GCC Drone Market 2026 Forecast

Demand in the GCC drone market divides along two axes that cut across all six states: government and defence procurement on one side, and civil or commercial deployment on the other. On the defence side, the United Arab Emirates Ministry of Defence is the buyer of record for the region's largest disclosed 2026 drone contracts, awarded to state-backed conglomerate EDGE Group at the UMEX exhibition in Abu Dhabi in January 2026. Qatar's Ministry of Defence operates through Barzan Holding, which signed a local-production and joint-development agreement for tactical unmanned aerial systems with Turkey's STM at the DIMDEX exhibition in Doha in 2026. Saudi Arabia's Ministry of Defence works through the state-owned Saudi Arabian Military Industries (SAMI), which has held a localisation agreement with Turkey's Baykar, covering electronic systems, mechanical components and composite drone structures, since August 2023.

On the civil and commercial side, the clearest named activity sits in Saudi Arabia and Oman. Saudi Arabia's General Authority of Civil Aviation (GACA), working with the Transport General Authority, tested drone-based postal parcel delivery in September 2025, and by May 2026 had issued the first operational permit for drone-based medicine delivery and medical-logistics operations to Terra Drone Arabia, covering the boundaries of the Holy Sites in Makkah during Hajj. In Oman, ESBAAR, a commercial drone-services provider founded in 2017, has carried out pipeline and infrastructure inspection work for CC Energy Development, an operator in Blocks 3 and 4; that engagement was announced in 2021, and the source reviewed for this page did not carry a more recent update on its scope or renewal. In Kuwait, Al-Anba reporting from February 2025 described Kuwait Petroleum Corporation and its subsidiaries as planning, not yet confirmed as having deployed, an expanded drone inspection programme across fields, refineries, pipelines and export terminals.

Bahrain stands apart on the civil side of the market. Its Civil Aviation Affairs directorate, under the Ministry of Transportation and Telecommunications, states on its own regulations page that all drone activities and related approvals in the Kingdom are suspended until further notice, with no resumption date published in the source reviewed for this page. No named commercial drone operator or civil procurement record for Bahrain was found in the sources fetched for this page; that absence is scoped to those sources, not asserted as a fact about the Bahraini market as a whole.

The United Arab Emirates General Civil Aviation Authority (GCAA) issued Safety Decision 2026-03 on 28 February 2026, suspending, with immediate effect, all authorisations and approvals for unmanned aircraft systems (commercial and recreational) and light sport aircraft across UAE airspace, and barring new authorisations while the suspension held. Issue 02, dated 27 March 2026, widened the scope to include balloon operations and Part-SPO specialised operations such as aerial photography, calibration flights and skydiving, and added a mechanism for the GCAA to grant written exemptions. Both decisions cite "prevailing circumstances affecting national airspace safety and security" without naming a specific incident. According to a UAE drone-services operator's account of official notifications, the GCAA and the Dubai Civil Aviation Authority (DCAA) confirmed a resumption of commercial UAV operations effective 30 June 2026, under existing GCAA certification, DCAA clearance and operator-specific permit requirements; this page was not able to locate and fetch the GCAA or DCAA's own lifting notice directly, so the resumption date is treated as reported rather than as independently confirmed.

Saudi Arabia's General Authority of Civil Aviation (GACA) has moved in the opposite direction on the civil side, expanding rather than restricting drone use. Registration in the Kingdom runs through GACA's UAS Portal, authenticated via the national Nafath identity system. In May 2026, GACA issued its first operational permit for drone-based medicine and medical-logistics delivery, to Terra Drone Arabia, for operations within the Holy Sites in Makkah during Hajj, building on operational trials conducted during the previous Hajj season. Import of drone hardware into the Kingdom additionally requires coordination with the Ministry of Interior.

Qatar enacted Law No. 10 of 2026 on Unmanned Aircraft, published in the twelfth issue of the Official Gazette for 2026. The law requires registration of all covered drones, sorts users into three licensing categories with distinct obligations, and requires commercial operators to hold insurance and secure approvals from the sector regulator relevant to their activity in addition to a Qatar Civil Aviation Authority (QCAA) licence. Government institutions and public entities must coordinate with the QCAA before conducting drone operations. Penalties for the most serious violations run to seven years' imprisonment, a fine of up to QR300,000, or both, with mandatory confiscation of the aircraft; other violations carry fines of up to QR200,000; the authority can also suspend a licence for up to three months or close a business for up to 15 days, both extendable for repeat or continuing breaches, and drone owners are held jointly liable with the operator, pilot, controller or crew member for third-party or property damage. As of the QCAA's own 30 July 2026 statement, the law's executive regulations, which would set out the detailed technical requirements, had not yet been issued.

Oman's Civil Aviation Authority issued a circular on 17 February 2026 requiring licensed commercial outlets for drone sales, registration of sold units through the CAA's AirPortal platform, and a formal ownership transfer through the Serb application before any aircraft changes hands. Two weeks later, on 3 March 2026, the same authority suspended all operating permits for unmanned aircraft and a wider set of aerial activities, including paragliding and paramotoring, "as a precautionary step to safeguard national airspace," with no new permits to be issued while the suspension held and no resumption date stated in the source reviewed for this page.

Kuwait enacted Decree-Law No. 89 of 2026, published in the official gazette Kuwait Al Youm in September 2026 and effective from its publication date. It establishes a registration, import, manufacture, sale and operation regime for drones, light aircraft and air-sports activities, run through the Directorate General for Civil Aviation (DGCA) with Ministry of Interior approval required for importing, manufacturing, assembling, programming or modifying drones. Registration is mandatory for drones over 250 grams, with registration changes to be reported within seven working days. Penalties are tiered: minor violations carry up to six months' imprisonment and fines of KD300 to KD700; moderate violations, including operating without Interior Ministry approval, up to two years and KD1,000 to KD2,000; and serious violations, covering commercial operation and restricted-airspace breaches, up to three years and KD3,000 to KD5,000. Existing owners have one year to comply, and the law's executive regulations are due by 31 December 2026.

Bahrain's regulatory position is the simplest to state and the least documented in public sources: Civil Aviation Affairs, under the Ministry of Transportation and Telecommunications, states on its own laws-and-regulations page that all drone activities and related approvals in the Kingdom are suspended until further notice, covering both operations and the processing of new permit or approval applications. The page reviewed for this page does not appear to state when the suspension began or when it might end.

The largest disclosed 2026 drone procurement in the GCC ran through UMEX, the biennial unmanned-systems exhibition in Abu Dhabi. On 21 and 22 January 2026, the UAE Ministry of Defence awarded EDGE Group contracts for 92 HT-750 unmanned rotary-wing aircraft, valued at AED1.396 billion (about USD380 million), and 76 smaller HT-100 aircraft, valued at AED661.194 million; the source reviewed did not state a US dollar figure for the HT-100 contract specifically. Both types are produced and delivered by EDGE entity ANAVIA, a Switzerland-based unmanned-systems developer that is 52%-owned by EDGE. Separately at UMEX 2026, EDGE subsidiary ADASI unveiled the Jeniah unmanned combat aerial vehicle, described by one trade outlet as "a system approaching the configuration of a deployable combat asset" rather than a conceptual mock-up, with a stated maximum takeoff weight above 4,000 kilograms, an 11-metre fuselage, a 7-metre wingspan, turbofan propulsion, a cruise speed near Mach 0.7, a payload of up to 480 kilograms and internal weapons bays. No contract or customer for the Jeniah was reported in the source reviewed.

Saudi Arabia's principal localisation record predates the current forecast window but remains the operative framework: on 7 August 2023 in Riyadh, under the patronage of the Minister of Defence, the state-owned Saudi Arabian Military Industries (SAMI) signed a localisation agreement with Turkey's Baykar covering the manufacture of electronic systems, mechanical components and composite drone structures, final aviation testing, and training and support services. The agreement extended two acquisition contracts the Ministry of Defence had signed with Baykar two weeks earlier. In a parallel memorandum, Saudi's National Company for Mechanical Systems (NCMS) agreed with Turkey's Roketsan and Aselsan to localise production of ammunition and optical sensors for drones. More recent public statements on delivery or production timelines under this programme were not found in the pages fetched for this page.

Qatar's most recent named agreement is the STM-Barzan Holding memorandum of understanding, signed at DIMDEX 2026 in Doha, covering local production and joint development of STM's tactical unmanned aerial systems in Qatar, with the framework also set to assess cooperation on unmanned naval platforms; STM is named as providing engineering, systems development and technology integration support to Barzan as a development partner. No financial value for the agreement was stated in the source reviewed.

Civil-side funding and deployment records are thinner and, where they exist, mostly describe intent rather than completed contracts. Kuwait Petroleum Corporation and its subsidiaries were, per February 2025 Al-Anba reporting, planning to expand drone-based inspection across oil fields, refineries, pipelines and export operations as part of a digital-transformation programme; the reporting describes a planning stage, not a signed contract. Saudi Arabia's postal-drone pilot, run jointly by GACA and the Transport General Authority in September 2025, tested parcel delivery ahead of the Hajj medical-drone permit issued the following year. In Oman, ESBAAR's 2021 engagement with CC Energy Development, covering a 98-kilometre pipeline and two telecom towers across Blocks 3 and 4, is the clearest publicly documented example of a domestic commercial operator holding an industrial contract in the sector, though the announcement predates this page's 2026 forecast window and no more recent renewal or expansion was found in the sources reviewed.

The defence-industrial side of the GCC drone market is dominated by state-backed national champions rather than open commercial competition. EDGE Group, the UAE's state-backed defence and technology conglomerate, is the region's most active name across 2026 procurement, delivering unmanned systems through at least two distinct entities: ANAVIA, the Switzerland-based, EDGE-majority-owned developer of the HT-100 and HT-750 rotary-wing platforms sold to the UAE Ministry of Defence, and ADASI, the Abu Dhabi-based subsidiary behind the Jeniah combat drone unveiled at UMEX 2026. The two entities occupy different tiers of the same portfolio: rotary-wing logistics and surveillance platforms on one side, a fixed-wing combat asset on the other.

Saudi Arabia's industrial response runs through SAMI, the Kingdom's state-owned defence company, which has pursued localisation of Turkish drone technology rather than developing an indigenous platform from a standing start; its 2023 agreement with Baykar, alongside NCMS's parallel agreement with Roketsan and Aselsan, positions Saudi industry as a manufacturing and integration partner for established Turkish designs rather than as an independent original design house, on the evidence reviewed for this page. Qatar's Barzan Holding is following a similar path with STM, seeking local production and joint development rather than an outright purchase.

On the civil and commercial side, competitive activity is far less consolidated and, in the sources reviewed for this page, thinly documented outside Saudi Arabia and Oman. Terra Drone Arabia holds the first GACA permit for medical-drone logistics at the Holy Sites, a first-mover position in a use case, Hajj medical logistics, that is specific to Saudi Arabia and unlikely to transfer directly to the other five states. ESBAAR occupies a comparable first-documented position in Omani industrial drone inspection, though its most recent publicly reported engagement on the record reviewed here dates to 2021. No named commercial drone importer, distributor or service provider was found in the sources fetched for Bahrain, Kuwait or the UAE's civil (non-defence) segment for this page; that gap in the public record, not an assertion that no such companies exist, is what this page can state.

Three research houses publish standalone GCC drone market estimates, and their figures for what is nominally the same six-state market disagree by more than an order of magnitude on base-year size. IMARC Group puts the market at USD 666.4 million in 2025, rising to USD 2,083.1 million by 2034 at a 13.50% compound annual growth rate for 2026-2034. Mordor Intelligence puts the same 2025 base year more than three times higher, at USD 2.07 billion, rising to USD 2.32 billion in 2026 and USD 4.12 billion by 2031 at a 12.12% CAGR, and additionally reports Saudi Arabia holding the largest single-country share (34.12% in 2025) with Qatar posting the fastest country-level growth (13.74% CAGR through 2031). Market Research Future puts a 2024 base year at just USD 0.194 billion, reaching USD 0.375 billion by 2035 at a 6.19% CAGR, an order of magnitude below either of the other two.

None of the three fetched pages discloses a scope definition, hardware alone against hardware plus services, civil use against civil plus defence, or consumer platforms against commercial and government fleets, that would reconcile figures this far apart for overlapping base years. The gap is characteristic of syndicated market-research reports generally, where headline numbers are frequently drawn from different segment definitions and are not designed to be compared directly against a competitor's report; it is stated here as a documented feature of the public record on this market, not resolved into a single house figure this page treats as authoritative.