Dubai Company Formation Abu Dhabi will host the IMF and World Bank annual meetings in 2029
The Annual Meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank Group go abroad every third year; the other two they stay in Washington. In 2029 they come to Abu Dhabi.
The signing
The agreement was signed on 18 October 2026 in Bangkok, on the margins of this year's meetings, by Mohamed bin Hadi Al Hussaini, Minister of State for Financial Affairs, and Khaled Mohamed Balama, Governor of the Central Bank, for the UAE, with Ajay Banga, President of the World Bank Group, and Kristalina Georgieva, Managing Director of the IMF.
What comes with it
The meetings bring finance ministers and central bank governors from the two institutions' 191 member countries, with the commercial banks, asset managers and press that follow them. The ministry puts the attendance in the tens of thousands.
The last time
Dubai hosted the meetings in 2003, the first in the Middle East. The 2029 edition is the first in Abu Dhabi and the second in the country.
Why it is on a company site
For a business registered in the UAE, the meetings are a week in which the people who set the terms of trade finance, sovereign lending and currency policy are in one city, holding side events that are far easier to get into than the plenary. Firms that sell to governments, and banks that sell to firms, plan their 2029 around it.
The useful comparison is 2003. Dubai hosted the meetings a year before DIFC opened, and the city's financial centre was built in the decade that followed. Abu Dhabi already has ADGM and the sovereign funds, so 2029 is less an opening than an audit: the institutions will be meeting in a city whose funds are among their own largest co-investors. The practical note for a smaller firm is that the week's side programme is run by the host, not by the IMF, and the host decides who exhibits.
Source: Ministry of Finance checked against the source
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