Marsa Al Saadiyat Works Due This Quarter: AED 100bn, 58,000 Residents, Abu Dhabi’s Largest Marina

What happened

On 22 July 2026 Aldar unveiled Marsa Al Saadiyat at an event witnessed by Sheikh Khaled bin Mohamed bin Zayed, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi. The district is the final phase of the Saadiyat Island masterplan: 6.4 million square metres along 8 kilometres of waterfront with 5.6 kilometres of beach, a gross development value of AED 100 billion, and homes for more than 58,000 residents in private mansions, branded residences, luxury villas and waterfront apartments, including a hillside community of stand-alone villas. Aldar said that site enabling and primary infrastructure works, which it is designing and delivering itself, commence in the third quarter of 2026, and that sales of the first homes begin in the second half of the year. Its H1 2026 results repeated the H2 launch and added that Aldar itself develops AED 60 billion of the AED 100 billion. Mohamed Khalifa Al Mubarak, Aldar’s chairman, called it the activation of the final phase of the island and the most ambitious chapter yet in its evolution. The third quarter ends on 30 September. At the time of writing Aldar has not issued a separate statement confirming that machinery is on site, so the honest description is that the district has moved from announcement to scheduled works, with the schedule Aldar set now falling due.

What is confirmed

What is not

No price, no price per square foot, no payment plan, no unit sizes, no floor plans, no district names, no phasing map and no completion date for any home. Aldar’s project page still says coming soon. The site’s access roads, the tunnels to Reem Island and Umm Yifeenah, the bridge to a further Aldar island and the rail station are all in the plan without dates of their own beyond the rail line’s reported 2030 horizon. That is normal eight weeks after a masterplan launch. A buyer can register interest, decide a budget and a preferred position, and arrange a mortgage pre-approval. A buyer cannot know what a unit costs, and any figure attached to the name today is not Aldar’s.

What it means for Saadiyat prices

The evidence is the register. Over the 12 months to August 2026 the ADREC register records 1,926 apartment sales on Al Saadiyat Island at a median of AED 3.82 million and AED 3,386 per square foot, and 285 villa sales at a median of AED 9.25 million. The ready apartment median is AED 2.5 million, well below the all-sales figure, which says the island’s new launches are already clearing at a premium to completed stock. Aldar’s own recent release, The Row Saadiyat, registered 574 sales at AED 3,861 per square foot. Knight Frank’s H1 review puts Saadiyat at about AED 43,100 per square metre, up about 21% in the year to June, the most expensive apartment market in the emirate. Marsa Al Saadiyat adds supply to that market, a great deal of it, over a decade or more. In the near term the effect runs the other way: a AED 100 billion commitment to the island, with a marina, a theatre district and a rail station, is the strongest possible statement that the island’s land is finite and its demand is not. The Grove and the Lagoons, both handing over now, sit between an opening Guggenheim on 11 December and a district that will take years to deliver, and that is a comfortable place for a completed Saadiyat asset to be. The risk is pricing. Above the island band, buyers are paying today for 2030 infrastructure; inside it, the first phase will allocate in days, as recent Aldar Saadiyat launches have. The Marsa Al Saadiyat prices guide on this site sets the register out by type and bedroom.

What to do now

Register interest with Aldar or through this desk, decide the position you want (marina, beach, hillside or inland), put the booking funds and the 2% ADREC fee in the UAE, and if you will finance, get a pre-approval on the ADREC off-plan framework. Then wait for the list. The off-plan finder on this site carries the launch with its registered comparables the day it is public.