16 September 2026
GISEC Global 2026 opened on Wednesday 16 September 2026 at the Dubai Exhibition Centre in Expo City Dubai and runs to 18 September. The 15th edition brings together more than 25,000 cybersecurity professionals, over 750 exhibiting brands and more than 350 speakers, with participants from 182 countries, and the show has expanded 20 per cent year on year. Organisers describe it as the largest cybersecurity event in the Middle East and Africa and the third largest in the world. The theme is Cyber First: The New Digital Order. GISEC Global 2026 is hosted by the UAE Cyber Security Council, with the Dubai Electronic Security Center (DESC) as Official Government Cybersecurity Partner, and is supported by the Ministry of Interior and Dubai Police.
The event in numbers
| Indicator | Reported figure |
|---|---|
| Edition | 15th |
| Dates | 16 to 18 September 2026 |
| Venue | Dubai Exhibition Centre, Expo City Dubai, halls 1 to 8 |
| Opening hours | 10:00 to 17:00 |
| Cybersecurity professionals expected | More than 25,000 |
| Exhibiting brands | More than 750 |
| Speakers | More than 350 |
| Countries represented | 182 |
| Hours of content | More than 300 |
| Year on year growth | 20 per cent |
| Global ranking claimed by organisers | Third largest cybersecurity event worldwide |
A new venue and a new summit
Two things are different about the 2026 edition. The first is the address: GISEC Global has moved to the Dubai Exhibition Centre at Expo City Dubai, taking halls 1 to 8 for three days. The second is a new top layer in the programme. The Cyber First summit gathers ministers, central bank governors, national cybersecurity authorities, chief executives and global institutions to work through the connection between cybersecurity, economic stability and national security. Organisers frame it around the idea of cyber first economies, where secure digital infrastructure and technological sovereignty are treated as conditions for economic continuity rather than as an IT budget line.
The event is organised by inD, a joint venture between Dubai World Trade Centre and Informa. Growth of 20 per cent in a single year is the practical measure of how the regional market is moving, and organisers tie it to rising international demand for cybersecurity innovation, collaboration and investment.
Who is on stage
The speaker list mixes national cyber authorities with corporate security chiefs. His Excellency Dr Mohamed Al Kuwaiti, Head of the UAE Cyber Security Council, and Amer Sharaf, Chief Executive of the Cyber Security Systems and Services Sector at DESC, represent the hosting side. From the corporate side, Subra Kumaraswamy, Senior Vice President and Chief Information Security Officer at Visa, and Alex Attumalil, Global Chief Information Security Officer at Under Armour, speak alongside vendor founders such as Roeland Delrue, Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer of Aikido Security.
One keynote sits outside the usual security programme. Michael Kelly, the four time Emmy nominated actor known for House of Cards, takes the stage to talk about deepfakes, digital identity and AI powered impersonation. That choice is not decoration: identity is the part of the security stack where the public and the enterprise now meet.
The threat picture behind the agenda
The numbers cited by organisers explain why the programme is built the way it is. Around 60 per cent of ransomware campaigns are now reported to be fully AI assisted, and polymorphic malware that rewrites its own code keeps traditional signature based defence a step behind. On identity, the Entrust 2026 Identity Fraud Report, built on more than one billion identity verification events across 195 countries, found that deepfakes accounted for one in five biometric fraud attempts.
The World Economic Forum Global Cybersecurity Outlook 2026, quoted in the event announcement, adds the board level view: 94 per cent of organisations expect artificial intelligence to be the biggest driver of change in cybersecurity, and 87 per cent name AI related vulnerabilities as the fastest growing cyber risk. Those two figures are the reason a trade show now carries a ministerial summit on top of it.
Standards, drills and the quantum question
Alongside the exhibition floor, GISEC Global 2026 hosts working sessions that are closer to standards work than to a conference agenda:
- ITU-T Study Group 17 regional groups. On 16 September the regional groups for Africa (SG17RG-AFR) and the Arab Region (SG17RG-ARB) meet jointly. SG17 is the International Telecommunication Union expert group that writes international recommendations on cybersecurity, information security, identity management and trust technologies. The meeting is open to member states, ITU-T sector members, academia and SG17 associates from both regions, chaired by Vincent Mwesigwa of the Uganda Communications Commission and Dr Mohamed Al Kuwaiti.
- Global Quantum Drill. Run across the three days with the ITU and the Cryptography Research Center of the Technology Innovation Institute, the drill puts participating organisations through scenarios that test readiness for the moment when current public key cryptography stops being safe. Sessions are led by Arnaud Taddei, Chair of ITU-T Study Group 17, and by Dr Mukul Kulkarni and Dr Jesus Dominguez of the Cryptography Research Center, with the closing and prize ceremony on 18 September.
- Dubai Cyber Challenge. Held under the patronage of His Highness Sheikh Mansoor bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Chairman of the Dubai Ports and Borders Security Council, with DESC supporting the School of Cyber Defense.
- GISEC CISO Circle. More than 250 security leaders in closed door briefings, outside the public agenda.
- Talent tracks. Women in Cyber, North Star Startups and Mentorship Labs run in parallel, together with SANS certified trainings and live cyber drills.
What this means for business in the UAE
Nothing at GISEC changes a rule. No licence fee, tax rate, filing obligation or visa requirement was amended this week, and no deadline was created for any company operating here. What the week changes is access and calendar. For three days the people who set national cyber policy in this region, the enterprise buyers who sign security contracts and the vendors who supply them are in the same eight halls, which compresses a year of business development into 16 September to 18 September.
The practical signal for companies based in the UAE is in the quantum track rather than in the headline numbers. When the ITU and a state research institute run a joint readiness drill on post quantum cryptography, migration planning has moved from research papers into the operational queue. Any business here that holds long lived sensitive data, from banks to healthcare to logistics, has a reason to ask its vendors what their post quantum roadmap looks like, and the honest answer for most is that the work has not started.
For a company being set up in the UAE, security is a licensing and banking question before it is a technical one. Cybersecurity, managed services and IT consultancy activities are licensed either on the mainland or through a free zone, and the route determines who your clients can be: government entities and regulated sectors have their own supplier requirements. Our guide to company formation in the UAE sets out how the two routes differ, what documents each requires and where the timelines diverge.
Practical notes if you are going
- The exhibition runs 16 to 18 September 2026, 10:00 to 17:00, at the Dubai Exhibition Centre in Expo City Dubai, halls 1 to 8.
- A free visitor pass covers the exhibition floor; the conference tracks and certified trainings require a paid all access pass, so check which badge you need before you travel.
- The CISO Circle is closed door and the SG17 regional group meeting has its own participation rules, so neither is covered by a general visitor badge.
- Expo City is at the far end of the Dubai network from the city centre; allow for travel time from Downtown and Business Bay at opening and closing hours.
- If you plan to sign anything on site, have the corporate documents of your UAE entity ready in advance, including trade licence and authorised signatory papers.
- Vendor conversations are more useful with a written scope: bring the systems, data types and compliance obligations you actually need covered.
How Atlant Capital can help
We do not sell security software and we do not run penetration tests. What we do is the corporate layer underneath a technology business in the UAE: choosing between a mainland licence and a free zone licence for IT, cybersecurity and consultancy activities, matching activity codes to what the company actually sells, registering the entity, and obtaining establishment cards and investor or employee visas for the technical team. See our company setup service for scope and process.
Once the licence exists, the next bottleneck is usually payments. A security vendor invoicing regional enterprises and government entities needs an account that can receive those payments without the compliance friction that stops many new technology companies in their first quarter. We handle corporate bank account opening end to end, including the documentation banks ask for from newly licensed technology firms.
Conclusion
The 15th GISEC Global is the largest edition in its history: more than 25,000 professionals, over 750 exhibiting brands, more than 350 speakers, 182 countries and 20 per cent growth in a single year, at a new venue in Expo City from 16 to 18 September 2026. The substantive shift is not the headcount but the layer added above it. A commercial exhibition now carries a ministerial summit, an ITU standards meeting and a post quantum readiness drill in the same building, which is what it looks like when cybersecurity stops being an IT procurement topic and becomes an economic policy one.
Source: TradeArabia.
FAQ
When and where is GISEC Global 2026 held?
GISEC Global 2026 runs from 16 to 18 September 2026 at the Dubai Exhibition Centre in Expo City Dubai, halls 1 to 8, from 10:00 to 17:00 each day. This is the 15th edition of the event, which moved to this venue for 2026. It is hosted by the UAE Cyber Security Council, with the Dubai Electronic Security Center as Official Government Cybersecurity Partner, and supported by the Ministry of Interior and Dubai Police.
How big is GISEC Global 2026?
Organisers expect more than 25,000 cybersecurity professionals, over 750 exhibiting brands and more than 350 speakers, with participants from 182 countries and more than 300 hours of content. The show has expanded 20 per cent year on year. It is described as the largest cybersecurity event in the Middle East and Africa and the third largest in the world.
What is new at GISEC Global 2026 compared with previous editions?
Three things: the move to the Dubai Exhibition Centre at Expo City Dubai, the new Cyber First summit that brings ministers, central bank governors and national cyber authorities into the programme, and a Global Quantum Drill run with the International Telecommunication Union and the Cryptography Research Center of the Technology Innovation Institute. The ITU-T Study Group 17 regional groups for Africa and the Arab Region also meet jointly at the venue on 16 September.
Does GISEC Global 2026 change any rules for companies in the UAE?
No. GISEC is an industry event, and no licence fee, tax rate, filing obligation or visa requirement was amended because of it. Cybersecurity, IT and consultancy businesses are still licensed either through mainland authorities or through a free zone, and the choice depends on the client base, whether the company needs to supply government entities, office requirements and visa quotas.
