UAE Prayer Times

Prayer Times Today in All Emirates

There is no single prayer time for the whole UAE. The country stretches far enough from east to west that the sun reaches Fujairah several minutes before it reaches Abu Dhabi, and every emirate has its own official timetable. This table shows today’s live times for all seven emirates plus Al Ain, which most prayer sites leave out even though a million people in the Eastern Region use it. Pick any row’s city in the tabs at the top of this page to see its full day, countdown and monthly timetable.

The pattern never changes: Fujairah, on the east coast, is always first; then come Ras Al Khaimah, Umm Al Quwain, Sharjah, Ajman and Dubai within a few minutes of each other; Al Ain follows; and Abu Dhabi, furthest west of the big cities, is last. The total spread across the country is about 9 minutes, which is why an app set to the wrong city can quietly put you several minutes out all day.

Monthly Prayer Timetable

Here is the full month for the emirate selected at the top of this page, with the Hijri date for every day. Change the emirate with the tabs above, or move between months with the buttons below. The highlighted row is today.

Two things to notice in any month of UAE prayer times. Times drift by a minute or two almost every day, because they follow the sun rather than the clock. And Dhuhr does not sit still either: it slides earlier into the autumn, then later again through winter, which is why the Friday prayer arrangement described below had to be fixed by the authorities rather than left to follow Dhuhr all year.

Fajr Prayer Time in the UAE

Fajr is the dawn prayer, and its UAE time today in Dubai is —. Fajr begins at true dawn, when the first light spreads across the eastern sky, and its time ends at sunrise, — in Dubai today. That gives you a window of roughly an hour and fifteen minutes, which sounds generous until you are the one setting the alarm.

Two related times matter around Fajr. Imsak is the cautious stopping point for eating before a fast, set 10 minutes before Fajr; in Dubai today that is —. And if you follow the official UAE timetable, Fajr is the prayer where apps disagree most, because the UAE calculates it at 18.2 degrees of sun depression while many apps default to 15 or 18 degrees, or to the Makkah method, and land several minutes away. The full explanation is in the calculation section below.

Dhuhr Prayer Time in the UAE

Dhuhr is the midday prayer, prayed once the sun has passed its highest point. In Dubai today Dhuhr is at —. Of the five prayers, Dhuhr moves the least across the year in the UAE: it stays within roughly twenty minutes of 12:10 to 12:30 PM all year, sliding later in midwinter and earlier in late autumn.

Dhuhr is also the prayer most affected by the working week. Most offices in the UAE time their lunch break around it, and on Fridays it is replaced entirely by the Jumuah congregation prayer covered below. If you are new to the UAE, note that Dhuhr is often written as Zuhr on local timetables; they are the same prayer.

Asr Prayer Time in the UAE

Asr is the afternoon prayer. In Dubai today the standard (Shafi’i) Asr time is —. Asr begins when the shadow of an object equals its length, on top of the shadow it already had at midday. That is the method followed by the Shafi’i, Maliki and Hanbali schools, and it is the method the official UAE timetable uses.

The Hanafi school waits until the shadow is twice the object’s length, which puts Hanafi Asr roughly 45 to 60 minutes later in the UAE. If you follow the Hanafi method, use the Hanafi toggle at the top of this page and the Asr card will switch for you. This single setting is the second most common reason, after the Fajr angle, why two phones in the same room can show different prayer times in the Emirates.

Maghrib Prayer Time and Iftar Time Today

Maghrib is prayed just after sunset, and in Dubai today it is at —. Maghrib is the one prayer time every resident of the UAE learns, whatever their routine, because it is also the time the traffic pauses, the cannons fire in Ramadan, and the working day winds down.

Outside Ramadan, Maghrib is simply the sunset prayer, with a shorter window than the others: it should be prayed before the twilight fades and Isha begins. During Ramadan, Maghrib doubles as iftar time, the moment the fast is broken; today’s fasting length and the Ramadan details are in the Ramadan section below.

Isha Prayer Time in the UAE

Isha is the night prayer, prayed once the twilight has completely disappeared. In Dubai today Isha is at —. The UAE calculates Isha at 18.2 degrees of sun depression, the same angle as Fajr, which keeps the official timetable internally consistent through the year.

Isha is where the wrong app setting hurts most visibly. Apps left on the Makkah (Umm Al-Qura) method do not use an angle for Isha at all; they simply add 90 minutes after Maghrib. In the UAE that can put Isha more than 10 minutes later than the official time, which is exactly the gap you will see if you compare a default phone app against the mosque loudspeaker. Set your app to the UAE or Awqaf method and the difference disappears.

Friday Prayer Time in the UAE (Jumuah)

Friday prayer, Jumuah, replaces Dhuhr on Fridays and is held in congregation with a sermon (khutbah) before it. Across most of the UAE, the khutbah and prayer are held at a fixed 12:45 PM all year round. Fixing the time, instead of letting it follow Dhuhr as it slides through the seasons, was done so that the Friday break sits predictably in the working day; before this arrangement, UAE Jumuah was held at 1:15 PM.

A few practical notes. Sharjah’s mosques have historically followed their own arrangement on Friday timing, so if you pray in Sharjah, confirm the time with your local mosque rather than assuming 12:45 PM. Mosques fill quickly on Fridays, and many people arrive 30 minutes or more before the khutbah; the sermon is part of the prayer, so arriving only for the final rakats means you have missed much of what Jumuah is. Government offices and many private companies in the UAE close or break from around midday on Friday to make room for it.

Eid Prayer Time in the UAE

Eid prayer is held in the morning on the first day of Eid Al Fitr and Eid Al Adha, in mosques and in the large open musallah grounds you will see signposted in every emirate. The pattern is the same everywhere in the UAE: the prayer takes place shortly after sunrise, typically about 15 to 20 minutes after the sunrise time for that city, once the sun has risen by roughly a spear’s length.

The exact Eid prayer time for each emirate is announced officially a few days before each Eid by Awqaf and the emirate authorities, and published in the national newspapers, because it depends on the confirmed first day of the Eid month. The next Eid prayer in the UAE will be for Eid Al Fitr, expected in March 2027, subject to the sighting of the Shawwal moon. When the announcement is made, this page’s sunrise time for your emirate, plus about twenty minutes, is the figure to plan around, and arriving early matters: musallah grounds fill from well before the prayer, and the takbirat begin ahead of it.

How UAE Prayer Times Are Calculated

UAE prayer times are not decided by each mosque. The official timetables are published by two authorities: Awqaf, the General Authority of Islamic Affairs, which covers the country federally, and IACAD, Dubai’s Islamic Affairs and Charitable Activities Department, which publishes Dubai’s timetable. Mosques set their adhan to these official times, which is why the call to prayer goes out across a city within the same minute. If you have ever searched for Awqaf UAE prayer times, this page shows you the same official method without the form-filling: pick your emirate at the top.

The method itself works like this. Fajr and Isha are calculated at a sun depression angle of 18.2 degrees below the horizon, the value the UAE authorities use. Sunrise and sunset are astronomical, Asr follows the Shafi’i shadow rule by default, and everything is computed for each city’s own coordinates, which is what produces the roughly nine-minute spread from Fujairah to Abu Dhabi. This page uses that same UAE method and cross-checks the output against the official timetable; the small calibration applied to sunrise is why our sunrise can differ by a minute from a raw calculation while the adhan times match the official ones.

Why, then, do apps disagree with the mosque? Because most global apps default to methods built for other countries: Umm Al-Qura for Makkah, the Muslim World League, ISNA for North America, or the Egyptian authority. Each uses different Fajr and Isha angles, and Umm Al-Qura does not use an Isha angle at all. In the UAE those defaults can be wrong by 5 to 15 minutes on Fajr and Isha. Open your app’s settings, look for the calculation method, and choose the UAE, Dubai or Awqaf option; if it offers manual angles, set Fajr and Isha to 18.2 degrees.

Qibla Direction from the UAE

The Qibla, the direction of the Kaaba in Makkah that Muslims face in prayer, points north-west from the UAE. From Dubai the Qibla bearing is 258 degrees measured clockwise from north; across the emirates it sits between about 256 and 258 degrees, with Abu Dhabi at the lower end of that range. In practice: face a little north of due west, roughly a quarter turn past west towards north.

In hotels and offices across the UAE you will usually find a Qibla arrow on the ceiling or in a drawer, set by the building. If you are using a phone compass, calibrate it away from metal and electronics, and treat a degree or two of wobble as normal; the mosques, of course, are already aligned, which is one more reason the congregation rows are the most reliable Qibla guide in the country.

Ramadan in the UAE: Imsak, Iftar and Taraweeh

During Ramadan this same page becomes the one most people in the UAE open at dawn and again at sunset, because the two times that structure the fasting day are both here. Imsak, the moment to stop eating before the fast, is 10 minutes before Fajr. Iftar, the moment the fast is broken, is exactly Maghrib. In Dubai today the fasting day, Fajr to Maghrib, runs —; in Ramadan that figure is the length of the fast itself.

Taraweeh, the long night prayer of Ramadan, is held in congregation after Isha in mosques across the country, and the last ten nights add the late-night Qiyam prayers as Laylat Al Qadr approaches. Ramadan timetables in the UAE are issued officially each year by Awqaf and IACAD, and the holy month itself begins on the sighting of the crescent moon: Ramadan 2027 is expected to begin around 8 February 2027, subject to that sighting. When Ramadan arrives, the countdown at the top of this page, set to your emirate, counts down to iftar every evening without you needing to change anything.

Prayer Times Through the Year in the UAE

The UAE sits close enough to the equator that its prayer times never reach the extremes of northern countries, but the swing across the year is still large. Fajr moves by almost two hours between January and June, and Maghrib by nearly as much. These are Dubai’s times on four sample dates, calculated on the official UAE method:

Read the year through those four rows. The earliest Fajr of the year, just before 4 AM, comes in mid-June; the latest, around 5:45 AM, in mid-January. Maghrib is earliest at the start of December, about 5:31 PM, and latest at the start of July, about 7:16 PM. For anyone fasting, that means the UAE’s longest fast is about 15 hours and 15 minutes in mid-June and its shortest about 12 hours in December, a gentler range than most of the Muslim world deals with, and one reason Ramadan’s position in the year matters so much here.

Praying in the UAE: Practical Notes

• You are never far from a mosque. The UAE has thousands of mosques, and in the cities you are rarely more than a few minutes from one. Prayer rooms also exist in malls, airports, hospitals, petrol stations on the highways and many office towers.
• Adhan and iqama are two different times. The times on this page are adhan times, when the call to prayer is made. The congregation (iqama) usually forms 20 to 30 minutes later, set by each mosque; the gap is posted on the mosque’s board or clock.
• Friday needs a head start. For Jumuah at 12:45 PM, arrive well before the khutbah. Parking around popular mosques fills streets, and in some areas roads close briefly around the prayer.
• Workplaces make room. Prayer breaks are a normal part of the UAE working day, and most employers, including non-Muslim ones, schedule meetings around Dhuhr without being asked.
• Set your phone once, correctly. Choose the UAE or Awqaf calculation method and your actual emirate as the location. Most “my app is wrong” stories in the UAE end at those two settings.

Rakats for the Five Daily Prayers

Each prayer is made up of units called rakats, a mix of obligatory (fard) and recommended (sunnah) units. This is the standard count followed in the UAE:

On Fridays, the Jumuah congregation replaces Dhuhr’s fard with 2 rakats prayed with the imam after the khutbah. Witr, the closing prayer of the night, is prayed after Isha’s sunnah; during Ramadan it is prayed in congregation after Taraweeh.

Frequently Asked Questions