Dubai Metro Ramadan Timings

Dubai Metro Ramadan timings 2027

RTA published no separate Ramadan metro timetable in 2025 or 2026, so the ordinary week applied on every day of the month. That catches people out, because plenty of other services in Dubai do shift: malls open later, offices cut hours, and the assumption is that the metro follows. It has not.

The table below is the standard week from RTA's timetable page, and it is the one to plan around unless RTA says otherwise. Sunday is the day worth double checking at any time of year, Ramadan or not, because trains do not start until 08:00.

What does change: buses, not trains

Bus timetables move during Ramadan. Routes tied to school and office hours get retimed, some frequencies drop in the afternoon and pick up after iftar, and RTA pushes the revised times into the S'hail app rather than reprinting a citywide table. A route that leaves at 07:10 for eleven months of the year may leave at 07:40 in Ramadan.

That difference matters for anyone whose trip involves a feeder bus at one end. The train will be there; the bus that gets you to it may not be on its usual clock. Bus fares stay exactly the same, on the same zone table as the metro.

Metro parking, station opening and gate rules carry on as normal. Your card still needs AED 7.50 on it to open a gate, in Ramadan as in any other month.

Eid is when the metro runs longer

Eid brings the extension that people expect in Ramadan. For Eid Al Fitr in March 2026, Khaleej Times reported metro hours of 05:00 to 01:00 across the holiday, with the tram running 06:00 to 01:00. That is an extra hour at the end of the night on most days.

Eid Al Adha in May 2026 followed the same pattern, 05:00 to 01:00 with a 08:00 start on the Sunday, alongside free public parking and a suspension of the E100 intercity route. We have that one from a press summary rather than an RTA page, so it carries a weaker label than the Eid Al Fitr hours.

Eid announcements land a few days before the holiday, once the dates are confirmed. Until then the standard week applies.

How iftar changes the way the network fills up

The shape of the day changes even though the timetable does not. The half hour before iftar is the quietest the metro gets, because almost nobody starts a journey they cannot finish before the call to prayer. The hour after it is the opposite, with stations near mosques, malls and hotel districts filling up at once.

Two practical points follow. Top up before you travel rather than at a ticket office at 19:00, and give a connection more slack than usual if a bus is involved. A ticket vending machine takes AED 20 or more and credits the card instantly; the NOL Pay app starts at AED 5 over NFC. All twelve top up channels are compared with their minimums and how fast the money lands.

Late nights run longer than usual in Ramadan, and the metro closes at the same time it always does. On a Thursday night the last trains still leave well before 00:00, which is the station closing time and not a departure.

How to check the hours for the day you travel

Two pages here answer the question for a specific day. The timings page reads your own device clock and says if the metro is running right now, and it swaps in holiday hours when an announced change is in effect. First and last train times go per station and per direction, which is what you actually need for a late trip out of Expo 2020 or Life Pharmacy.

Ramadan 2027 is expected to begin around 8 February 2027 and end around 9 March 2027. Those dates depend on the moon sighting and can move by a day in either direction, so treat them as a planning guide rather than a fixed calendar. RTA has kept metro hours unchanged for the last two Ramadans, and this page gets updated within days if that changes.