In late July 2026, His Highness Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan made a working visit to Belgrade, where one of his stops was the EXPO 2027 Playground, the multimedia centre for the world exposition Serbia hosts next year. It is the same exposition around which GITEX will stage its first Southeast European edition. He had arrived from Bratislava in Slovakia, another country from the CEE region.
Underneath that layer sits a commercial relationship that has been compounding for years. Roughly 17,400 Central and Eastern European companies now operate in the UAE, a figure given by H.E. Abdulla bin Touq Al Marri, the UAE's Minister of Economy and Tourism, in Dubai last November.
What has changed in the past two years is the institutional layer between the two regions. A Dubai chamber has opened its first Eastern European office. A Gulf free zone has run a roadshow in Warsaw. A UAE ministry has launched a dedicated CEE forum. A Slovak fund has expanded to Abu Dhabi. The EBRD has built a Gulf market-entry programme for founders from its regions. A Sharjah innovation park has gone looking for partners in Cluj.
Do you know any other organizations that should be on this list? Reach out to etien@therecursive.com
Events
1. GITEX
The largest physical meeting point between the two regions, and the only event brand building permanent capacity inside CEE. GITEX Global 2026 runs 7 to 11 December, moving for the first time in 46 years from Dubai World Trade Centre to the Dubai Exhibition Centre at Expo City. The 2025 edition drew over 200,000 attendees from 180+ countries and 6,800+ exhibitors.
The CEE-facing move is Belgrade. GITEX Ai Serbia debuts at Belgrade Fair on 26 and 27 May 2027 as the official tech event of EXPO 2027 Belgrade, organised by DWTC and KAOUN International in strategic partnership with the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Serbia. Its president, Marko Čadež, who is also the connective figure behind Serbia's business council in Dubai and its chamber-to-chamber structure with Dubai Chamber, has framed the timing around EXPO as a chance to put Serbian digital transformation in front of a global investor audience. Serbia's ICT sector contributes around 10% of national GDP, with $4.31 billion in 2024 exports and roughly 110,000 professionals.
2. Doers Summit, The Doers Company
One of the most explicitly CEE-to-Gulf event brands, Doers Summit was built by people from the corridor. Stylianos Lambrou and Dušan Duffek, one Cypriot and one Slovak who met at Cambridge, started it in 2018 as a 300-person gathering in Limassol. It became Reflect Festival, then Doers, and now runs across Athens, Limassol and Dubai.
The first Middle East edition landed at Dubai Silicon Oasis in November 2025 under DIEZ patronage, pulling more than 4,000 attendees from 115 countries. The second returns to DSO on 24 to 26 November 2026, targeting 5,000+ founders, investors, operators and corporate decision-makers from Europe, the GCC, Asia and the Global South, with the format deliberately weighted toward masterclasses, roundtables and private sessions rather than stage time. Underneath sits Doers United, an invitation-only network built city by city through founder dinners across Greece, Cyprus, Central Europe and the UAE.
3. Investopia
The UAE's state investment platform, and the only Gulf government initiative with a dedicated CEE track. On 20 November 2025 it convened the CEE-UAE Investopia Strategic Economic Forum in Dubai, focused on AI, space, defence and energy, organised with Euro Atlantic Consulting under its chairman Dr. Tamás Fellegi. The stated outcome was a directive to host new editions of Investopia Global Dialogues across Central and Eastern Europe.
The seniority is the point. H.E. Abdulla bin Touq Al Marri, Minister of Economy and Tourism and Investopia's chairman, shared a stage with Montenegro's deputy prime minister, and state secretaries from Slovakia and Hungary sat on panels moderated by Investopia COO David Tabet.
The fifth flagship edition, originally set for 31 March to 2 April 2026, was rescheduled. Abu Dhabi now hosts Investopia Bridge 2026 on 7 October under the theme "Investing in a More Resilient World." The 2026 Global Talks host cities are Athens, Berlin, Tashkent and Milan, with the Berlin edition deliberately co-located with GITEX Europe.
4. Web Summit Qatar
The Gulf's highest founder density, and increasingly where CEE delegations land, including the EBRD's Gulf market-entry cohort. The third edition ran in Doha from 1 to 4 February 2026 with more than 30,000 participants from 124+ countries, over 1,600 startups, 800+ investors and 400+ speakers. 85% of the startups came from outside Qatar. Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani used the opening to announce an additional $2 billion for Qatar's Fund of Funds, the extension of Qatar Development Bank's Start from Qatar programme, and a 10-year residency programme for entrepreneurs, founders and senior executives. Sheikh Jassim bin Mansour bin Jabor Al Thani chairs the permanent organising committee.
Investors and accelerators
5. EBRD
The bank runs the Star Venture Arabian Gulf Market Entry Programme with growth strategy partner StrategEast, led by Anatoly Motkin, which exists to move companies out of EBRD regions and into GCC markets. In February 2026 the cohort, Aspichi, Alaqan, VanOnGo, UvU, Investbanq and SpaceLab, went to Web Summit Qatar, then to a Riyadh Ecosystem Exposure Day on 5 February built with Monsha'at, Saudi Arabia's SME Authority, and Saudi venture advisory platform Parachute16, with support from the Saudi Ministry of Investment. Investor meetings, regulatory briefings, Monsha'at hub visits.
Capital moves the other way too. Amine Chabane, Principal at EBRD Venture Capital, led the $17.4 million Series B of RemotePass in May 2026, the UAE-founded global employment and payroll platform built by Kamal Reggad and Karim Nadi, already profitable, with 35,000+ workers across 150+ countries and $800 million in cross-border payroll processed. 500 Global joined the round.
Institutionally, the UAE became the EBRD's 72nd shareholder in September 2021 as a contributing member.
6. Zero One Hundred (0100 VC)
One of the very few CEE venture firms with a physical Gulf presence. The fund invests at early stage across CEE and the Middle East, with Fund II going all-in on Emerging Europe: 21 countries, a 200 million population, from the Baltics through Central Europe to the Balkans and the Eastern Mediterranean.
Managing Partner Dušan Duffek is based in Abu Dhabi, where he describes his work as connecting the dots between Europe and the Middle East. In late 2024 he opened the fund's Abu Dhabi office and signed an MoU with Investopia to connect CEE startups with UAE investors, with offices across Slovakia, Czechia, Cyprus and the UAE. The fund went on to co-organise a satellite Investopia edition in Hungary, and appears among the fifteen institutional partnerships Investopia signed alongside Emirates Development Bank, Standard Chartered and DHL. Partner Michal Csonga covers the fund's CEE deal flow.
Duffek is also co-founder of The Doers Company and a co-founder and board member of 0100 Conferences: three organizations on this list, one person, one Abu Dhabi desk.
7. 500 Global
The only venture platform with funded programmes on both ends of the corridor. In the Gulf, Amjad Ahmad and Amal Dokhan, Managing Partners at 500 Global, lead 500 MENA L.P., backed by Jada Fund of Funds and Saudi Venture Capital with support from Sanabil, deploying up to $10 million per investment across Saudi Arabia and the UAE, alongside the Sanabil 500 MENA Seed Accelerator and a regional headquarters in Riyadh.
On the CEE side, partner Pedro Santos Vieira runs the 500 Eurasia accelerator out of Georgia with Georgia's Innovation and Technology Agency (GITA) and Bank of Georgia, investing at pre-seed and seed across the Caucasus, Eastern Europe, Central Asia and the Baltics, with funding up to $100,000 and applications open to founders across 29 European countries.
8. VentureFriends
Proof that the flow runs in both directions inside a single firm. Founded in Athens in 2016 by Apostolos Apostolakis and George Dimopoulos, VentureFriends now manages over €300 million across four funds, writing first cheques of €500K to €3M at pre-seed and seed with a mandate that has always covered Europe and MENA.
The clearest corridor result is Huspy, the Dubai proptech founded by Jad Antoun and Khalid Ashmawy that VentureFriends backed early. Huspy handles roughly a quarter of Dubai's residential mortgages, has raised over $100 million including a $59 million Series B in 2025, and has expanded into Spain and Saudi Arabia. The Dubai-born grocery marketplace InstaShop sits in the same portfolio.
Capital has also flowed the other way. During the Greek prime minister's 2022 visit to the UAE, Mubadala and the Hellenic Development Bank of Investments extended their €400 million co-investment partnership to cover VC and PE, and made VentureFriends Fund III their first deal under it.
9. Endeavor
The only organization with formal chapters on both sides of the corridor running a single shared selection standard, which means a founder in Sofia and a founder in Riyadh sit inside the same system, vetted the same way.
On the Gulf side, Lateefa Alwaalan has led Endeavor Saudi Arabia as Managing Director since the chapter launched in 2012, and Endeavor UAE runs Entrepreneur Experience with Thais Malauzat. Careem's co-founders, including Mudassir Sheikha, came through the UAE office in 2018. Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon complete the regional map.
On the CEE and Southeast Europe side, Panagiotis Karampinis has run Endeavor Greece since 2018 and became Endeavor's Regional Managing Director for Europe in 2026; Momchil Vassilev leads Endeavor Bulgaria, which has extended into Serbia, North Macedonia and Kosovo; Mihnea Crăciun set up Endeavor Romania in 2021, coming to the role from the EBRD; Bartosz Lipnicki heads Endeavor Poland from Warsaw with Wiktor Schmidt as board chair; and Sviatoslav Sviatnenko is founding Managing Director of Endeavor Ukraine, launched in 2024 with financial backing from the EBRD and the Ukraine-Moldova American Enterprise Fund.
The chapters already work the corridor directly. Endeavor Greece activated initiatives in Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Riyadh in 2025 alongside European and US cities. And Endeavor Catalyst, the rules-based co-investment fund with over $500 million under management, puts capital behind the same founders: it backed Fahmi Al-Shawwa's Immensa in a $20M Series B earmarked partly for Saudi expansion, and sits on the cap table of UAE-founded RemotePass alongside EBRD and 500 Global.
Gulf-based corridor builders
10. Dubai International Chamber
In October 2025, the chamber opened its first representative office in Eastern Europe, in Warsaw, inaugurated with the UAE Ambassador to Poland Mohamed Ahmed Salem Farea Alharbi and Michał Jaros, Secretary of State at Poland's Ministry of Economic Development and Technology.
The office runs both directions: supporting Polish companies expanding through Dubai, and giving Dubai-based companies market intelligence, opportunity identification and vetted local partners for entering Poland. Dubai's non-oil trade with Poland reached AED 7.2 billion in 2024, up 5% year on year, with 453 Polish companies registered as active Dubai Chamber of Commerce members by the end of H1 2025.
H.E. Mohammad Ali Rashed Lootah, President and CEO of Dubai Chambers, has positioned Warsaw as part of Dubai Global, the initiative launched by Crown Prince Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum targeting 50 international representative offices by 2030 across 30 priority markets. Salem Al Shamsi runs global markets and Noora AlSuwaidi covers Europe and the Americas. On the inbound side, Maha Al Gargawi, VP of Business Advocacy, oversees the network of 60+ national business councils that includes the Bulgarian, Serbian, Romanian, Czech and Polish structures below.
11. DMCC
The Dubai free zone has gone to CEE directly. Under Executive Chairman and CEO Ahmed bin Sulayem, DMCC ran its first Made for Trade Live roadshow in Warsaw, addressing over 139 Polish business representatives in partnership with the Polish Investment and Trade Agency following an MoU between the two. DMCC is also the physical home of CzechTrade's Dubai office.
12. SPARK, Sharjah Research, Technology and Innovation Park
The clearest statement of intent from the Gulf side. H.E. Hussain Al Mahmoudi, appointed CEO by royal decree of the Ruler of Sharjah, runs an ecosystem of roughly 13,000 companies across a 20-million-square-foot site in Sharjah's University City, and has been travelling to Central and Eastern Europe to build what he calls a technology corridor.
He appeared at Techsylvania in Cluj-Napoca in 2026 making the case for partnership over competition between the two regions. It is his second attempt at Romania: fifteen years ago, as Director General of the Sharjah Chamber of Commerce, he set up a Romanian regional trade centre that did not last. This time the vehicle is technology rather than trade, and the target is Cluj's R&D base as it matures out of IT outsourcing.
Councils and trade agencies
13. Bulgarian Business Council in Dubai (BGBC)
Launched in December 2025 under Dubai Chamber of Commerce and chaired by entrepreneur Milo Borissov, BGBC is the only business council officially backed by Dubai Chambers to represent Bulgarian interests. At launch there were 243 active Bulgarian member companies of Dubai Chamber, 54 of which joined in the first nine months of 2025. Dubai-Bulgaria non-oil trade hit AED 777 million in 2024, and bilateral trade reached roughly €281 million in 2025, up about 17%.
In July 2026 Borissov opened a Bulgarian-Emirati Business Forum in Sofia, organised with the UAE Embassy, convening Deputy Minister of Economy Mihaela Karadimova and Bulgaria's Consul General in Dubai, Stanislav Dimitrov, around technology, energy, infrastructure, logistics, healthcare and real estate. Minister of Innovation and Growth Ivan Vasilev has since been in talks with the UAE Ambassador on a potential strategic agreement covering digital technologies, AI and robotics.
14. Serbian Business Council (UAE)
Established in July 2023 with Dubai Chamber of Commerce, with Dr. Marko Selaković elected chairman at the first AGM, attended by 17 Serbian company representatives. 207 Serbian companies were registered with the chamber at launch, and Dubai-Serbia non-oil trade reached $73.4 million in 2022, up 42% year on year.
Serbia runs the most stacked playbook in the region, and Marko Čadež of the Serbian Chamber of Commerce is the thread running through it: the council, a joint chamber structure with Dubai, a Dubai economic mission to Belgrade, a bilateral trade agreement, and GITEX Ai Serbia in 2027.
15. Romanian Business Connect UAE
The operator-driven version, a community rather than a chamber structure, and the self-described most trusted Romanian business community in the Emirates.
Its co-founder Milentina Marcus is Co-Founder and CEO of Dubai-based BridgeX ME, and works as a market entry and expansion strategist for the UAE and wider Middle East, positioning her practice around helping European companies decide if, when and how to enter the UAE. She serves as Ambassador of the Romanian Business Community in the UAE and brings more than twenty years in leadership and business growth to the role, with a stated focus on connecting Romanian entrepreneurs to the Emirati business ecosystem.
The community's flagship output is the Romania-UAE Business Summit in Dubai, built for owners and decision-makers exploring expansion and combining summit content, matchmaking and sector-specific company visits. For a founder who is not yet ready for a chamber-level credential, this is the layer that answers the practical questions first.
16. CzechTrade United Arab Emirates
The longest continuously operating CEE trade agency presence in the Gulf. Stefani Neymon Myslovich directs the Dubai office, established in 2007 and operating from Jumeirah Lakes Towers inside DMCC as part of CzechTrade's 65-country network. The Gulf mandate covers Czech export strengths in glass, porcelain, construction and building materials alongside ICT, AI, IoT, healthcare and electrical engineering, with Czech pavilions at exhibitions including The Big 5 and INDEX, and services running from company formation support to accounting, legal and digital marketing referrals. Czech companies have used it as a launchpad into both the UAE and Saudi Arabia.
It is paired with the Czech Business Council in Dubai, founded in May 2014 under the Dubai Chamber umbrella with backing from the Czech Embassy and CzechTrade.
17. PAIH Dubai and the Polish Business Council
Poland's state investment and trade agency runs a Foreign Trade Office in Dubai and located inside the Dubai International Financial Centre. Maciej Białko also initiated and served until recently as founding chairman of the Polish Business Council in Dubai, having previously worked at the Polish Embassy in Abu Dhabi and run the Upper Silesian Fund's Abu Dhabi office, Poland's first regional economic representation in the Middle East.
The office has convened Polish ICT and new-technology companies with Dubai Internet City, the TECOM district that anchors much of Dubai's software and platform economy, to walk founders through what expansion into the emirate actually requires. PAIH also co-hosted DMCC's Warsaw roadshow.
Poland is now the only CEE market with institutional presence running in both directions: PAIH and the Polish Business Council in Dubai, Dubai International Chamber in Warsaw.
Relationship Infrastructure
18. The Recursive
Full disclosure: this is us.
The Recursive is building the relationship infrastructure between European and Gulf tech ecosystems. Founded in Central and Eastern Europe, its tech media, market intelligence and events platform has reached more than 3.8 million people worldwide over the past six years, connecting thousands of founders, VCs, enterprises, policymakers and HNWIs shaping tech across Europe, DACH, the UK and the US.
The company is now expanding its on-the-ground coverage into the UAE and Saudi Arabia, building a two-way bridge with Europe so that ecosystem players in both regions can find, understand and connect with each other more effectively. Etien Yovchev, Co-founder and Managing Partner, soon to be based between Dubai and Abu Dhabi, is leading the expansion.
The Recursive operates across three lines, Media, Studio and Events, with the goal of building a stronger bridge between the ecosystems and supporting tech founders, investors and ecosystem builders expanding between CEE, GCC and DACH with market intelligence, new market entry and relationship building.
Member discussion