The UAE launches an AED 9M challenge for federal employees on AI

The UAE launches an AED 9M challenge for federal employees to build AI agents. His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, announced the Annual Government Challenge on 2 November 2026. The first edition coincides with UAE Innovation Month and asks employees of federal ministries and entities to design agentic AI assistants. Nine winning projects will share total prizes of AED 9 million. The Mohammed bin Rashid Centre for Government Innovation at the Ministry of Cabinet Affairs will oversee the program. The challenge is open to all federal ministries, entities and their staff. Teams register on the dedicated platform at challenge.gov.ae . Entries are judged on alignment with strategic priorities, quality and feasibility of the idea, suitability of the agentic AI application, measurable impact, scalability, governance and sustainability. The first edition focuses on three categories. Government Services covers solutions that serve customers directly, simplify journeys and reduce time and steps. Internal Operations targets coordination, monitoring, analysis and decision-making inside entities, with emphasis on cutting repetitive work. Unconventional Ideas invites new models that reimagine how government functions. Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid said the launch aims to inspire government talent to create bold solutions with real impact on services, operations and projects. He added that the first challenge is agentic AI and that the top nine government projects and teams will be honored. He called for unconventional ideas that make a difference and take government work to new levels. Mohammad bin Abdullah Al Gergawi, Minister of Cabinet Affairs and Chairman of the National Committee for the Agentic AI Project, has noted that the government plans to deploy agentic AI assistants to work alongside employees. The challenge forms part of the UAE government’s target to transition 50 percent of government sectors, services and operations to agentic AI models within two years. That target was set earlier in 2026. In May the Cabinet approved a capability program to train 80,000 federal employees, from ministers to junior staff, across five occupational categories. A digital platform powered by agentic tools is intended to support personalized learning. The first four federal agents were launched in May for procurement, tax auditing, customer happiness and technical support. Later phases include a national technical ecosystem called FedAI to help agencies develop and operate agentic services. Agentic systems differ from standard chat tools. They can be given permission to act on defined tasks with limited supervision, such as updating a record or assisting a routine check, while officials retain final oversight. The Annual Government Challenge seeks to embed a culture of innovation and positive competition inside government work and to expand the role of existing talent in designing practical solutions. Each annual edition of the challenge will focus on one national priority. This first edition centers on redesigning services and operations, enhancing decision-making and raising performance through agentic AI. No individual prize amounts per category have been published. The total pool is AED 9 million for the nine winning projects. Registration details, submission deadlines and exact evaluation timelines beyond the platform address have not been listed in the initial announcement. The program sits inside a broader effort that includes the earlier training commitment and the launch of initial agents. In the wider Gulf, Saudi Arabia has also moved on public-sector AI foundations, while the UAE has set a two-year window for half of its federal work to shift to agentic models. The challenge is one concrete channel through which federal employees can propose the projects that populate that shift. If the next update from the Mohammed bin Rashid Centre for Government Innovation or the Ministry of Cabinet Affairs names submission deadlines, individual prize amounts or the first cohort of selected projects, the challenge has a measurable follow-through. If the next statement only restates that registration is open, the change for the market remains the same as the 2 November announcement. The figures missing from the current disclosure are the individual prize amounts per category, exact submission deadlines and evaluation timelines. The challenge is one step in the UAE’s two-year plan to move half of federal government work to agentic AI.