At six o’clock on Friday evening, January 9, 2026, a new virtual session will convene as part of the Creative Encounters on the Silk Road series, opening the new year with an open dialogue on children’s and young adult literature—one of the literary fields most deeply connected to shaping awareness and nurturing imagination.
The year 2025 was rich in movement, travel, and multi-directional cultural work—a year in which geography intersected with creativity, and personal experience converged with public cultural action, grounded in a firm belief in the role of the word, art, and knowledge in building bridges among peoples.
Major Journeys of the Year:
Ras Al Khaimah ushered in 2026 with a 15-minute New Year’s Eve spectacle of drones and fireworks, setting a new Guinness World Records title for the largest aerial display of a phoenix formed by multirotor drones.
The centrepiece of the celebration was a large-scale drone performance that transformed the night sky into a series of
The United Arab Emirates concluded 2025 with a record-breaking series of athletic achievements, securing unprecedented medal hauls across regional, continental, and global competitions.
The year marked the country’s most successful historical performances in multi-sport events, including record tallies at the GCC Beach Games –
The Sheikh Zayed Book Award (SZBA) at the Abu Dhabi Arabic Language Centre (ALC) has unveiled the longlisted works for the Translation, Contribution to the Development of Nations, and Literary and Art Criticism categories for its 20th edition (2025-2026). The lists were announced as the judging committees began the evaluation of all
