The UAE is putting another piece of its agentic AI strategy in place, and this one is about people rather than models, data centers or government platforms.
Registration has opened for the seventh cohort of the UAE Artificial Intelligence Programme, with the latest intake placing heavier emphasis on generative AI and agentic AI systems.
Announced by UAE Minister of State for Artificial Intelligence Omar Sultan Al Olama, the program will run from September 2026 through January 2027. It brings together government employees, private-sector professionals, developers, engineers and business leaders who increasingly need to understand what AI deployment actually looks like inside an organization.
UAE AI Program Shifts Deeper Into Agentic AI
Agentic AI isn’t being treated as a side topic in the new cohort.
The seventh edition includes five specialized modules covering generative and agentic AI concepts, machine learning data strategies, practical applications and the governance of autonomous AI systems.
That timing matters.
The UAE Government has been pushing toward a much larger transition to AI-driven public operations. Its stated ambition is to move 50% of government sectors, services and operations toward agentic AI-powered operating models within two years.
Training people to evaluate, deploy and govern those systems becomes part of the infrastructure itself.
Buying an AI platform is relatively easy. Knowing where autonomous agents should be allowed to operate — and where human oversight still needs to sit — is a different problem.
That governance challenge is already becoming central to the UAE’s broader agentic AI government strategy.
Technical and Professional Tracks Target Different AI Roles
The UAE AI Program is splitting participants into two main learning paths rather than treating everyone as an AI developer.
The Technical Track is aimed primarily at developers and engineers. It goes deeper into AI architecture, programming and model development.
The Professional Track takes another route. Business leaders and strategists will focus more heavily on AI governance, evaluating technology vendors and building realistic digital adoption plans.
That separation makes sense as enterprise AI moves beyond experimental chatbot projects.
A chief strategy officer doesn’t necessarily need to build a model from scratch. They do need to understand what an AI vendor is selling, where the risks are and whether an agent should be trusted with a particular workflow.
An engineer has a very different job.
University of Birmingham Joins UAE National AI Initiative
The program is being delivered by the National Program for Artificial Intelligence in collaboration with the University of Birmingham.
Participants will also learn from an international group of academics and AI specialists connected with institutions including the University of Birmingham, University of Oxford, Uppsala University and NYU Abu Dhabi.
The academic element gives the program a slightly different position from short corporate AI courses.
It combines technical instruction with governance, strategic planning and organizational deployment — areas becoming increasingly tangled as businesses experiment with AI agents that can make decisions or complete multi-step tasks with less direct supervision.
More Than 450 Professionals Have Already Graduated
The UAE AI Program is not starting from zero.
More than 450 professionals representing over 100 government and private-sector organizations have graduated since the initiative was launched. Many have since moved into leadership positions within their respective organizations, according to information published about the latest cohort.
The seventh cohort now arrives at a noticeably different point in the AI cycle.
Earlier AI education programs could concentrate heavily on machine learning fundamentals and data science. Today’s workplace conversation includes large language models, generative AI, autonomous agents, AI governance and systems capable of performing entire workflows.
The curriculum is changing with it.
UAE Builds AI Skills Alongside AI Infrastructure
The program also sits inside a much broader UAE effort to raise AI literacy across different parts of society.
The country recently opened the eighth UAE AI Camp in Dubai, with workshops covering subjects such as fraud detection, generative AI and agentic AI. Previous editions of the camp attracted more than 34,000 participants and involved technology companies including Google, Microsoft, Intel and Accenture.
There is a pattern emerging.
The UAE is investing heavily in AI infrastructure and government adoption, but it is also building education programs aimed at creating the workforce that will actually operate those systems.
That second part may prove just as important.
Agentic AI can automate more than a conventional chatbot. It can potentially plan actions, interact with software and execute tasks across several steps. Organizations introducing that level of autonomy need people who understand both the opportunity and the failure points.
That workforce challenge also appears in the private sector, where AI spending in the UAE and Saudi Arabia is rising faster than enterprise readiness.
Who Can Apply for the Seventh UAE AI Program Cohort?
Registration is open to employees working across government, semi-government and private-sector organizations.
The new cohort begins in September 2026 and continues through January 2027. Interested professionals can obtain application information through the UAE Artificial Intelligence Office and the national Artificial Intelligence Programme.
For the UAE, this is less about creating another class of AI specialists and more about spreading practical AI capability through organizations that are already being asked to automate faster.
Agentic AI is becoming part of the government’s operating strategy.
Now the people expected to manage that shift are being trained for it.
