Art Dubai Galleries welcomes applications from established commercial galleries that have been operating for a minimum of two years and, for the first time, invites applications within both the Contemporary and Modern markets.

Applications will be reviewed by the Art Dubai Selection Committee Andrée Sfeir-Semler (Sfeir-Semler Gallery, Beirut/Hamburg), Priyanka Raja (Experimenter, Kolkata/Mumbai), and Sunny Rahbar (The Third Line, Dubai).

Bawwaba | بوابة (meaning gateway in Arabic) is dedicated to solo presentations of newly produced work, offering a platform for emerging to mid-career artists. It is conceived as a space for deep, focused engagement with individual practices, allowing artists to present new bodies of work that reflect the cultural, political, and aesthetic concerns shaping their local contexts.

Bawwaba 2026 will be curated by Amal Khalaf, curator and artist who serves as Director of Programmes at Cubitt, and who co-curated the Sharjah Biennial 16 and Ghost 2568 in Bangkok.

Bawwaba Extended is a new artist-focused section dedicated to interdisciplinary artistic practices. Spanning the entire fair environment, Bawwaba Extended will transform the site into a dynamic space for experimentation and innovation through installations, digital media, moving image, sound, and public interventions.

The section will be curated by Amal Khalaf and Alexie Glass-Kantor, Executive Director, Curatorial, Art Dubai Group. 

Zamaniyyat | زمانيات  (from zaman, the Arabic word for ‘time’), is a dedicated platform featuring solo and group presentations that revisit the work of artists who shaped and reshaped modernisms throughout the 20th century in the Middle East, Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

Zamaniyyat 2026 will be curated by Dr. Sarah A. Rifky, a curator, writer, and art historian who has held curatorial, founding, and leadership roles internationally, including with Townhouse, documenta 13, and Beirut, which she co-founded in Cairo (2012–2015).