Six years on from its enactment, Federal Law No. 6 of 2018 has materially reshaped the conduct of arbitration in the UAE. This short primer walks through the changes that matter to practitioners — and the ones we now have evidence to assess.
For most of the previous decade, arbitration in the UAE was governed by Articles 203 to 218 of the Civil Procedure Law. That regime served its time but, by 2018, had become awkward — a procedural framework drafted long before the modern institutional centres of the Emirates rose to global prominence. The Federal Arbitration Law was conceived to replace it.
What the new framework does.
At its core, the 2018 law is a modern arbitration statute drawn closely from the UNCITRAL Model Law. It governs proceedings seated anywhere in the federal jurisdiction of the UAE, expressly preserving the autonomy of free-zone arbitration regimes in DIFC and ADGM.
Three changes stand out in our practice:
- A clear, statutory rule on the separability of the arbitration agreement from the underlying contract.
- Express recognition of the tribunal's competence to rule on its own jurisdiction.
- A defined framework for interim and conservatory measures — and, importantly, for their enforcement by the local courts.
"The 2018 law did not merely codify good practice — it gave local courts a clear procedural roadmap for handling tribunal-ordered relief."
The institutional landscape today.
DIAC remains the most-used institution for Dubai-seated arbitrations. Its 2022 rules brought several procedural improvements — expedited procedures, joinder, and consolidation — and the federal law sits comfortably alongside them. ADCCAC in Abu Dhabi continues to administer a significant volume of construction and energy-sector matters under the same federal framework.
For international parties, the question of seat remains decisive. Mainland UAE under the 2018 law offers a credible, enforcement-friendly arbitration regime. DIFC and ADGM offer common-law procedural cultures, separate court systems, and the familiar comfort of English-language proceedings. The choice is rarely obvious, and it is almost always worth taking time to make.
Enforcement, in practice.
An award is only as useful as the jurisdiction that will enforce it. The 2018 law brought UAE enforcement procedure closer to the Model Law standard — narrower grounds for refusal, clearer timelines, and a more disciplined approach by the local courts in entertaining set-aside applications.
Our experience since 2020 supports this. Set-aside applications that would, a decade ago, have produced lengthy procedural battles are now disposed of in months rather than years. Enforcement against assets in the UAE — and into the GCC under the Riyadh Convention — is materially more reliable than it once was.
A practitioner's view forward.
The 2018 law is now a settled regime. The questions in front of practitioners today are less about the statute and more about its interaction with the institutional rules, the courts' developing jurisprudence, and the practical realities of cross-border enforcement.
For parties choosing where to seat a matter — and for in-house teams thinking about arbitration clauses in their commercial contracts — the federal law has changed the calculus. The UAE is now a credible, modern arbitration seat. The work, increasingly, is in choosing well.