If you’ve spent even a week in Dubai, you’ve seen the rite of passage in motion: learner cars circling the same roundabouts, hazard lights blinking, and instructors calmly coaching through the city’s most familiar test routes. For a place that still runs on wheels — commutes, school drop-offs, client meetings, even quick supermarket trips — a UAE driving entitlement quickly becomes one of those “adulting in Dubai” milestones, alongside sorting your Emirates ID or setting up a bank account.
In fact, Dubai’s Roads & Transport Authority (RTA) reports that the emirate replaced more than 58,000 foreign driving licenses in 2026, a handy indicator of just how steady the pipeline can be for driving schools. That’s why driving schools are a steady, repeatable business category tied to Dubai’s constant inflow of new residents. Every month brings fresh arrivals: employees on new contracts, founders relocating to build something, students starting semesters, and families settling into new neighbourhoods. Many of them arrive thinking they can rely on taxis and ride-hailing indefinitely, then reality hits: work sites are spread out, schedules get tight, and convenience starts to look a lot like having your own driving license.
Whether you’re setting up your first training car, expanding an existing motoring business, or launching a full-scale academy with multiple instructors, you need a trade license to start operating a driving school in Dubai.
Automobile Driving School – 8549.09
This business activity covers the operation of a professional driving school that delivers structured driver education through a mix of classroom-style theory teaching and supervised, on-road practical lessons, typically for light vehicles and, where the correct approvals are in place, additional categories such as motorcycles or heavy vehicles.
Under this business activity, you’re permitted to run a licensed training centre, provide theory instruction, deliver practical driving sessions, and guide learners through a clear pathway towards official test readiness, including managing bookings, lesson plans, instructor allocations, student progression, and the training records and logs that may be checked during inspections.
In the real world, that often looks like balancing peak-time schedules, onboarding new learners, tracking who’s ready to book a test, and keeping your documentation tight. You might be running a full-scale school offering evening theory classes with weekend practical slots for busy professionals, a specialised centre focused on a single category such as motorcycle training, with dedicated vehicles and instructors, or a premium service aimed at expats and corporate fleet drivers with structured lesson documentation for employer reimbursement.
However, you are not allowed to engage in providing adult literacy programmes, general secondary education, driving schools for occupational drivers, higher education, or cultural education.
Third-Party Approval:
Third-party approval from the Roads and Transport Authority (RTA) is required before the trade license is issued.
Note that this business activity cannot be combined with other RTA activities, only with RTA Group B.
Anti-Money Laundering Compliance:
Business activity 8549.09 is exempt from this requirement.
