Ramadan 2027 is expected to begin around 6 to 8 February, with the exact date confirmed by the moon-sighting committee the evening before. Eid Al Fitr lands somewhere around 8 to 10 March. That's the single biggest attention and spend window in the region, and most brands start thinking about it in January, which is roughly two months too late.
Here's the timeline that works, read backwards from day one.
Eight to six months out — now
Decide whether you're actually running a Ramadan campaign or just changing your logo colour for a month. The second one is fine and costs nothing, but don't confuse it with the first.
If you're running a campaign, this is when the idea gets chosen and the budget gets protected. Media rates in the Ramadan window are set by demand, and demand is already visible. Brands that commit early get inventory at a sane price. Brands that commit in January pay whatever's left.
Four months out — October
Creative lock. Treatment, script, cast, locations. Nothing after this point should be a conceptual question.
Ramadan creative has a narrow lane and a lot of failure modes. The work that lands is about generosity, family, and slowing down. The work that doesn't is a normal ad with a crescent moon dropped in the corner, or a sale that treats a religious month as a retail season. Test the idea on someone who fasts before it goes into production, not after.
Three months out — November
Book the crew. This is the part brands underestimate. Between November and February every developer, hotel, and retailer in the UAE is shooting, and the good directors, DOPs, and edit suites are gone first. A January booking gets you whoever nobody else wanted.
Book locations in the same breath, and start the permits. If the shoot involves a mosque exterior, a heritage site, or aerial coverage, the approvals take longer than you'd like — the permit process is its own timeline.
Ten to eight weeks out — late November to December
Shoot. Yes, three months before the campaign runs. Post-production for a campaign of any size is four to six weeks once you count colour, sound, versioning, and the approval rounds nobody schedules but everyone needs.
Shoot the Eid material on the same days. The wardrobe, the cast, and the set are already standing, and coming back in March to shoot two extra films costs multiples of what it costs to shoot them in December.
Six weeks out — late December
Edit locked. Masters, cutdowns, vertical versions, and the Arabic and English variants. Build the versions properly rather than cropping a 16:9 master into a square and hoping. If a film only works with sound, it doesn't work on a feed.
Four weeks out — mid January
Media booked and creative delivered to platforms. Sequencing matters more in Ramadan than in any other month, because behaviour changes by time of day. Mornings are slow. The hours before iftar are the peak. Late night, after taraweeh, is a second peak that most brands underspend.
Plan for the rhythm rather than a flat daily budget across thirty days.
Week one of Ramadan
Publish, then leave the campaign alone for a few days. Early numbers in Ramadan are noisy and brands panic-optimise into the ground. Give it a week before you touch anything.
The last ten nights, and Eid
The final stretch of Ramadan and the run into Eid is where the spending happens and where most brands have already exhausted their creative. Hold budget and at least one unreleased asset for this window.
Eid is a different campaign with a different tone. Ramadan is reflective. Eid is celebratory, generous, loud. Using the same film for both is the most common and most visible shortcut in the market.
What to decide this month
Whether you're in, roughly what you're spending, and who owns it internally. Everything else on this calendar depends on those three answers, and every week you wait shortens the production window at the other end.
If you want a Ramadan campaign scoped against this timeline — creative, production, and media planned as one thing — send us the brief while the calendar still has room in it.