Wizz Air Returns to Dubai and Abu Dhabi From 25 October 2026: 12 Routes and 49 Weekly Flights to the UAE, Jeddah and Amman, 470,000 Winter Seats, Fares From AED 269

2026-09-09

Wizz Air is coming back to the UAE. In a statement on Tuesday 8 September 2026, confirmed in an Instagram post on Wednesday 9 September, the Hungarian ultra-low-cost carrier said it is progressively restoring 12 routes and 49 weekly flights between nine European cities and four Middle East destinations: Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Jeddah and Amman. The programme provides 470,000 seats over the 2026-2027 winter season. The UAE takes the largest share: eight routes and 32 weekly flights. Abu Dhabi gets six routes (Budapest, Katowice, Larnaca, Sofia, Cluj and Krakow, 20 weekly flights) and Dubai International gets two (Budapest five times a week and Bucharest daily, 12 weekly flights). The first UAE flights are on Sunday 25 October 2026, the first day of the IATA winter schedule, with the remaining Abu Dhabi routes following on Tuesday 27 October. Tickets are on sale on wizzair.com and in the app, with advertised one-way fares from AED 269 on Budapest to Dubai and from AED 107 (EUR 24.99) on Larnaca to Abu Dhabi. The return comes a year after Wizz Air closed its Abu Dhabi base on 1 September 2025 and about eight months after it suspended all flights to the Gulf and Jordan at the end of February 2026 because of the regional security situation. Below are the full route table, the timeline, what the airline has not disclosed and what the restored capacity means for companies in the UAE.

The announcement at a glance

All 12 routes: frequencies, start dates and fares

The list below follows the airline’s statement as reported by Cyprus Mail on 8 September 2026, with UAE-side fares from wizzair.com as quoted by What’s On and Abu Dhabi Review on 9 September. Fares are one-way, advertised starting prices, and change with date and demand: Khaleej Times noted that on the airline’s website the first available flights from both Dubai and Abu Dhabi are on 25 October from AED 289 per passenger, with prices rising towards the winter months.

The frequencies add up exactly to the 49 weekly flights in the announcement: 20 to Abu Dhabi, 12 to Dubai, 14 to Jeddah and 3 to Amman. Three of the 12 routes serve Saudi Arabia, one serves Jordan and eight serve the UAE, so the Emirates account for two thirds of the restored programme. Budapest, the airline’s home city, is the anchor on the European side with four routes: Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Jeddah and Amman. Poland gets eight weekly flights to Abu Dhabi from Katowice and Krakow, Romania gets nine from Bucharest and Cluj, and the Cyprus link is the cheapest advertised entry point at EUR 24.99.

What the UAE gets: 8 routes, 32 weekly flights and roughly 14,000 seats a week

The airline gives one seat figure for the whole programme, 470,000 for the winter season, and does not break it down by destination or aircraft type. The IATA winter schedule runs 22 weeks from 25 October 2026 to 27 March 2027. Spread across that period, 470,000 seats is roughly 21,400 seats a week, or about 218 seats per flight leg counted in both directions, which is consistent with the Airbus A321 family that makes up most of the Wizz Air fleet (the A321neo seats 239). On the same basis the UAE portion, 32 rotations a week, works out at around 14,000 seats a week in both directions, or close to 300,000 seats over the season. These are our calculations from the airline’s headline numbers, not published figures, and the actual count depends on which aircraft is assigned to each route and on how the September Jeddah and Amman restarts are counted.

For scale, the former Abu Dhabi base was much larger. According to the Abu Dhabi Media Office, Wizz Air Abu Dhabi operated more than 19,000 flights in 2024, offered more than 4.4 million seats, carried more than 3.5 million point-to-point passengers to more than 30 destinations and accounted for 25 percent of point-to-point traffic at Zayed International Airport, bringing more than 1.2 million international visitors to the emirate. That is about 365 flight movements a week. The restored UAE programme, 32 rotations or 64 movements a week, is under a fifth of that activity and is flown from European bases rather than from a fleet stationed in Abu Dhabi. The comparison matters for anyone reading the return as a full restoration: it is a winter programme from Europe, not the rebuilding of a UAE-based airline.

From a 12-aircraft Abu Dhabi base to flights from Europe: the timeline

The two interruptions had different causes. The 2025 closure was a commercial and operational decision by the airline about a UAE-based subsidiary: the Pratt and Whitney engines on its A321neo fleet lost time to inspections in the heat, the airspace around the region kept closing during the 2024 and 2025 escalations, and the carrier said it could not get the market access it needed to grow. The 2026 stop was an industry-wide safety suspension after the strikes on Iran at the end of February: within a week more than 29,000 flights across the region had been cancelled, and several international carriers pushed their Dubai resumption dates to late 2026 or into 2027. Wizz Air’s restart is therefore a security-driven return to routes it was already flying from Europe, timed to the winter schedule, and the airline is explicit that all Middle East flights remain subject to continuing operational and security assessments.

What the airline has not disclosed

• Which entity operates the flights: Wizz Air Hungary, Wizz Air Malta or Wizz Air UK. The Abu Dhabi joint venture has closed, and the airline has not said whether a locally based operation will be rebuilt.
• Aircraft assignment by route and the seat count per flight; the 470,000 figure is a programme total.
• Whether any of the routes continue into the summer 2027 schedule or are limited to the winter season.
• The fare on Budapest to Jeddah and the full fare ladder on each route; only starting prices have been advertised.
• The exact days and times on each route; the airline’s Dubai route pages list Budapest on five days a week and Bucharest daily with a 21:05 departure and a block time of about 5 hours 15 minutes, but the timetable is confirmed only in the booking flow.

The wider low-cost picture in the UAE

Wizz Air is returning to a market that filled part of the gap while it was away. Air Arabia has been building its own Central European network from Sharjah for the coming winter, including Sharjah to Katowice from 17 December, which will compete directly with the Katowice to Abu Dhabi service, as well as new links to Gdansk, Frankfurt and Dusseldorf. Etihad has kept adding point-to-point routes from Abu Dhabi, most recently the year-round Abu Dhabi to Red Sea International service from 4 October 2026. On the Dubai side the airport is at full stretch: Dubai International was ranked the most connected airport in Asia-Pacific and the Middle East in the ACI 2026 index and Dubai Airports expects to pass 100 million passengers a year within 18 months. In that environment 32 extra weekly low-cost rotations do not change the totals, but they reopen a price segment on the Central and Eastern Europe routes that has been thin since March.

What this means for business in the UAE

1. Cheaper staff travel to and from Central and Eastern Europe. Companies in the UAE that employ Polish, Romanian, Hungarian, Bulgarian and Cypriot nationals, which is common in construction, hospitality, healthcare and aviation services, regain direct low-fare flights for home leave and recruitment trips. From late October a one-way Abu Dhabi to Cluj or Larnaca ticket starts in the AED 107 to AED 171 range, against multi-stop itineraries through Istanbul or the Gulf carriers’ fares in the spring and summer.
2. A direct Cyprus link for group structures. Larnaca to Abu Dhabi three times a week from 27 October restores a direct route for owners and directors who split time between UAE operating companies and Cyprus holding entities. Board meetings, bank appointments and audits become a same-day trip instead of a connection.
3. Inbound tourism and hospitality from the CEE markets. In 2024 Wizz Air brought more than 1.2 million international visitors to Abu Dhabi. Hotels, tour operators, destination management companies and attraction operators that lost Central European volume in March get the channel back for the peak winter months, when Dubai and Abu Dhabi hotel rates are highest.
4. Real estate and investment marketing. Brokers and developers targeting buyers from Poland, Romania and Hungary can again plan viewing trips and roadshows around a direct flight; Budapest to Dubai runs five times a week and Bucharest to Dubai daily from 25 October.
5. Plan for conditionality. The airline has said the flights remain subject to security assessments, and the 2026 suspension shows how quickly a programme can be paused. For corporate travel policies that means flexible fares or the airline’s WIZZ Flex option, insurance that covers schedule changes, and a fallback through Air Arabia, flydubai, Etihad or Emirates for time-critical trips.

Checklist for companies and travellers

• Check the airport: Dubai flights use Dubai International (DXB), not Al Maktoum; Abu Dhabi flights use Zayed International (AUH).
• Note the two start dates: 25 October for Budapest and Katowice to Abu Dhabi and both Dubai routes, 27 October for Larnaca, Sofia, Cluj and Krakow to Abu Dhabi.
• Advertised fares are one-way basic fares without checked baggage or seat selection; price the full trip, including bags, before comparing with full-service carriers.
• Book with flexibility for the first weeks of the restart; the airline has said all Middle East flights remain under continuing security review.
• For employees on UAE residence visas, confirm that the visa and Emirates ID are valid for re-entry before a home-leave trip, and remember that a resident who stays outside the UAE for more than 180 days risks cancellation of the visa.
• Companies that book travel for staff from a UAE entity need a corporate card or bank account in AED; the airline sells UAE-origin fares in AED on its website.
• Travel businesses selling the routes should register the activity correctly: inbound tour operator, travel agency and destination management licences are separate activities under Department of Economy and Tourism rules in Dubai and DCT rules in Abu Dhabi.

How Atlant Capital can help

Atlant Capital works with companies that make money from the flow of people between Europe and the Gulf: travel agencies and destination management companies, hospitality operators, recruitment firms, real estate brokers and the service providers around them. We register companies on the mainland and in free zones with the right activity list, including tourism and travel activities that require additional approvals, through our company setup service. We open corporate and personal bank accounts in the UAE so that ticketing, payroll and supplier payments run in AED, and we arrange residence and work visas for owners and staff, including the Emirates ID and medical steps that must be complete before a new hire’s first flight home. Our clients are mostly founders from Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Central and Eastern Europe, so we know the corridors these routes serve.

Conclusion

Wizz Air’s return is real, dated and bookable: eight UAE routes, 32 weekly flights, Abu Dhabi from 25 and 27 October and Dubai International from 25 October, inside a 12-route, 49-flight, 470,000-seat winter programme that also covers Jeddah and Amman. It is smaller than the 12-aircraft Abu Dhabi base that closed in September 2025 and it is flown from Europe under a standing security caveat. For UAE businesses the practical effect is a restored low-fare corridor to Hungary, Romania, Poland, Bulgaria and Cyprus for the winter, useful for staff travel, inbound tourism and investor visits, provided travel plans allow for the possibility of another pause.

FAQ

When does Wizz Air return to Dubai and Abu Dhabi and from which cities?

The first flights are on Sunday 25 October 2026: Budapest to Dubai five times a week, Bucharest to Dubai daily, Budapest to Abu Dhabi four times a week and Katowice to Abu Dhabi five times a week. On Tuesday 27 October the airline adds Larnaca, Sofia and Krakow to Abu Dhabi three times a week each and Cluj to Abu Dhabi twice a week. In total the UAE gets eight routes and 32 weekly flights; the wider programme of 12 routes and 49 weekly flights also covers Jeddah from Milan, Rome and Budapest and Amman from Budapest.

Which airport in Dubai does Wizz Air use?

Wizz Air’s Dubai flights operate from Dubai International Airport (DXB). The airline’s route pages list Dubai to Bucharest as a daily flight departing 21:05 with a block time of about 5 hours 15 minutes, and Dubai to Budapest on five days a week. In Abu Dhabi the flights use Zayed International Airport (AUH), the airport the former Wizz Air Abu Dhabi base operated from.

Why did Wizz Air stop flying to the UAE?

There were two separate stops. On 14 July 2025 the airline announced the closure of Wizz Air Abu Dhabi, its joint venture with ADQ, effective 1 September 2025, citing engine reliability in the hot climate, geopolitical volatility with airspace closures and regulatory limits on market access; the base had 12 aircraft and 29 destinations. Flights from European bases to Abu Dhabi continued. Then, at the end of February 2026, after the US and Israeli strikes on Iran, Wizz Air suspended all flights to the UAE, Jordan, Israel and Saudi Arabia for security reasons and extended the suspension for Dubai and Abu Dhabi until 24 October 2026. The restart follows revised EASA conflict-zone guidance and the airline’s own assessments.

How much do Wizz Air tickets between the UAE and Europe cost?

Advertised one-way starting fares are AED 269 for Dubai to Budapest, AED 359 for Dubai to Bucharest and between AED 107 (Larnaca) and AED 342 (Krakow) on the Abu Dhabi routes, with Budapest at AED 257, Cluj at AED 171 and Sofia and Katowice at AED 300. From the European side the starting fares range from EUR 24.99 for Larnaca to Abu Dhabi to EUR 79.99 for Krakow to Abu Dhabi and Bucharest to Dubai. These are basic fares without checked baggage, and Khaleej Times reported that prices on the website rise towards the winter peak.