UAE Falls to 15th in IMD's Digital and AI Ranking but Still Leads MENA

The Swiss business school released the results on November 12. The UAE scored 91.13, down from 93.38 a year earlier, according to the figures as reported by Middle East AI News. IMD has renamed the study, which used to be the World Digital Competitiveness Ranking, to add measures of AI adoption and readiness. The 2025 edition covered 69 economies, so the year-on-year change compares two editions that do not measure exactly the same things.

The ranking matters to Gulf governments because they cite international league tables to show progress on national AI strategies. Those strategies are being used to attract data centre investment, chip supply agreements and technology talent.

The United States is first with a score of 100.00. Singapore is second on 99.79 and the Netherlands third on 97.08, followed by Denmark and Canada. China is seventh and South Korea tenth.

Saudi Arabia is 20th with 86.55, second in the region. The kingdom came second worldwide for companies' awareness of AI cybersecurity risks and fourth for carrying out its national AI strategy. Saudi coverage of the results also put it fourth for corporate AI adoption and for public access to AI technologies, and seventh for AI skills development, cities' use of AI in public services and companies' work to reduce algorithmic bias. The kingdom was outside the top 20 in last year's digital ranking.

Qatar is 30th on 82.31. It ranks fourth worldwide on IMD's trust sub-factor and seventh for business practices. Bahrain is 33rd (80.60), Oman 36th (79.89), Jordan 40th (76.77) and Kuwait 49th, so all seven MENA economies in the study are in the top 50.

IMD scores each economy on 88 criteria. Fifty-one are hard statistics and 37 come from its Executive Opinion Survey, which runs from February to April each year. The criteria fall under five factors: governance, technology and infrastructure, efficiency, workforce development, and values. Because so much of the score comes from executives' views, the results reflect business sentiment as well as measurable capacity.

The UAE's drop contrasts with its showing in IMD's flagship World Competitiveness Ranking, published in June. There it was fifth overall and first for economic performance, and second in the world for citizen trust in artificial intelligence.

IMD also published an AI Maturity Index of companies alongside the country ranking. Nvidia is first, followed by Alphabet and Microsoft. SoftBank Group and Samsung Electronics entered the top five, replacing Meta Platforms and Amazon.

The UAE government had not commented publicly on the 2026 result at the time of writing. IMD's full report, with each economy's results on individual criteria, is available from the school.