On the morning of September 30, 1978, a sixteen-page black-and-white tabloid was hand-delivered to homes and newsstands across Dubai. The city was a small town with a growing expatriate community that had no access to international news. There was no international media in the region, no satellite television, no internet. The only way to find out about the world outside was to visit one of the hotels that pinned Reuters and Associated Press ticker tapes on boards in their lobbies.
Into that gap stepped Gulf News. When it reached homes that September morning with headlines about drinking and driving, and the announcement of Pope John Paul’s untimely death, it opened the floodgates of information. It was not a sophisticated product by any standard. But it was there, and in a city that was beginning to transform itself at extraordinary speed, being there was everything.
Gulf News was founded by UAE businessman Abdullah Abulhoul, with its offices located on Airport Road in Deira. It was launched and inaugurated by Sheikh Rashid bin Saeed Al Maktoum, Vice-President of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, published in tabloid format six days a week. On the first day, 11,000 copies were printed and distributed free of charge to readers in Dubai and Sharjah. The editorial, advertising, finance, and production team numbered sixty people, with sixty-five more handling distribution.
The early years were difficult. Publication was temporarily suspended in January 1979 amid increasing technical and production challenges, restarting in March of the same year. Gulf News remained erratic, barely surviving with a circulation of around 3,000. Problems were compounded by ownership changes, and with no investors willing to take a risk, it was on the verge of closure.
In January 1980, the format changed from tabloid to morning broadsheet, publishing seven days a week. A weekly lifestyle magazine was introduced, along with a publication for younger readers. The ambition was clear. The execution was still catching up.
In one dramatic move, the fate of Gulf News changed. In 1984, three visionary leading businessmen of Dubai bought the paper. They were Obaid Humaid Al Tayer, Abdullah Al Rostamani, and Juma Al Majid, who formed Al Nisr Publishing and vowed to make Gulf News their flagship publication.
Gulf News was relaunched on December 10, 1985 by Al Nisr Publishing. Within a few months it had new premises, new printing technology, and revitalised editorial, marketing, circulation, and production teams. From February 1986, readers were charged one dirham per copy for the Gulf News package, which comprised the broadsheet newspaper and a colour leisure supplement with classified advertisements titled Tabloid.
The commercial results were immediate and striking. Advertising revenues soared by over 40 percent in the first three months, and subscriptions took a gigantic leap. The phenomenal success of the relaunch was so remarkable that it earned the distinction of being referred to as a unique record in print media within the GCC.
The years following the relaunch were defined by technical ambition. Gulf News became the first newspaper in the region to print colour in broadsheet format, the first with heat-set colour printing on glazed paper from 1986, and the first in the Gulf with computerised page make-up from 1988. Each of these milestones reflected a publication that was not content to simply exist but was pushing the boundaries of what regional journalism could look like.
By the late 1980s, Gulf News was being distributed to other GCC countries, extending its reach beyond the UAE for the first time. The paper was no longer just a Dubai product — it was becoming a regional one.
Gulf News launched its online edition in 1996, early by any regional standard. The internet was still a novelty for most readers, but the editorial team understood that the future of news consumption was changing. It was the website’s major relaunch in 2005 and the introduction of a dedicated technology team that truly transformed gulfnews.com into a significant digital presence.
The investment paid off. Gulf News consistently sold more copies and reached more readers than all other English newspapers in the UAE combined, with average daily print circulation exceeding 109,000 and the website drawing around 1.3 million unique visitors per month. In a media landscape that has seen print publications struggle globally, those are numbers that speak to genuine editorial relevance.
Gulf News became a major campaigning voice in the UAE through multiple social initiatives, including Go-Green and Make It Safe. The brand further sought to nurture the local community by hosting and supporting events such as the Gulf News Fun Drive, the Terry Fox Run, and Roadstar.
Gulf News was the first newspaper to publicly endorse the region’s intellectual scene by supporting events such as the Arab Strategy Forum, which explores the region’s geopolitical challenges and opportunities. For a publication that began as a modest tabloid filling an information vacuum, that kind of institutional ambition represents a considerable distance travelled.
Through its owner Al Nisr Publishing, Gulf News is a subsidiary of the Al Tayer Group, chaired by former UAE Finance Minister Obaid Al Tayer. The ownership structure has remained stable for four decades, which is itself a significant factor in the publication’s consistency and longevity.
Gulf News is now approaching its fiftieth year. It has covered the UAE’s transformation from a small federation of emirates into one of the world’s most recognised cities and economies. It has reported on oil booms and financial crises, on the construction of landmarks that now define Dubai’s skyline, on the arrival of millions of expatriates who made this country their home.
Throughout its history, Gulf News operated as a voice between the government and the people, talking to readers about what concerned them. That positioning — neither detached international observer nor purely official mouthpiece, but something in between — reflects the particular character of media in the UAE: rooted in the country’s development, invested in its future, and shaped by the extraordinary diversity of the audience it has always served.
For anyone who has lived in the UAE for any length of time, Gulf News is simply part of the landscape. It was there before the internet, before satellite news, before social media made everyone a publisher. And it is still here — which, given everything the media industry has been through in the past two decades, is a story worth telling on its own terms.
The United Arab Emirates is the world's strategically located business hub, with business-friendly free zones, developed IT sector and the second-largest economy in the Arab world. Numerous ventures from various industries emerge here every year, enjoying good economical climate, developed ecosystem, low taxes, and many other advantages of UAE. During its continuous growth, UAE's economy helped many local companies to grow with it, becoming globally-recognized brands. On Comingsoon.ae, we created a list of these brands, with our short reviews about their success stories.
