Israeli companies will not participate in the 2025 Dubai Airshow

Following media reports last month about their potential involvement, Israeli companies will officially not take part as exhibitors in this year’s Dubai Airshow. Although the latter has featured Israeli participation in recent editions since the signing of the 2020 Abraham Accords, Tel Aviv will be absent in the upcoming exhibitions.

What is the Dubai airshow?

In 1986, Dubai Airshow began as Arab Air, bringing together aviation professionals at the Dubai World Trade Centre. It aims to shape the future of aerospace, accelerate business and investment, as well as advance industry intelligence.

Today, in the 2025 event, the Dubai Show is hosting more than 1,500 exhibitors and more than 148,000 industry professionals from over 47 countries – the biggest and boldest yet. This year’s edition will focus on defense primarily, with Timothy Hawes, managing director of Informa Markets, which organizes the Dubai Airshow, revealing that “Defense is a huge part of this Dubai Airshow. It is probably 40 to 50 per cent of the show in some respects for the exhibition site.”

Israel’s absence from this year’s edition

Hawes confirmed that “Israeli companies won't be participating as part of the exhibition at this show.” There were 6 Israeli defense companies that were registered to exhibit at the 2025 Dubai Show before notification from the show organizers, according to informed sources. Due to the fact that defense will take center stage in the upcoming exhibition, Tel Aviv’s participation would be highly controversial and unacceptable.

This comes after Israel breached Qatar’s territorial sovereignty and targeted the Hamas delegation in Doha, which had been a key mediator in the Gaza ceasefire talks. The unprecedented attack garnered widespread international criticism and caused Qatar to temporarily suspend its mediation efforts (before resuming them following a formal and public apology offered by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during his last visit to the White House).

With that being said, accepting the participation of Israeli companies in a defense-centered exhibition held at a neighboring Arab country after Qatar’s incident would cause outrage in the Arab world, and Doha specifically.