Founded in 2004 by the Abu Dhabi Music and Arts Foundation, the festival programmes orchestras, opera, dance and visual art across two months, mainly at the Emirates Palace, and commissions new work from Arab composers and artists each year — the commissioning is the part that distinguishes it from a presenting season.
No attendance figure is collected in this pass.
It is the oldest arts festival of its kind in the Gulf and predates the cultural district on Saadiyat Island by well over a decade.
The window spans February to April as a season of separate evenings. Its dates are also shaped by Ramadan, which it does not programme across.
PlanningA long window across late winter and spring — a season of individual nights, not a week.
Dates
Season
Computed from the recurrence rule we record for this entry, not copied from a listing. A date marked ~ comes from a calendar conversion and the observance may fall a day or two either side.