Published: 4 September 2026
The Arts Club began in London in 1863 as a meeting place for people connected with the arts, literature and sciences. Its membership would eventually include figures such as Charles Dickens, Franz Liszt, Frederic Leighton, Auguste Rodin and James McNeill Whistler. More than a century and a half later, its first international outpost opened in Dubai, placing that tradition not in another historic residential quarter, but within ICD Brookfield Place at the centre of DIFC.
That move is what makes the Dubai club particularly interesting. DIFC is principally associated with finance, law and investment, yet the working life of such a district depends as much on the places where people meet outside formal offices as on the offices themselves. Across 65,000 square feet, The Arts Club provides dining rooms, lounges, a library, exhibition space and private rooms in which those exchanges can continue over lunch, art, music or an evening drink. In this setting, the private club becomes part of the social infrastructure of the financial centre, bringing a nineteenth-century idea of repeated association into the daily life of contemporary Dubai.
A London Institution Recast for Dubai
The Dubai club interprets its Mayfair heritage through a contemporary interior. ICD Brookfield Place provides the Foster + Partners-designed architectural frame, while Milan-based Dimorestudio devised the interiors. Architectural Digest has noted that ten varieties of coloured marble were used across the floors, accompanied by patterned textiles, timber, lacquer, vintage references and specially selected furniture.
These interiors unfold as a sequence of rooms with different purposes. Members’ lounges sit alongside a library, dedicated art spaces and a rooftop terrace, allowing the atmosphere to change as the day progresses. Breakfast, a private conversation, dinner with friends and a late drink each have an appropriate setting rather than being accommodated in the same room. DIFC describes the club as having three restaurants and five lounges in addition to its other spaces.
For members whose homes or offices are nearby, this arrangement has a practical quality. The club can provide a meeting place between appointments, somewhere to work over lunch or a familiar address before returning home. Privacy comes both from access restricted to members and their guests and from having enough distinct rooms for different kinds of company.
Dining Through the Day
The club’s three principal restaurants follow different parts of that routine. The Brasserie is the all-day dining room, serving breakfast, lunch and dinner. Its changing seasonal menu draws principally on Mediterranean flavours, making it suited to anything from an early breakfast to a longer evening meal.
Rōhen changes the pace. Its Nikkei menu brings Japanese and Peruvian cooking together, while evening music gives the restaurant a livelier character later in the day. Ofelia takes another direction through Italian cooking under chef Alessandro Stefani, accompanied by its own programme of live performances during the season.
Elsewhere, the club offers more specific settings. Oscuro, on the fifth floor, houses a bespoke humidor alongside its selection of cigars, spirits and wines. On the rooftop, Oscuro Kitchen provides alfresco dining, while the members’ lounges, library and terrace have their own club menu. The result is a choice between a formal meal, something brief between meetings and a longer evening without leaving the clubhouse.
Weekends bring a family element to the daytime programme. Children are welcomed in The Brasserie and Rōhen during specified weekend and public-holiday hours, while the club maintains separate adult spaces later in the day. That way, families can use the club during the day while the evenings retain a more adult character.
Art as Part of Daily Life
Art remains central to the club’s identity. Its permanent contemporary collection continues to develop across the building, bringing together regional and international artists at different stages of their careers. Works represented in the collection and throughout the clubhouse include pieces by Yto Barrada, Amoako Boafo, Daniel Richter, Shara Hughes and Dubai-based Syrian artist Nour Malas.
The setting changes the way those works are encountered. Unlike a single exhibition visit, membership means returning to the same paintings, photographs and sculptures over breakfast, meetings or dinner. A work can remain in view long enough for its scale, colour and subject to become familiar, an experience with particular resonance for anyone who collects or is beginning to look at contemporary art more closely.
Alongside the permanent collection is a changing exhibition programme. The 2026 programme has included presentations devoted to Sylvia Ong and Salmah Almansoori, as well as Vanguards: Masters of Middle Eastern Contemporary Art. Gallery tours, artist talks and topical discussions accompany the visual programme, while music, interviews, debates and The Culture Counter podcast extend it beyond the walls.
This gives the art programme a social dimension. Members can encounter an artist’s work in the club, hear a discussion around it and then return to it later in a different context. For collectors, the value lies partly in that continuity. In this way, art becomes part and parcel of life at the club.
Membership and Access
Access to The Arts Club Dubai is for members and their guests. Full membership is currently open to applicants aged 30 and above, with an annual subscription of AED18,900 and a member assessment fee of AED15,750. Separate membership rates apply to applicants under 30 and to spouses sharing the same address as a full member.
Membership also extends beyond Dubai. An additional international subscription gives Dubai members full access to The Arts Club London, while reciprocal arrangements provide access, subject to the relevant rules, to selected private clubs in Europe and the United States. For people who regularly move between cities, that network adds a practical element to membership beyond the facilities available in DIFC.
The clubhouse has its own conventions. Members and guests follow an elegant dress code and the club’s rules, while private dining and entertaining are available to members. These details give the rooms a degree of consistency even as their purpose changes from breakfast to business meetings, cultural events and late-evening gatherings.
A Social Address Within the Financial Centre
The Arts Club arrived in DIFC as the district was already firmly established around finance and professional services. Its contribution operates on another level. It provides somewhere for a conversation to continue after an office meeting, for lunch to extend into the afternoon, or for art and music to enter a working week. Its location within ICD Brookfield Place makes those uses particularly easy to combine.
That helps explain why the club makes more sense when considered through patterns of use rather than an inventory of rooms. The Brasserie at breakfast, an exhibition during the afternoon and dinner at Rōhen serve different moments in the day, yet each belongs to the same address. For residents and professionals spending substantial time in DIFC, that familiarity can be part of the attraction.
The Arts Club Dubai has carried a nineteenth-century London institution into a financial district built for a very different century. What has endured is the underlying social habit: a private place in which work, food, art and conversation can overlap naturally, and where familiarity develops through returning rather than through a single occasion.
