UAE Fuel Price History 2015–2026: Monthly Tables and Records

From October 2026, a litre of Super 98 in the UAE costs AED 4.40, Special 95 is AED 4.28, E-Plus 91 is AED 4.21 and diesel is AED 4.80, according to the UAE Fuel Price Committee’s October announcement, reported by Khaleej Times. That is a jump of about 60 fils a litre, over 16% in a single month, and the first time pump prices have been above AED 4 in more than four years. This article lays out the full published price history since deregulation in August 2015 (month by month wherever the data exists, flagged as a range where it does not) and what the October 2026 price actually means for the cost of filling up one of our cars.

UAE fuel prices right now: October 2026

The table below is the full October 2026 price list, effective from the first of the month.

Khaleej Times reported the increase as the sharpest in recent memory and the first time petrol has traded above AED 4 a litre since early 2022. The outlet attributed the rise to escalating US–Iran tensions and renewed fears over a closure of the Strait of Hormuz, which pushed Brent crude toward and above $100 a barrel through September 2026.

Helpful tip

October’s price is a four-year high, not an all-time high. The record remains July 2022, when Super 98 hit AED 4.63 during the global energy-price shock that followed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The records table further down this page has the details.

Alex Shvarov, Automotive expert with over 15 years of experience

How the UAE sets fuel prices each month

Since deregulation, UAE pump prices have not tracked the daily crude oil price. They are set once a month by the Fuel Price Committee at the Ministry of Energy and Infrastructure, announced on the last day of the month and taking effect on the first day of the next. As The National explained in August 2026, the formula is a lagged benchmark on the international average price of the refined products themselves (petrol and diesel, not crude) over the preceding weeks, with refining margins, distribution, storage and blending costs, retail margins, freight and any taxes layered on top.

That lag is why a cheaper week of crude oil does not show up at the pump straight away, and why it can arrive diluted once other cost components are added. The effect is a smoothing one: UAE drivers see a single, predictable change on the first of each month rather than the daily swings of a fully floating market.

Full history: January 2023 to October 2026

This is the best-documented stretch of the series, with a monthly announcement for every grade, every month, cross-checked across two independent trackers. It is also the stretch that matters most for anyone budgeting a trip or a rental this year.

Source for the tables below: UAE Fuel Price Committee monthly announcements, compiled by IOTee and cross-checked against Dubai Wheels’ independent compilation; October 2026 also matches the Khaleej Times figures above.

2026

2025

2024

2023

Two things stand out across these 46 months. First, diesel moves more independently of petrol than most drivers expect: look at April and May 2026, when diesel spiked to AED 4.69 while Super 98 was still under AED 3.70, a sign that diesel’s own refining margins were under separate pressure that spring. Second, the overall range for Super 98 across this period runs from AED 2.45 (February 2026) to AED 4.40 (October 2026), so the current price is the top of its own four-year range, not just a one-month spike.

2021: the year prices doubled

The year before this table starts is worth its own look, because it is the clearest month-by-month illustration of a full price cycle: economies reopening after the pandemic, demand recovering faster than supply.

Special 95 started 2021 at AED 1.80 and ended the year at AED 2.66, up 48% in twelve months, with almost every single month higher than the one before it. That steady, almost uninterrupted climb is what pandemic-era demand recovery looked like at the pump, and it set the base from which the 2022 energy-price shock took prices even higher.

2015 to 2022: deregulation to the energy crisis

Before 2021, the published record gets thinner: the Fuel Price Committee’s own archive of monthly announcements is not published as a single downloadable series, so this stretch is reconstructed from contemporaneous news coverage and motoring-site trackers, and shown here as annual ranges rather than exact months.

In August 2015, the UAE removed the subsidy that had kept pump prices fixed for years. Special 95 jumped from AED 1.72 to AED 2.14 overnight, a 24% rise, and from that point the Fuel Price Committee began setting prices monthly against global benchmarks instead. Prices fell through 2016 as global oil markets were themselves depressed: Emirates 24|7 reported pump prices down 21% from their deregulation-day level by February 2016, the cheapest point in the whole series.

The next shock was COVID-19. With global demand for fuel collapsing in 2020, the Committee cut prices for April 2020 to Special 95 at AED 1.80, then froze them unchanged for May, June and July as the pandemic took hold, an unusual departure from the normal monthly cycle.

Records: the highest and lowest since 2015

The July 2022 record came during the same global energy shock that pushed petrol and diesel prices up worldwide, as supply fears followed the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. October 2026 is the closest the UAE has come to that record since. Khaleej Times put it plainly: the last time drivers paid more than AED 4 a litre before this was in early 2022, on the way up to July’s peak.

What a full tank costs in our fleet

Brook Drive rents every car full-to-full: you collect it with a full tank and return it full, so the only fuel cost on a rental is whatever you put in the tank yourself, at whatever the Fuel Price Committee has set for that month. There is no markup. Here is what that means in practice for three cars from our own fleet, using the October 2026 prices above and each car’s published tank capacity.

Verdict

The big V6 SUV actually costs more to fill than the V12 supercar: the Patrol’s tank is 5 litres bigger than the Ferrari’s. Fuel price moves the same for every renter; what changes the bill is tank size and how far you drive, not which badge is on the bonnet.

Alex Shvarov, Automotive expert with over 15 years of experience

The Audi Q3, Nissan Patrol and Ferrari 12 Cilindri are all available to rent from our current fleet.