Dubai Metro Stations

How many Dubai Metro stations there are

The count that matters for fares is 55 metro stations. The Red Line holds 35 of them, which includes the six Route 2020 branch stops that opened in 2021, and the Green Line holds 20. The Dubai Tram adds 11 more stops in the Marina and Al Sufouh, and because the tram shares the NOL card and the fare table, the useful total for a rider is 66.

Ten stations opened on 9 September 2009, the day the network started: centrepoint, Airport Terminal 3, City Centre Deira, Al Rigga, Union, BurJuman, max, Financial Centre, Mall of the Emirates and National Paints. The rest of the Red Line arrived through 2010, the Green Line opened in September 2011, Al Jadaf and Creek were added in March 2014, and the branch to Expo 2020 came in 2021.

Twelve stations are underground and one, Life Pharmacy, sits at street level. Everything else is elevated. Union and BurJuman each count once as a station but twice in the platform tally, because each has separate Red and Green Line levels below ground. The underground stations are listed here, and they matter in summer because they stay cooled from the platform to the exit. The map page shows the same stations drawn on the network.

Every Dubai Metro station with code and zone

Stations run in order along each line, Red from R11 to R42 on the trunk and R70 to R76 on the branch, Green from G11 to G30. The gaps in the numbering are deliberate: R27, R28, R30 and R75 were never built. The code is the safest way to identify a station, since sponsor names change and codes do not.

Zones come from the shading on the official RTA rail network map published December 2025, because RTA does not publish a station to zone table. A trip inside one zone costs AED 3 on a Silver card, two adjacent zones AED 5, and anything wider AED 7.50.

Dubai Metro stations that changed name

Sponsors buy naming rights, so 19 stations answer to something different from the name on an old map. Four changed during 2025 alone: GGICO became Al Garhoud in April, Al Khail became Al Fardan Exchange in April, UAE Exchange became Life Pharmacy in May, and Jabal Ali became National Paints in July. Some stations are on their third name, and ONPASSIVE has been Al Safa and Noor Bank before that.

The changes are cosmetic. No route, platform, zone or fare moved with them, and the code stayed put in every case. What does move is the language people use, so a taxi driver may still say Rashidiya for centrepoint, Etisalat for e&, or Jebel Ali for Life Pharmacy long after the signs changed.

BurJuman appears twice in the table because it has a Red Line code and a Green Line code, and both platforms carried the old name Khalid Bin Al Waleed until 2012. The table below covers every station whose current name differs from the one it opened with, in code order.

The 11 Dubai Tram stops

The tram opened on 11 November 2014 and runs 10.6 km through Dubai Marina, Jumeirah Beach Residence, Media City and Al Sufouh. All 11 stops sit in Zone 2, so any tram ride is a one zone fare at AED 3 on a Silver card.

Two stops connect to the metro by footbridge: Jumeirah Lakes Towers to DMCC and Dubai Marina to Sobha Realty. Palm Jumeirah connects to the Palm Monorail, which is a separate operator and does not accept a NOL card. Tram hours run 06:00 to 01:00 Monday to Saturday and from 09:00 on Sunday. The tram guide covers routes and fares in full.

The busiest stations on the network

Dubai Metro carried 294.7 million riders in 2025, up 7% on the year before. BurJuman was the busiest station with 17.8 million entries and exits, followed by Al Rigga on 13.8 million and Union on 13.6 million. Mall of the Emirates took 11.2 million and Burj Khalifa and Dubai Mall 10.9 million.

The pattern says something useful about when to travel. Both interchanges are in the top three, so Union and BurJuman are the platforms where a peak hour train is most likely to be full before it reaches you. First half figures for 2026 put BurJuman on 8.4 million and the metro as a whole on 136.5 million trips, so the ranking is holding.

Ridership is measured as entries and exits at the gate line, so an interchange trip that never leaves the paid area counts once rather than twice. That flatters neither Union nor BurJuman: their totals come from people actually starting or ending a journey there, which is what makes both stations awkward at 08:00 and again at 18:00.

How to read a station code

The letter gives the line and the number gives the position. R11 is the northern end of the Red Line at centrepoint and R42 is the southern end at Life Pharmacy. G11 is the north east end of the Green Line at e& and G30 is Creek. Tram stops run T01 to T11 from Jumeirah Beach Residence 1 to Al Sufouh.

Union appears twice, as R18 on the Red Line and G20 on the Green, and BurJuman does the same as R19 and G26. That is the giveaway for an interchange: one building, two codes. Both interchanges are explained here, including how long the change takes between platforms.

Codes also survive rebranding, which is why they are worth knowing. R33 has been Sharaf DG, then Mashreq, then InsuranceMarket, while the code never moved. Ticket machines, the RTA app and the timetable PDF all use codes alongside names, so quoting R33 removes any doubt about which station you mean.