A Dubai food brand told us last month they tripled their creator budget in 18 months. Their TV spend stayed flat. That single shift, repeated across hundreds of UAE brands, is roughly the story of 2026.
We pulled patterns from Inflink platform data, public agency disclosures, and conversations with around 80 brand-side marketers in Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Sharjah. Industry estimates put 2026 UAE creator spend in a defensible range of AED 950 million to AED 1.2 billion, depending on how you count gifting, barter and content licensing.
How the AED 1 billion splits
Roughly 38 percent goes to F&B, beauty and fashion combined. Real estate is the fastest-growing single sector, up an estimated 40 percent year on year off a smaller base. Hospitality and tourism together sit near 18 percent, automotive around 7 percent, the long tail covering electronics, finance, healthcare and education.
- F&B: estimated 16 percent of total spend
- Beauty: estimated 13 percent
- Fashion: estimated 9 percent
- Real estate: estimated 11 percent and climbing
- Hospitality: estimated 10 percent
- Tourism: estimated 8 percent
What is genuinely new versus reshuffled
Most growth is reallocated print, OOH and TV money. The genuinely new spend is in two places: real estate developers shifting from broker-only marketing to direct creator buys, and SME brands that historically did no paid marketing at all.
The micro-creator share
Spend on creators under 50K followers grew faster than the macro segment. Brands tell us they get better engagement per AED on micro accounts, and procurement is easier because individual deal sizes stay under the threshold that triggers extra approvals.
Expect 2027 to be slower in percentage growth and faster in professionalization. Rate cards are dying, structured deal flow is replacing them, and the brands paying late are the ones losing access to the better creators.