Dubai Metro First and Last Train

Why the last train is earlier than the closing time

Dubai Metro stations close at midnight most nights, but the last train through any given station leaves before that, and the gap grows the further you are from the middle of the line. A train leaving Expo 2020 at 22:44 arrives at centrepoint just after midnight, so the far end of the line closes more than an hour early in practice.

This is the single most useful thing to check before a late trip. The times here are per station and per direction, which is how RTA publishes them and how they actually work. Network opening hours are a separate figure.

Last trains tonight from the stations Dubai actually uses

The lookup above covers every station, but a handful carry most of the city's late journeys. On a Monday to Thursday timetable the pattern is simple: the closer you are to the middle of the Red Line, the earlier your last train in each direction leaves. BurJuman in Bur Dubai and Union in Deira, the two interchange stations, hold trains latest, while Airport Terminal 3 sees its last citybound train just after midnight for arriving passengers.

After the Dubai Mall fountain show, the last train from Burj Khalifa towards Expo 2020 and the Marina leaves at 23:22, and towards Deira at 23:35. From DMCC in the JLT and Dubai Marina cluster, the last train back towards Deira and the airport goes at 23:09. On Fridays every one of these pushes roughly an hour later. All times are scheduled departures from RTA timetable REG_20251215.

First trains for early flights from DXB and Expo

A morning flight from Dubai International is the most common reason to need a first train. On Monday to Thursday the first departure that reaches Airport Terminal 3 from the centrepoint side passes at 5:05, and the first from the Expo 2020 and Marina side arrives around forty minutes after its 5:00 start. The catch is Sunday: nothing reaches Terminal 3 until just after 8:00, so a Sunday flight before roughly 10:30 means a taxi or a bus.

In the other direction, the first trains out of centrepoint leave at 5:00, and the Green Line starts at 5:01 from e& in Al Qusais and 5:03 from Creek in Al Jaddaf. Anyone connecting to the tram for JBR or Dubai Marina should remember it starts an hour later than the metro, at 6:00. The timings page holds the full network hours and the airport guide covers where to buy a card on arrival.

Two branches, two sets of times

The Red Line splits at National Paints. One branch runs to Life Pharmacy, the other along Route 2020 to Expo 2020. Trunk stations carry two sets of times in each direction as a result, one per branch, and they differ by a few minutes. If you are heading past National Paints, check the branch that matches your destination on the Red Line station list, or plan the trip in the route planner.

Where these first and last train times come from

Every time on this page and in the lookup is a scheduled departure from RTA's own metro and tram timetable, serial REG_20251215, the winter schedule that took effect on 15 December 2025. RTA publishes it as a PDF per station and direction; we parse the whole file so you can query any of the 66 stations without scrolling a document.

Two details matter when reading it. Times after midnight, such as the 0:02 last airport train, belong to the previous service day. And a terminus row shows an arrival time rather than a departure, because nothing leaves the end of the line. When RTA issues a new seasonal timetable, this page is rebuilt from the new file, and the serial shown here changes with it.