The key facts
- UCL Global Business School for Health will open in Dubai Healthcare City, expected in 2027
- The first three programmes: digital healthcare and entrepreneurship, management of health and wellbeing, and Executive MBA Health — about 30 students each in the first year
- Teaching on a hybrid model: four intensive days per month with lecturers from London plus online over two years
UCL's new campus in Dubai
University College London will open a school in Dubai specialising in business and management in healthcare. UCL Global Business School for Health will be located in Dubai Healthcare City, with the opening expected in 2027. The project is led by its founder and director, Professor Nora Colton; it develops a similar school opened in London in 2021, at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. According to Colton, the school was created 'for the future' — with an eye to the digital transformation of healthcare and a shift in focus towards prevention, and the pandemic, in her assessment, exposed problems of leadership and management in the sector.
Programmes and teaching format
Three programmes will launch: digital healthcare and entrepreneurship, management of health and wellbeing, and the Executive MBA Health. In the first year, each programme plans to enrol about 30 students. The format is hybrid: lecturers from the London campus fly to Dubai once a month, students receive four intensive days of in-person classes, and online learning lasts for two years. If the plan is met, from the third year the school expects to launch full in-person programmes as well. Colton stressed that the quality of education in Dubai must match the London level, including the fit-out of rented premises.
Context and expansion plans
The school's founder calls the UAE 'the ideal next step' for UCL, noting the dynamism of the country's healthcare system and its attractiveness to people from all over the world, which creates opportunities to teach an audience from different cultures. Colton is already considering long-term partnerships with hospitals and startups and speaks of her intention to expand the school's presence in the UAE over the next few years. The announcement follows the launch in June of the Dubai Authority for Healthy Longevity, whose task is to turn the emirate into a global centre for the science of longevity and wellbeing; at that time the Vice President and Ruler of Dubai, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid, said the emirate would attract the best minds to develop medicine and life-enhancing technologies. For comparison: UCL, founded in 1828, ranks eighth in the latest QS World University Rankings and seventh in the Best Global Universities 2025–2026.
