A phone call while I was reading the announcement
On 3 August, while I was reading the Dubai Land Department announcement about IPS 2026, an Italian investor called me with a very practical question: “Does it still make sense to come to Dubai to understand the market, or is everything decided online now?”. The answer sounds simple, but it is not. Online, you can collect information. In Dubai, the best decisions still happen when data, developers, banks, institutions and advisors sit around the same table.
The numbers say more than “another property fair”
Dubai will host the 22nd edition of IPS 2026 from 7 to 9 September 2026 at Dubai World Trade Centre, with the support and strategic partnership of Dubai Land Department. The event will bring together investors, developers, government entities, financial institutions, policymakers and international experts. The scale is the interesting part: exhibition space is increasing by 38% compared with the previous edition. In 2025, IPS attracted more than 30,000 visitors, representing 182 nationalities from 153 countries, and facilitated deals worth over AED 1.84 billion.
The shift is institutional, not promotional
The point is not that Dubai is organising another large real estate event. The point is that the market is becoming more institutional. IPS 2026 is not only about stands and brochures: it includes a main conference, an Institutional Investors Conference, workshops, training programmes, project launches, and dedicated tracks on PropTech, sustainability and smart cities. For a serious investor, this changes the quality of the conversation: you are not only looking at the product, you are reading the rules of the game.
What this means for investors from Italy
For an Italian investor, the real opportunity is not arriving in Dubai and being impressed by the most spectacular project. It is using moments like IPS to compare multiple operators in the same setting, understand which developers have real credibility, which districts are attracting institutional capital, and which commercial promises do not survive due diligence. When a market becomes more transparent, disciplined buyers gain an advantage over emotional buyers.
Why Rema Living filters before proposing
At Rema Living Real Estate, this is exactly how we work: first the context, then the numbers, then the product. We do not guide Italian investors through Dubai to multiply options, but to reduce them to the few that make sense based on objectives, capital, time horizon and risk. If you want to prepare a strategy before evaluating concrete opportunities, you can book a direct conversation here: https://rema.ae/prenota-il-tuo-incontro.
The practical step before September
If you are considering Dubai over the next few months, do not wait until you are standing in front of a booth to decide what you are looking for. Prepare a framework in advance: budget, minimum acceptable yield, preferred area, exit horizon, risk tolerance and developer criteria. In a market full of supply, the edge does not belong to the investor who sees the most projects. It belongs to the investor who knows how to reject more of them.
