Eid Al Etihad 2025: How Can Brands Be a Part of UAE Unity?

The United Arab Emirates is gearing up to honour its national day, Eid Al Etihad, on Tuesday 2nd December 2025, marking 54 years since the seven emirates first united in 1971. Across two days of public holiday, UAE residents dressed in the red, green, black, and white of the flag will venture out into the streets for an array of fireworks and artworks, performances and parades.

But how do brands show up and join in the celebrations? Typically, local brands throw themselves into it, with activations that touch the real world and resonate. Global advertisers? Not so much.

This year, M+C Saatchi Middle East strategist, Samar Mustafa, invites international brands to participate more meaningfully than they may have before. Typically, most have adjusted their colourways to match the flag, introduced special offers, or put out commemorative social posts or emotional films. Perhaps they should follow the lead of the locals.

Thinking back to most campaign that made the biggest impact personally, Samar recalls how one brand engaged with themes of sustainability for the golden jubilee year. “In 2021, there was a collab between The National, which is a newspaper, and Havas, and they made a plantable newspaper, They used Ghaf tree seeds, which is the national tree of the UAE, biodegradable paper, and vegetable oil, so that when you finished reading the paper, you could plant it. That was refreshing.”

It’s a significant moment in a rising market’s calendar that international brands have potentially overlooked. Moving forward, how can they show up in a way that feels genuine and respectful – not forced?

Authentic Participation

In this year’s theme of ‘United’, Samar perceives a special opportunity for brands to show up in a way consumers actually want to see. With so many residents constantly coming and going, genuine community is something people crave. Brands have the power to facilitate that. “It’s a great space for brands to explore because it’s all about strengthening social bonds and creating more inclusive spaces. I hope we see work that really leans into that, with interesting activations that genuinely bring people together,” says Samar.

There are a couple ways brands can do that. As citizens flood the streets, brands can meet them exactly where they are by creating experiences for them to share in; but they can also reflect the nation’s pride in their storytelling, showcasing the magnificence of the melting pot. To do that, international brands must first get to know the market on a deeper level.

Samar adds, “National Day carries a lot of pride, so showing up authentically matters. People appreciate brands that genuinely understand the culture and celebrate it with care and love rather than staying at the surface level of a flag post or treating it like a checklist just to be part of the moment.”

The strategist points to local brands like delivery apps, Talabat and noon, as prime examples of localisation done well – ones that see the culture as it is instead of through a Western lens. If larger international brands want to resonate in the same way, she argues, they need to put in the work. Hiring Arabic speakers in the region is not enough; time, effort, and research into the UAE’s subcultures is required to speak to the market authentically come Eid Al Etihad. At the same time, brands must strike the balance between wanting to participate in the day and commercialising it.

Honouring Heritage While Looking Ahead

There’s a second balancing act that takes place on Eid Al Etihad: paying homage to the UAE’s heritage without losing sight of the future. It’s naturally embedded into the day – quotes from when Sheikh Zayed was founding the nation carve out his vision for its evolution.

​Hafsa Qureshi, business director at Serviceplan Group Middle East, points out, “There’s a push towards growth and prosperity, so there's a strong sense of pride in what we have been and what we can achieve.”

That manifests itself around the country in artwork fusing past, present, and future. “There’ll be artists, musicians, photographers, etc. who almost remix aspects of heritage and create artistic interpretations of them,” Hafsa continues, shouting out the work of contemporary artist, Dina Saadi. “She's reinterpreted Emirati culture through a new, street culture lens, I would call it.”

Among the notable work of the year, Hafsa comments, is Dubai Brand and Dubai International Finance Centre (DIFC) Eid Al Etihad artwork: “They’ve put the country’s founders, Sheikh Zayed and Sheikh Rashid, at the forefront with monumental portraits done on The Gate Building, and creating collaborative events with different brands in the region to celebrate this as a month-long celebration.” The 50-metre tall mural explicitly sets legacy and ambition side by side, juxtaposing the founding fathers with symbols of the UAE’s achievements in space exploration, from the Hope Probe to the Rashid Rover.

Codes of Conduct

For brands looking to engage with future national day celebrations, the rules of the game have never been clearer. Becoming a more closely protected brand itself this year, the official Eid Al Etihad site has published a centralised brand kit available to all who need them, not just official partners.

“What’s new this year isn’t the idea of protecting national symbols – that’s been there for a long time – but the way it’s being expressed as a full brand system,” says Haïkel Ben Hamouda, Magnitude Creative’s head of strategy. “The language is explicitly about ‘unifying celebrations across the UAE’, which frames Eid Al Etihad less as a loose collection of local initiatives and more as a single, orchestrated national brand moment.”

The evolution mirrors the UAE’s broader movement to consciously define and protect its identity, Haïkel observes. In recent years, the nation rebranded the national day from ‘Union Day’ to the same meaning in Arabic, ‘Eid Al Etihad’, in a more authentic reflection of its roots. The long-standing rule that non-Emiratis cannot portray Emiratis in media was also publicly re-emphasised this year, following some high-profile missteps.

It seems that the UAE is encouraging all media toward “clearer, more compliant frameworks for how the country, its leaders and its people are represented in content,” says the head of strategy. He describes it as a mix of “identity sovereignty (wanting Emirati identity and national symbols to be depicted through the lens of Emiratis themselves) and nation-branding at scale: treating Eid Al Etihad as a strategic communications platform, not just a public holiday, and giving the whole ecosystem a single visual language to play within.”