What time is the last metro from Dubai Airport?

The last Red Line train into the city leaves Airport Terminal 3 at 22:56 from Monday to Thursday. On Friday the last one leaves at 23:56. Terminal 1, the next station towards the city, has its own times in the tables below, a few minutes later.

Midnight, the hour most guides give, is when the Metro stations close: Dubai Airports lists the Metro as running 05:00 to midnight from Monday to Thursday. It is not the last departure from the airport. The airport stations are near one end of the Red Line, and the last trains leave them early enough to run the rest of the line before it shuts. A flight that lands at eleven on a Tuesday has already missed the last train, even though the stations are open for another hour.

The last train from the airport, by day

Two last trains leave each terminal, one for each end of the Red Line. The times are departures from the platform.

Terminal 3

Terminal 1

Which column is yours

Both trains stop at every station from the airport to National Paints. That stretch includes Al Rigga, Union, BurJuman, Burj Khalifa / Dubai Mall, Business Bay, Mall of the Emirates, and SOBHA REALTY and DMCC, the two stations where the Metro meets the Dubai Tram. If your station is on that stretch, the later of the two times is your last train.

The later one is not always the same train. From Monday to Thursday and on Saturday it is the Life Pharmacy train; on Friday and Sunday it is the Expo 2020 one.

The line splits after National Paints. Ibn Battuta, Energy, Danube and Life Pharmacy are on one branch; The Gardens, Discovery Gardens, Al Furjan, Jumeirah Golf Estates, Dubai Investment Park and Expo 2020 are on the other. For a station past the split, only that branch’s column counts.

If you land close to the last train

The time in the table is when the train leaves the platform, not when your flight lands. Between the two are the walk from the gate, passport control, the baggage belt and the walk to the Metro station. We do not put a number on that: Dubai Airports does not publish one, and it changes with the hour and the queue.

The Metro also limits luggage to two pieces, including hand luggage. With a third bag the timetable does not matter: the bag rule rules the Metro out first.

After the last train, the way into the city is a taxi or a pickup; how the options compare has the official taxi fares.

The last train back to the airport

If you are heading to the airport for a late flight, or leaving the airport on a layover and coming back the same night, the train you need runs the other way, towards centrepoint. From Burj Khalifa / Dubai Mall:

The Friday train leaves after midnight, so it is in the early hours of Saturday. In this direction the last trains run later than the ones out of the airport, because the airport stations are close to the end of their run.

The first train in the morning

The first trains towards the city leave Terminal 3 at 05:05 towards Life Pharmacy, 05:08 towards Expo 2020 from Monday to Saturday, and at 08:03 towards Life Pharmacy, 08:07 towards Expo 2020 on Sunday. From Terminal 1 they leave at 05:07 towards Life Pharmacy, 05:10 towards Expo 2020, and at 08:05 towards Life Pharmacy, 08:09 towards Expo 2020 on Sunday. The Sunday start is the other gap in the timetable: an early Sunday landing waits for the Metro, or takes a taxi.

Where this page stops

These are RTA’s regular times. RTA’s timetable page says timetables for public holidays and special occasions are published separately, from its home page, and the Metro can run different hours on those days. The tables here do not cover them.

This page covers the Red Line, the line that serves the airport. Terminal 2 has no Metro station.

Where these times come from

Every train time on this page is from RTA’s station-by-station Metro and Tram timetable, a PDF on rta.ae marked REG_20260925, which we read cell by cell. The station opening hours are from Dubai Airports’ Metro page.