The fifteenth AIM Congress opens at Dubai World Trade Centre under the patronage of Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, structured around three pillars and running to a programme that saves bilateral signings and country-pavilion announcements for its final day.
The fifteenth edition of AIM Congress opens today at Dubai World Trade Centre, running to 9 September under the patronage of Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the United Arab Emirates and Ruler of Dubai.
The congress is held under the theme "Reshaping Global Prosperity: Unlocking New Investment Pathways Towards a Sustainable and Inclusive Future" and is organised around three pillars: Global Markets, Future Economies and NexGen. Organisers expect more than 20,000 participants and over 400 regional and international institutions across banking, financial services, technology and sovereign investment.
The programme structure is worth knowing in advance, because it determines when anything concrete is likely to surface. Day one anchors on heads-of-state and ministerial keynotes alongside a headline plenary on global investment flows. Day two divides into vertical tracks, with concurrent streams covering foreign direct investment, foreign portfolio investment, small and medium enterprises, startups, family offices, future cities and the digital economy. Day three closes with bilateral and multilateral signings, country-pavilion deal announcements and the AIM Investment Awards.
For an industrial readership the third day is the one that matters. Investment congresses generate a large volume of intent and a smaller volume of commitment, and the commitments are conventionally timed for the close. What appears there — a manufacturing joint venture, a logistics facility, an industrial zone agreement — is the part that eventually reaches contractors and equipment suppliers. What appears on day one is usually framing.
The framing this year has a strong set of numbers behind it. According to the World Investment Report 2026 published by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, foreign direct investment inflows into the United Arab Emirates reached AED 177.3bn in 2025. The country retained its position as the world's second-largest destination for new greenfield foreign direct investment projects for a third consecutive year, attracting 1,562 projects.
Greenfield is the relevant word. A greenfield project is a new facility rather than the purchase of an existing one, which means it involves land, construction, equipment and hiring. Counted by project rather than by value, the greenfield measure is a reasonable proxy for how much physical activity a country's investment inflow actually generates, and 1,562 of them is a substantial pipeline of building work distributed across sectors.
What the congress will not settle is how much of that pipeline is industrial. The Emirates attract greenfield investment across a wide range — financial services, technology, logistics, tourism, professional services — and only some of that translates into factories, warehouses and process plant. The sector tracks on day two are where that distribution becomes visible, and the country pavilions on day three are where specific commitments get names attached.
The congress runs until 9 September at Dubai World Trade Centre.