Dubai’s 2026 Michelin Guide: A City Competing at the Highest Level
Twenty starred restaurants among 122 selected, across 38 cuisines. The fifth edition shows a guide that has nearly doubled in size since its 2022 debut.
On 6 October, the Michelin Guide unveiled its fifth Dubai selection at Atlantis The Royal on the Palm Jumeirah: 122 restaurants across 38 cuisine types, with 19 new additions. Twenty of them hold stars. The guide covered 69 restaurants when it launched in 2022, and 119 a year ago; Michelin’s own headline says the selection has almost doubled in size. The question for 2026 is less how big the guide has become than what its distribution of stars says about the city.
The stars, tier by tier
As published by Michelin and reported by The National and What’s On, the 20 starred restaurants are as follows.
Three stars (2):
- FZN by Björn Frantzén (retained)
- Trèsind Studio (retained)
Two stars (4):
- Il Ristorante – Niko Romito (retained)
- Orfali Bros (promoted from one star)
- Row on 45 (retained)
- STAY by Yannick Alléno (retained)
One star (14):
- 11 Woodfire
- Al Muntaha
- avatāra
- Birch (new)
- Dinner by Heston Blumenthal
- Hakkasan Dubai
- Hōseki
- Jamavar
- KIGO (new)
- Manāo
- Moonrise
- Ossiano
- Smoked Room
- Tasca by José Avillez
What the mix says
The starred tier is internationally eclectic. The National describes the top end as spanning Scandinavian-Asian fusion (FZN), modern Indian (Trèsind Studio), contemporary Middle Eastern (Orfali Bros) and Japanese sushi and kaiseki (KIGO). One of the two new stars, Birch, is built on the chef Arslan Berdiev’s Turkmen roots and travels, with produce such as Uzbek tomatoes. Dubai’s ambition shows less in a single cuisine than in the range of cooking it can support at a high level.
The movement within the tiers is modest. Both three-star restaurants kept their stars, the two-star group includes one promotion, and of the 14 one-star restaurants, 12 retained their stars while two, Birch and KIGO, are new. Michelin made the selection with the Dubai Department of Economy and Tourism as its destination partner. In other words, the guide’s growth has come mainly from additions in the lower tiers, with a small number of stars changing hands at the top.
The promotion that mattered most to the region was Orfali Bros, a restaurant founded by three brothers from Aleppo that went from one star to two. Michelin’s release described the move from neighbourhood bistro to a flagship of Middle Eastern gastronomy; our profile of the restaurant traces how it got there.
The guide that began with 69 restaurants now covers 122, and the question is no longer whether Dubai belongs in it.
Below the stars: value and heritage
The Bib Gourmand list, which recognises good cooking at moderate prices, now numbers 22. Four are new: Middle Child, S.E.A Bistrot, Three Bros (the Orfali brothers’ sister restaurant) and YUBI Dubai. It also includes Berenjak, Kinoya, Sufret Maryam, Shabestan and Al Khayma Heritage Restaurant, the Emirati restaurant in Al Fahidi. A further 80 restaurants are Michelin Selected, 13 of them new. Special awards went to Gonzalo Platero and Window at Alserkal for Opening of the Year, Rémy Marquignon of Ossiano for Young Chef, Ninad Jani of avatāra for Sommelier and Akinori Tanigawa and the team at KIGO for Service. For the Emirati side of the story, see our feature on Al Khayma.
The overlap with MENA’s 50 Best
The Michelin results echo the regional ranking published in February. In MENA’s 50 Best 2026, seven of the top ten restaurants were in Dubai: Kinoya (2), Trèsind Studio (3), Orfali Bros (4), Sufret Maryam (7), Jun’s (8), Manao (9) and Moonrise (10). Four of those now hold Michelin stars (Trèsind Studio, Orfali Bros, Manāo and Moonrise), and two more, Kinoya and Sufret Maryam, are Bib Gourmand. Twenty-five UAE restaurants made the 50 Best list overall. Two guides with different methods are pointing at largely the same group of restaurants.
The caveat: closed restaurants
The guide has also drawn criticism. Four of the starred restaurants, Al Muntaha, Dinner by Heston Blumenthal, Ossiano and Smoked Room, are listed as temporarily closed but kept their stars. Michelin said it was aware of the closures, is in contact with the teams and will re-evaluate each restaurant when it reopens. Semafor reported on 8 October that 11 restaurants across the guide’s distinctions were closed, and one food writer questioned why shuttered restaurants were included. The 2026 stars therefore describe a slightly larger map than the one diners can currently book.
Even so, the direction is clear. The next test will come as new openings, from Gymkhana in DIFC to the Palm’s autumn arrivals described in our neighbourhood guide, reach inspectors’ tables.
Sources & fact-check9
- The MICHELIN Guide Dubai selection nearly doubles in size in its fifth editionMICHELIN Guide, 6 October 2026
- The MICHELIN Guide Dubai celebrates its 5th editionMichelin (corporate), 7 October 2026
- Michelin Guide Dubai 2026: Closed restaurants retain stars as new winners emergeThe National, 7 October 2026
- Michelin Guide 2026: all the Michelin-star restaurants in Dubai revealedWhat’s On, 6 October 2026
- Orfali Bros earns 2 Michelin stars in 5th edition of Dubai guideArab News, 6 October 2026
- MICHELIN Guide Dubai 2026: everything you need to knowGulf News, 6 October 2026
- MENA’s 50 Best Restaurants 2026: winners listThe National, 3 February 2026
- Mini scandal clouds Dubai’s Michelin GuideSemafor, 8 October 2026
- How Orfali brothers are redefining gastronomy and Levantine dishesKhaleej Times, 18 August 2022
Every name, number and date in this story was checked against the sources above before publication. Spotted something wrong? Tell us — we correct errors openly. See our editorial standards.
