Launched in January 2026 to coincide with Sobha's 50th anniversary, Sobha Sanctuary is described by the company as its largest single development ever — a AED 50 billion masterplan spanning roughly 37.5 million sq ft off Al Ain Road, close to another Sobha project, Sobha Elwood. At full build-out, it's planned to house around 20,000 families across roughly 18,000 apartments and 2,000 villas, delivered in phases over four to eight years, with first handovers publicly reported for Q3 2029.
The masterplan is built around a central destination park, a community mall, a wellness centre, a hospital facility, and two international schools — plus over 50,000 trees threaded through a 6km "Leisure Loop" and a 9km wellness loop around the development's perimeter. The first phase released was villas (around 250 homes), with townhouses and villas publicly reported from roughly AED 3.9M up to AED 13M on a 60/40 payment structure. Sobha's own materials name four villa sub-communities — The Willows, The Grove, The Greens, and The Brooks — alongside The Woods, the apartment sub-community that includes the Abode launch below (with further Serenity and Retreat phases reportedly still to come). Additional sports facilities reported include football grounds, running tracks, padel courts, and a skate park, with four green corridors extending outward from the central park. One figure we're deliberately not using: Sobha's own community page states the masterplan's total area as "8 million sq ft," which conflicts with the much larger 37.5 million sq ft already cited above and widely reported elsewhere — the same "8 million sq ft" figure also appears, unchanged, on Sobha's own Siniya Island page (whose real area is a very different 16.1 million sq ft), which looks like a stale template value on Sobha's site rather than a real number, so we've stuck with the better-corroborated 37.5 million sq ft figure.
Current launch: Abode
The Woods Abode — to give this launch its full name — sits within The Woods, a private woodland enclave plot within the wider masterplan, framed by parks on both its front and rear edges with uninterrupted green views along its longer sides, next to a cluster of villa communities and close to one of the masterplan's planned schools. It's a newer apartment release, pitched at a noticeably more accessible price point than the villa-first initial phase — this is the entry route into Sanctuary for a buyer who isn't after a AED 4M+ villa. Sobha's own floor plans show several 1-bedroom layout variants (with balcony) running from roughly 540 to 546 sq ft total saleable area, and 2-bedroom variants (with balcony) from roughly 961 sq ft — plus further 1- and 2-bedroom layout types in the same brochure we haven't been able to size precisely from the material we've seen.
| Unit type | Starting price | DLD waiver |
|---|---|---|
| 1 Bedroom | AED 1,000,000 | 2% |
| 2 Bedroom | AED 1,600,000 | 4% |
Amenities called out specifically for Abode include a lagoon lifestyle feature, a 20km cycling loop, a wellness club, an international school, retail and leisure space, and 60+ amenities in total — consistent with the wellness-and-greenery positioning of the wider Sanctuary masterplan. Sobha's fuller marketing material for the wider masterplan fleshes out what that positioning actually includes: roughly 50% of Sanctuary given over to open and green space, anchored by an approximately 800,000 sq ft central park, and a water-based wellness sequence (a hydrotherapy facility, saunas, and steam rooms). Worth flagging directly: this newer material describes a roughly 5km leisure loop, versus the 6km Leisure Loop mentioned in earlier Sobha material for the same masterplan above — close enough that it's likely the same feature rounded differently across two documents, but worth confirming the current figure with us rather than treating either as exact. Family life is built around a social club, children's play spaces, family and youth zones, walkable retail, and farmers'-market events, plus dedicated pet wellness — therapy gardens and play zones for pets specifically, a differentiator most competing masterplans don't call out — and roughly 20km of connected cycling network woven through the community's wider smart-mobility and sustainability systems.