GITEX Adds a Robotics Show in Dubai as Humanoid Makers Line Up Middle East Debuts

The main GITEX GLOBAL 2026 programme opens with the GITEX Summit on 7 December at Dubai World Trade Centre, before the exhibition moves to Expo City. The new show gives Dubai's biggest technology fair a separate stage for what the industry now calls physical AI: systems that sense, reason and act in the real world, not only on a screen.

The timing follows a sharp rise in humanoid robot shipments. The organisers cited Counterpoint Research figures showing more than 22,000 humanoid robots shipped worldwide in the first half of 2026, up 300 percent from a year earlier, with full-year shipments expected to pass 50,000 units. Dubai has its own target: its Robotics and Automation Program aims to deploy 200,000 robots over 10 years to 2032.

Unitree heads the exhibitor list. The organisers described it as one of the world's largest humanoid makers, with 31 percent of the global market. Other headline exhibitors include UBTECH, whose humanoids the organisers said work in car factories and are being tested by Airbus; AiMOGA, the embodied AI robotics brand of carmaker Chery; quadruped maker DEEP Robotics; and the UAE's Micropolis Robotics, which supplies autonomous patrol robots to Dubai Police.

Most of the hardware comes from Chinese manufacturers, with UAE companies acting mainly as integrators and resellers. Dubai-based Mangobot plans to show what it calls a robotic workforce, with general-purpose robots, patrol units, multilingual receptionist robots and wearable exoskeletons that visitors can try. "It's less 'come look at robots' and more 'come see what working alongside robots actually feels like,'" said Mazen El-Kurdi, Mangobot's chief technology officer.

Lootah Robotics, another UAE systems integrator, will show humanoid, quadruped, service, cleaning and telepresence robots from Unitree, AGIBOT, Pudu Robotics, UBTECH and EngineAI. General manager Hazem Ghazal said the company is building "an integrated robotics ecosystem" so that organisations can use different robots for different jobs while keeping central control.

Several Chinese developers are using the show for regional launches. Lumos Robotics will give the Middle East debut of MOS 2, a wheeled, dual-armed "AI Worker" that the company says can carry payloads of up to 50 kg and run for more than eight hours. Lumos said its first-generation MOS robots logged more than 1,000 hours of continuous operation without failure at Mitsubishi Electric's factory in Changshu, handling materials, inspecting quality and driving screws. "Robots need to do more than move. They need to perform useful tasks reliably in real environments," said Cecile Wei, the company's PR director.

Light Origins will make the first public appearance of a bunny-shaped household robot, which co-founder and CTO Tingxiang Fan said is "ready to enter consumers' homes". Raydiculous, from the Chengdu Humanoid Robot Innovation Centre, will show its TP01 humanoid for commercial and public-service settings, which speaks English and Arabic, alongside a bipedal robotic dinosaur called DINOBOT.

The show also has a training strand. UAE robotics education company Besomi will present six humanoid and mobile robots, known as the Besomi Rangers, on a stand shared with Unitree, Seeed Studio, Arduino and Qualcomm. It will run a live lab where engineers can train on Arduino's VENTUNO platform, developed with Qualcomm.

The exhibitor list leans heavily on demonstrations and early commercial pilots. The organisers have not said how many robotics companies will take part or whether deployment deals are expected to be signed during the four days at Expo City.