UAE tops GEM for entrepreneurship, plus 2026 safety and trust rankings

The UAE ranked first globally for entrepreneurship, economic performance, safety, and public trust during the first half of 2026, and the evidence comes from a stack of high-profile international indexes. The country retained its position as the world’s best environment for entrepreneurship for the fifth consecutive year in the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) 2025/2026 report. It also ranked first globally as the best place to start and grow a business, reinforcing a competitiveness story that is not limited to one slice of the economy.

This matters for anyone making real decisions about where to build, invest, hire, or expand. The same set of results also places the UAE at or near the top across safety and trust: it topped Numbeo’s 2026 Safety Index, Abu Dhabi was named the world’s safest city for the 10th consecutive year since 2017, and the UAE ranked first globally in the 2026 Edelman Trust Barometer for public trust in government. Add in first place in the Henley Private Wealth Migration Report 2026 as a leading destination for wealthy migrants, and you get a single narrative: the UAE is trying to be the place where entrepreneurs, capital, and socially minded legitimacy all point in the same direction.

Zoom out and the pattern looks intentional. Arabian Business reports that the Emirates strengthened its position among the world’s leading economies during the first half of 2026 after securing top positions across international competitiveness rankings that cover entrepreneurship, economic performance, safety, investment, and public trust. The publication frames the results as a broader signal that the UAE is among the world’s best-performing countries across business, governance, innovation, and quality of life, not just a one-off win. In other words, the competitiveness argument is meant to read like a portfolio, with multiple risk dimensions addressed at once.

In entrepreneurship specifically, the GEM 2025/2026 results put the UAE at the top for five years running. The report’s headline is simple: the country ranked first globally as the best environment to start and grow a business. But the second layer is where executives tend to care most, because it connects capability with execution. Arabian Business notes that among high-income economies, the UAE ranked first across eight indicators, and that it ranked second globally for entrepreneurial finance and access to funding. It also says the UAE was one of only four economies to achieve above-sufficiency scores across all entrepreneurship framework conditions.

That “framework conditions” language is a reminder that entrepreneurship rankings usually blend culture, policy, financing access, and institutional support. For boards and investors, the practical implication is that a top entrepreneurship score can reduce some of the operating uncertainty that typically comes with early-stage expansion: fewer bureaucratic bottlenecks, more predictable policy adaptability, and more availability of the inputs entrepreneurs need. Arabian Business lists several of those contributors, including the absence of bureaucracy, adaptability of government policies, employment, availability of international talent, national culture, societal support for competitiveness, and air transport quality. Those are not glamorous metrics, but they are the mechanics of execution.

The UAE’s positioning is also reinforced by broader competitiveness framing. Arabian Business cites the IMD World Competitiveness Ranking 2026, noting the UAE ranked first globally for entrepreneurship-related indicators, and it adds that the report placed the UAE fourth globally for multiple areas including overall performance categories. While the provided text truncates some lines, it is still clear that the rankings span governance, innovation, international relations, and infrastructure. The publication also says the country recorded its highest-ever governance ranking and strengthened its performance across business, trade, international relations, security, and sustainability. It further reports that the UAE entered the global top 10 investment destinations for the first time.

There is also a communications and legitimacy layer, and it shows up across “soft power” and trust metrics. Arabian Business reports that the UAE remained among the world’s top 10 in the 2026 Brand Finance Global Soft Power Index for the fourth consecutive year. It also notes that the country ranked second globally for public confidence in artificial intelligence, business creation, women’s representation in parliament, and city management, and it placed third globally for international image, access to artificial intelligence technologies, tourism receipts, merchandise exports, and energy infrastructure. For an executive team, these are signals that policy and investment appetite are being supported by public trust, governance performance, and perceived capacity for emerging technology adoption.

Finally, the safety and wealth-mobility pieces turn this from a business story into a capital and talent story. Arabian Business says the UAE topped Numbeo’s 2026 Safety Index, while Abu Dhabi remained the world’s safest city for the 10th consecutive year since 2017. It also reports that the UAE ranked first globally for the second successive year in the Henley Private Wealth Migration Report 2026, recording the world’s highest Wealth Mobility Competitiveness Index score of 85.3 out of 100. The thread tying these together is risk: safety affects residency and operations, trust affects governance risk perceptions, and wealth mobility affects where capital can follow opportunity.

Put it all together and the stakes for executives become pretty direct. If you run a company considering expansion, partnerships, or hiring, these rankings are a proxy for how attractive and stable the operating environment may feel to entrepreneurs, investors, employees, and the public. In the first half of 2026, the UAE is effectively presenting a multi-index case that it is future-ready across entrepreneurship, governance, investment, and quality of life. For peers watching from other jurisdictions, the competitive question is not whether the UAE is getting attention. It is whether other markets can match the same combination of access to funding, institutional support, safety, and public trust.