The thing that moves a shoot date in Dubai is almost never the camera. It's paperwork. Crews get booked, talent gets held, a location says yes, and then someone asks whether the permit came through and the room goes quiet. Here's how the process actually runs, so you can build a schedule that survives contact with it.
One authority, one portal
The Dubai Film and TV Commission is the body that issues filming permits for the emirate. You register on the DFTC portal, create the project, and submit. One application can carry multiple days and multiple locations, which matters more than it sounds — splitting a three-day shoot into three applications is a common and expensive mistake.
Abu Dhabi runs its own process through its own authority. If your schedule crosses the emirate border, you are running two applications, not one.
What it costs
The DFTC charges a non-refundable application fee of around AED 520 per submission, with public-location filming adding roughly AED 2,520 on top. Confirm both on the portal before you build them into a budget, because these numbers do get revised.
Private locations are a different question entirely. There, the fee is whatever the owner decides, and the ceiling published for private locations sits around AED 25,000 per day. A hotel lobby, a mall atrium, a tower's podium level, a villa in a gated community — each one sets its own number based on how badly they want your production there and how much revenue you're costing them by being in the way. A rooftop that costs nothing on a Tuesday morning in August can cost five figures in March.
What they ask you for
Expect to supply a project description, the script or a shot brief, a shooting schedule, and a full crew and cast list with passport copies. Add a commissioning letter from the client, and a No Objection Certificate from the property owner for anything shot on private premises.
That NOC is the item that derails schedules. It comes from the landlord, not the commission, and it moves at the landlord's pace. Chase it the day the location is confirmed, not the week of the shoot.
Drones are a separate process, not a checkbox
This is where productions get caught. A filming permit does not cover flying. Commercial drone work in Dubai needs approval from the General Civil Aviation Authority and a separate permit from the Dubai Civil Aviation Authority. The DCAA does not treat GCAA registration as a substitute. Both are required.
Underneath that sit the operator authorisation, a licensed remote pilot, third-party liability insurance with cover in the region of AED 1,000,000 per aircraft, and an operations manual. Individual flight requests typically need submitting around five business days ahead.
If your production company already holds all of this, a drone day is a scheduling question. If it doesn't, you are looking at several weeks to build the file from scratch — well past the point where it can be added to a shoot that's already booked. Ask any production company you're considering whether they hold current GCAA and DCAA approvals. It's one line in an email and the answer tells you a lot.
The lead time to actually plan for
Standard DFTC approval commonly lands in two to five working days. That is the approval window, not the planning window.
Working backwards from a shoot day, the honest sequence is: lock the location, get the NOC, submit the permit, and leave room for one round of questions from the commission. Two to three weeks between "location confirmed" and "camera rolls" is comfortable. One week is possible and unpleasant. Anything shorter and you're gambling with a booked crew.
Ramadan and the peak season between November and March compress everything, because every developer, hotel, and brand in the city is shooting at once and the same locations are fielding the same requests.
What gets applications sent back
Vague project descriptions. A crew list that doesn't match who turns up. Drone work mentioned in the treatment but absent from the application. A location named loosely — "Downtown" is not an address, and the commission needs to know exactly where people will be standing.
Filming without a permit carries fines, and more practically, it ends the shoot. Security moves you on, the location owner gets involved, and the day is gone with the crew already paid.
If you'd rather not manage any of this, that's what a production company is for — permits, NOCs, and aerial approvals are part of the job, not a line item you should be chasing. Send us the brief and we'll come back with dates and a fixed price that already account for the paperwork.