Dubai is putting serious money behind its push into agentic artificial intelligence. The city is launching a new global competition that gives developers, entrepreneurs and innovators a chance to build AI agents for real-world problems.
The Create AI Agents Championship, announced by Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Crown Prince of Dubai, carries a prize and grant pool worth more than AED2.5 million ($680,000). The programme replaces the previous Create Apps Championship. Now, the focus shifts from conventional applications to AI agents capable of performing tasks and supporting users with greater autonomy.
For Dubai, the change reflects where the technology conversation is heading. AI is moving beyond systems that simply answer questions. Companies are increasingly experimenting with agents that can plan, make decisions and complete multi-step workflows.
Dubai Turns Its App Competition Into an AI Agent Challenge
Dubai’s decision to replace the Create Apps Championship with an AI-focused competition signals a broader change in the emirate’s technology priorities. The previous programme helped attract developers and entrepreneurs from around the world. However, the new competition is aimed at a different generation of software where AI can take a more active role in completing tasks.
The Create AI Agents Championship asks participants to identify a practical problem, develop an AI agent to address it and demonstrate how the solution could create measurable value. The emphasis is therefore on working technology rather than an idea that exists only on paper.
The Government of Dubai Media Office said the championship is designed around autonomous AI-agent systems. These systems can be integrated into practical applications and address real user needs.
Four AI Agent Categories Cover Different Types of Problems
The competition has been divided into four categories to encourage applications of agentic AI across different parts of society and the economy. That structure gives participants room to tackle everything from everyday personal tasks to complex business challenges.
The categories are Best Societal AI Agent, Best Personal AI Agent, Best Business AI Agent and Best Youth AI Agent. The youth category is open to participants aged 21 or under at the time of registration. Qualifying teams are required to have an eligible young person as their team lead.
The societal category focuses on areas including education, inclusion, sustainability and community resilience. Personal agents can target productivity, health, wellbeing and everyday decision-making. Meanwhile, business agents can address workflows, customer experience, services and organisational decision-making.
Winners Will Share More Than AED2.5 Million
The financial backing gives the championship more weight than a conventional technology competition. Dubai is offering funding that can help winning teams continue developing their ideas after the competition. This means promising prototypes are not left at the demonstration stage.
Each of the four category winners will receive an AED550,000 grant. From those winners, one will receive the AI Agent of the Year title and an additional AED1 million award. This takes the overall prize and grant pool above AED2.5 million.
That funding could become particularly important for early-stage builders. Developing an AI agent beyond a prototype can require infrastructure, testing, product development and access to specialist talent. The grants give successful teams some room to make that next step.
The Competition Is Open to More Than Developers
Dubai is not limiting the championship to professional software engineers or established technology companies. The competition is open internationally and does not require participants to have a formal technical background.
Individuals and teams can enter with an original idea, prototype or early-stage minimum viable product. Existing companies can also submit new AI-agent capabilities, although fully commercialised products are not eligible.
That broad entry model could produce a mix of projects from experienced AI developers, entrepreneurs and people who understand a particular industry problem. Some may have never previously built a standalone technology product.
Teams can bring together different skills, including development, design, business strategy and industry expertise. For agentic AI, that combination can be useful. This is because the hardest part is often identifying the right problem rather than simply building the software.
Training and Mentorship Will Support Participants
The championship is also being positioned as a learning programme, giving participants access to training and mentorship while they develop their projects. That matters because many potential entrants may understand a business problem without knowing how to design and deploy an effective AI agent.
Three introductory workshops on agentic AI will be followed by a Digital Academy in November. This academy will feature four advanced training courses, four practical workshops and mentorship sessions.
Participants will also have access to self-paced learning resources and specialised sessions designed to help them improve their concepts before submission. The programme therefore combines competition with a development pipeline for people who are still building their expertise in agentic AI.
Registration Runs Until December 2026
Participants have until December 2026 to register for the championship and prepare their submissions. Entrants will need to develop an AI-agent prototype and provide supporting materials, including a pitch deck and demonstration video.
The deadline gives participants several weeks to move from an initial idea toward something that can actually be demonstrated. That is important for a competition centred on AI agents. The difference between a promising concept and a useful system often becomes clear only when the technology is tested against a real workflow.
Dubai’s training programme is intended to help participants during that development period, particularly those who are new to agentic AI.
Dubai Wants AI Agents Inside Real Businesses
The championship also fits into Dubai’s wider push to increase the use of AI agents across government and business. The emirate has been developing initiatives focused on AI adoption, digital transformation, workforce skills and the use of emerging technologies in public services.
The Create AI Agents Championship adds a startup and innovation layer to those efforts. Instead of only encouraging existing organisations to adopt AI, Dubai is also looking for new ideas and new companies that can build agent-based solutions from the ground up.
That could create a pipeline of products that eventually move beyond the competition and into commercial or government use. Whether that happens will depend on the quality of the solutions and, more importantly, whether people actually use them.
The New Championship Builds on Thousands of Earlier Applications
Dubai is not starting from zero. The previous Create Apps Championship attracted a large international community of developers and entrepreneurs. This gave the new programme an existing foundation to build upon.
Across three editions, the Create Apps Championship received 15,564 applications from 153 countries, produced 1,700 prototypes and supported the launch of more than 140 applications.
The third edition alone attracted 9,754 applications. Those numbers give Dubai an established network of technology builders who could potentially move into the new AI-agent competition.
The change from apps to AI agents is therefore less about abandoning the previous programme and more about redirecting that ecosystem toward the next stage of software development.
Dubai Is Betting on the Next Phase of AI
The bigger story behind the championship is Dubai’s growing interest in AI systems that can do more than generate content or answer questions. Agentic AI is increasingly being explored for tasks that involve planning, decision-making and interaction with other software.
The Create AI Agents Championship gives that ambition a practical framework. Participants have a problem to solve, a prototype to build, a deadline to meet and significant funding available to the strongest projects.
For Dubai, the potential payoff extends beyond the prize money. Successful projects could produce new startups, attract AI talent and create technologies that eventually find their way into businesses and public services.
The competition will reveal which ideas can survive outside the pitch deck.
Sources
- Government of Dubai Media Office — Hamdan bin Mohammed launches Create AI Agents Championship
https://mediaoffice.ae/en/news/2026/october/07-10/hamdan-bin-mohammed-launches-create-ai-agents-championship - Emirates News Agency (WAM) — Hamdan bin Mohammed launches Create AI Agents Championship
https://www.wam.ae/en/article/c2mg2qf-hamdan-bin-mohammed-launches-create-agents - Middle East AI News — Dubai launches AED25m Create AI Agents Championship
https://www.middleeastainews.com/p/dubai-launches-aed25m-create-ai-agents
