From catering business to Dubai's top-selling private developer
DAMAC's story starts earlier than its property business. The wider DAMAC Group traces back to 1982, when Hussain Sajwani built it up from catering and logistics contracts, long before Dubai's freehold property market existed in anything like its current form. DAMAC Properties — the real estate development company most buyers actually mean when they say "DAMAC" — was founded separately, by the same Hussain Sajwani, in 2002. The two-decade gap between those dates is a genuine source of confusion online, since some sources cite 1982 for "DAMAC" without specifying which entity they mean.
DAMAC Properties listed on the Dubai Financial Market in 2015, trading as a public joint-stock company for seven years. In 2022 it went the other way: Sajwani, through his investment vehicle Maple, bought out the roughly 28% of shares he and his associates didn't already hold for around AED 2.19 billion, and the company delisted from the DFM. It has been wholly owned by Sajwani and associated entities ever since — a structure that puts it in a different category from listed peers like Emaar, where public shareholders and disclosure requirements still apply.
Private ownership hasn't slowed it down. DAMAC reported AED 36 billion in property sales for 2025, ranking first among Dubai's private developers for the year. By September 2026 the company said it had handed over more than 50,000 homes cumulatively, with a further 55,000+ units across over 100 million sq ft in its planning-and-development pipeline — and in the first half of 2026 alone it awarded US$2.72 billion in construction contracts, targeting more than 8,800 handovers across DAMAC Hills, DAMAC Hills 2, DAMAC Lagoons, Chic Tower and Elegance Tower for the year.
The branded-partnership playbook
Where Binghatti's branded-residence strategy (covered in our Binghatti guide) is a recent pivot, DAMAC has been doing this for well over a decade. Its partnership with the Trump Organization began in 2013 and produced the Trump International Golf Club Dubai, the centrepiece of the DAMAC Hills community. A 2018 global licensing deal brought Roberto Cavalli's name to its interiors, and its Safa One and Safa Two towers carry a de Grisogono co-branding, with jewellery-house-inspired interior detailing. Most recently, DAMAC became Chelsea Football Club's official front-of-shirt sponsor for the men's and women's teams, confirmed in May 2025 — a sponsorship that runs alongside, not instead of, its separately developed Chelsea Residences in Dubai Maritime City, which we cover project-by-project on our full DAMAC page.
Branded partnerships aren't unique to DAMAC in Dubai, but the range here — a golf-course deal with a US president's family business, an Italian fashion house, a Swiss jeweller, and now a Premier League football club, spanning more than a decade — is unusually broad for one developer, and predates the current wave of branded-residence marketing across the city.
The landmark projects that built the name
Before the current pipeline of Lagoons, Islands and Riverside releases, DAMAC's reputation was built on a smaller number of large, early-2010s communities. DAMAC Hills, anchored by the Trump golf course, opened in February 2017 and is now reported to be around 85% complete and handed over, with an active remaining portfolio of villas and towers valued at roughly $816 million. Akoya Oxygen, a larger residential community nearby, added a second golf course designed by Tiger Woods. DAMAC Heights, an 88-floor, 335-metre tower in Dubai Marina, opened to tenants in 2018, and DAMAC Towers by Paramount — a 2,000-unit, four-tower co-development with Paramount Hotels & Resorts — remains one of its best-known hospitality-branded addresses. Outside the UAE, AYKON London One (also known as DAMAC Tower Nine Elms), a roughly $758 million, 50-floor tower in London, is its highest-profile project overseas.
More recently, DAMAC Islands — launched in 2024 — reportedly set a Guinness World Records title for the highest revenue generated from a real estate project launch within 24 hours. DAMAC Islands 2, the current follow-up release, is one of six active projects we cover in full on our DAMAC developer page, alongside Riverside Views, Valencia and Sorrento at DAMAC Lagoons, Chelsea Residences, and Violet 4.
What we've verified directly, versus what's public reporting
As with every developer profile on this site, it's worth being specific about sourcing. The company history, DFM listing and delisting dates, and the 2025/2026 scale figures above are drawn from independent reporting — Gulf News, Forbes Middle East, construction-trade press including MEConstructionNews and Technical Review Middle East, and a sourced company history — not just DAMAC's own promotional materials. The current project-level pricing, payment plans, and floor-plan detail on our full DAMAC page come directly from DAMAC's own channel-partner documents and brochures, and where we've found a genuine gap between what DAMAC states and what public listings show — Sorrento's handover date, for instance, which DAMAC's own launch material doesn't state, or the exact payment-plan mechanics on Violet 4 — we've flagged it there rather than filling it in with a guess.
Read the full project pages
Every project mentioned here has its own detailed section on our DAMAC developer page, with current pricing, real renders, and — where we have it — the payment-plan breakdown: