Dubai Crown Prince Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed has announced the launch of the Create AI Agents Championship — a worldwide competition to build autonomous AI agents. The prize pool exceeds Dh2.5 million, entry is open globally, and registration closes in December 2026.
What happened
On October 7, 2026, during the third-edition awards ceremony of the Create Apps Championship at Emirates Towers Boulevard, Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum — Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Defence of the UAE, and Chairman of The Executive Council of Dubai — announced the launch of the new Create AI Agents Championship. It is an evolution of the earlier app-building challenge towards agentic AI: participants no longer build mobile apps but autonomous AI systems that can set goals, plan steps and act on a user's behalf.
The initiative is led by the Dubai Chamber of Digital Economy, part of Dubai Chambers. The ceremony was attended by HE Omar Sultan Al Olama, Minister of State for Artificial Intelligence, Digital Economy and Remote Work Applications; HE Mohammad Ali Rashed Lootah, President and CEO of Dubai Chambers; and Saeed Al Gergawi, Vice President of the Dubai Chamber of Digital Economy.
Prize pool: Dh2.5 million across four categories
The total prize pool exceeds Dh2.5 million and is distributed as follows:
- Dh550,000 grant to each of the four category winners (about US 50,000 each);
- Dh1 million as the highest recognition — AI Agent of the Year — awarded to one of the four category winners on top of the category grant;
- the money is a development grant — intended to help winners refine their AI agent, run pilots and bring the solution to market.
The four categories
Entries are judged across four application profiles:
- Best Societal AI Agent — agents that strengthen social cohesion and inclusion, and support education, sustainability and social resilience;
- Best Personal AI Agent — agents that enhance daily life, productivity, health, wellbeing and personal decision-making;
- Best Business AI Agent — agents helping public- and private-sector organisations improve workflows, decisions and customer experience;
- Best Youth AI Agent — a separate category for participants under 21 at the time of registration; for team entries the team lead must also be under 21.
Who can enter
There are no geographic restrictions — the championship is open to innovators worldwide, including the UAE. There is no minimum age; entries are accepted from both individuals and teams. A technical background is not required: Dubai is deliberately inviting non-technical founders alongside developers, as long as the idea is strong.
Applicants may submit an idea, a prototype or an early-stage MVP. Existing businesses may enter with a new AI-agent solution or capability. Fully commercialised solutions are not eligible — the goal of the championship is to grow new ventures, not to support already-established ones.
Timeline: from registration to December 2026
Registration opened on October 7, 2026, on the dedicated platform www.dubaichamberdigital.com/en/create-ai-agents. From there, participants follow a multi-stage programme:
- October–November 2026 — three introductory workshops on Agentic AI;
- November 2026 — the Digital Academy opens with four advanced training courses, four practical workshops and mentorship sessions;
- December 2026 — registration closes; participants must submit a working AI-agent prototype, a pitch deck and a demo video.
Self-paced learning content, specialised sessions and mentorship programmes are also available — so participants can refine ideas, assess commercial potential and prepare their pitches.
Why it matters for business in the UAE
Over three editions, the earlier Create Apps Championship drew 15,564 applications from 153 countries, produced 1,700 prototypes and launched more than 140 applications; the third edition alone attracted 9,754 entries. These numbers explain why the emirate keeps the competition format: it works as a funnel of ideas and early MVPs for Dubai's digital economy.
The launch of the Create AI Agents Championship is part of a wider strategy — Dubai positioning itself as the first city in the world to lead the use of agentic AI in government and commercial services. For UAE-based businesses, that signals a stronger ecosystem: both Dubai as a hub for applied AI, and the business communication and productivity tools that local companies now rely on.
How to apply and what to prepare
Registration runs through the Dubai Chamber of Digital Economy portal: www.dubaichamberdigital.com/en/create-ai-agents. Entry is free — there is no submission fee. By the December deadline, participants need to submit three deliverables:
- a working AI-agent prototype;
- a pitch deck setting out the problem, the solution and the potential;
- a demo video showing the agent in action.
What this means for Dubai's startup ecosystem
For teams already working on an AI product — or planning to build one — the championship offers three practical benefits: grants with no equity dilution (the organiser takes no stake), access to mentors and the Digital Academy curriculum, and public visibility, since winning becomes an entry point into the Dubai Chambers ecosystem. Winners who want to anchor operations in the UAE will then face the jurisdiction question — how to choose between a free zone and the mainland, depending on the target market, visa plans and activity profile.
In parallel, Dubai has set the goal of equipping about 295,000 companies in the emirate with agentic AI within two years. The championship is therefore not an isolated initiative but one of the entry points into a wider programme of embedding AI agents into the emirate's business landscape.
This material is for information only. Entry conditions, exact deadlines and judging rules are confirmed on the Dubai Chamber of Digital Economy portal (dubaichamberdigital.com) and in the Dubai Media Office announcement (mediaoffice.ae). Prize amounts reflect the organiser's statement on the announcement date (October 7, 2026).
