federal Decree-Law No. 38 of 2021 gives copyright in a work created for another person's benefit to the person it was made for, unless otherwise agreed in writing, while Article 9 says the author keeps every economic right not explicitly assigned and Article 13 says handing over the original copy transfers nothing. This is general information, not legal advice.
How much does it cost to trademark a logo in the UAE?
AED 6,500 in government fees for one class: AED 750 examination, AED 750 publication and AED 5,000 registration, as listed on the Ministry of Economy and Tourism's service pages on 12 October 2026. An expedited one day examination costs AED 2,250 instead of AED 750. Fees are charged separately for each further class, agents charge on top, and renewal after ten years is AED 5,750 plus AED 750 publication.
Is my trade licence name already a trademark?
No. The UAE government portal states that the local department of economic development registers the trade name while the Ministry registers the trademark. A reserved trade name lets you trade under it; a registered mark is what you rely on when a competitor launches something that looks like you.
Who owns artwork a studio generated with AI?
Unsettled in the UAE, so ask rather than assume. We found no UAE ruling or amendment on it. Hadef & Partners wrote in April 2025 that current UAE law does not recognise AI as an author and that wholly AI created elements will not fall under copyright protection; Al Tamimi lawyers write in the September 2026 Chambers UAE chapter that works created solely by AI may not qualify. Both are published views, not law.