UAE Petrol & Diesel Prices: The Full 2026 Data Trail

Looking at a single month’s UAE petrol price rarely tells the full story. A driver who only checked September 2026’s rate sheet would see petrol and diesel both rising, but they would miss that petrol had already touched a higher price in June, fallen back in July, and climbed again twice since. The 2026 data trail shows a year defined by sharp turning points rather than a steady trend in one direction, with petrol and diesel frequently moving at different speeds. Understanding that fuller picture is useful for anyone planning fuel costs in Dubai, whether through station visits or fuel delivery in Dubai arranged around the monthly price cycle.

UAE Fuel Prices in 2026: The Big Picture

2026 cannot be summarised as a year of prices simply rising or falling. The first quarter was relatively calm, with prices actually easing slightly in February before climbing again in March. From April onward, prices moved sharply higher over several consecutive months, driven largely by global oil market conditions. July then brought a significant pullback, only for prices to rise again through August and September. Viewed across the full nine months, the year shows at least four distinct phases rather than one continuous direction, and comparing petrol against diesel throughout reveals that the two fuels didn’t always move in step.

This matters more than it might first appear, because most drivers form their sense of “fuel prices this year” from whichever month they happen to be filling up in. Someone who last paid close attention in February would be caught off guard by June’s rates; someone who checked again in July might have assumed the worst was over, only to see prices climb again by September. Neither impression is wrong exactly; each simply reflects one frame from a much longer sequence. A year-long view smooths out that distortion and shows the shape of the whole story: a calm start, a sharp shock, a partial recovery, and a renewed climb.

The Complete 2026 UAE Petrol and Diesel Price Table

The table below shows verified monthly prices for all three petrol grades and diesel, based on official UAE Fuel Price Committee announcements from January through September 2026.

The clearest pattern in this table is the divide between the first quarter and everything that followed. Prices stayed within a narrow band through February and March, then broke sharply higher in April and stayed elevated for the rest of the period covered here, with July as the one significant exception. Looking down each column individually also shows how consistently the three petrol grades move together: Super 98, Special 95, and E-Plus 91 rise and fall in the same months almost every time, with only their absolute price levels differing. Diesel is the one column that occasionally breaks from that rhythm, both in April and again in September, which is why it receives separate attention later in this article.

It’s also worth noticing what the table doesn’t show: a smooth, predictable progression. A driver reading only the January and September figures might conclude that prices simply rose gradually across the year Super 98 moved from AED 2.53 to AED 3.80, an increase that could look like modest monthly creep if the months in between were ignored. The reality, as the table makes clear, was far more volatile, with genuine spikes and pullbacks along the way rather than a steady climb.

How UAE Fuel Prices Moved Month by Month in 2026

The year can be grouped into a few meaningful phases rather than nine separate stories. January and February were a quiet start, with prices actually dipping slightly in February before a modest rise in March. April marked a sharp break from that pattern, followed by continued increases through May and June that pushed petrol to its highest point of the year so far. July brought a sudden and substantial pullback across every fuel type. August and September then resumed an upward path, though without returning to June’s peak for petrol.

Framed as phases, the sequence reads as: a stable opening (January–February), a sharp escalation (March–April), a continued climb to the year’s peak (May–June), a sudden correction (July), and a renewed, more moderate rise (August–September). Each phase has a distinct character. The escalation phase was driven by a single identifiable external shock; the climb to the peak reflected that shock continuing to work through global markets rather than a new event; the July correction suggests markets partially normalising; and the August–September rise, more modest in scale than April’s, points to prices settling into a new, higher range rather than returning to where the year began. This phased view is more useful for planning purposes than any single month-to-month comparison, since it shows how quickly the underlying conditions can shift from one phase to the next.

The February 2026 Price Shock: A Major Turning Point

February 2026 stands out as the low point of the year for every fuel type covered here, but it’s better understood as the calm before the real turning point than a shock in itself. The sharp movement came the following month, when regional conflict beginning on February 28 disrupted global oil markets and pushed UAE prices sharply higher through March and into April. In hindsight, February’s low prices mark the last point in the year before the market conditions that shaped almost everything afterward took hold every subsequent month’s price, all the way through September, has to be read against that backdrop rather than against January’s slightly higher starting point.

This connects directly to a broader story about how long those effects lasted, covered in more detail in How the February 2026 War-Driven Price Shock Still Hasn’t Fully Reversed.

From Early-Year Prices to Later Highs: The Super 98 Journey

Super 98 began 2026 at AED 2.53 in January, dipped slightly to its year-low of AED 2.45 in February, and then climbed steadily to a year-high of AED 3.95 in June. That climb wasn’t uninterrupted. July brought a sharp drop back to AED 3.40 before prices resumed rising through August and September. The overall direction across the nine months is unmistakably upward, even accounting for July’s pullback, and the size of the swings involved is unusual by the standards of previous years.

Placed side by side, the February low and the June high are separated by less than four months and represent a difference of AED 1.50 per litre, a gap that, on its own, illustrates just how much ground shifted underneath UAE drivers in a relatively short window. By September, Super 98 had settled at AED 3.80, below June’s peak but still well above where the year began. The complete month-by-month path behind this figure, including the exact scale of each individual change, is covered separately in From AED 2.45 to AED 3.80: Super 98’s Full 2026 Price Timeline.

Did Special 95 and E-Plus 91 Follow the Same Pattern?

Special 95 and E-Plus 91 tracked Super 98’s overall shape closely throughout 2026, rising and falling in the same months and by broadly similar proportions. Special 95 moved from AED 2.42 in January to a year-high of AED 3.83 in June, before settling at AED 3.69 by September. E-Plus 91 followed the same rhythm, from AED 2.34 in January to AED 3.76 in June and AED 3.61 in September. The main difference between the three grades is simply their absolute price, which reflects their different octane ratings; the direction and timing of their monthly moves has been consistent throughout the year.

This consistency is itself informative. If one petrol grade had moved noticeably out of step with the others at any point in 2026, it would suggest something specific to that grade’s supply or demand a shortage of a particular blend, for example. Instead, all three grades rising and falling together in every single month points to a single shared cause behind petrol’s movements throughout the year: the broader crude oil market, rather than anything specific to individual fuel grades. That shared pattern is also what makes diesel’s occasional departure from it, discussed next, worth paying attention to.

Why Diesel Told a Different Story in 2026

Diesel followed the same broad up-and-down shape as petrol through most of 2026, but with far larger swings at key moments. April is the clearest example: while petrol rose by roughly a third, diesel jumped from AED 2.72 to AED 4.69, an increase of more than 70% in a single month. Diesel and petrol are different refined products that trade in separate global markets, so it isn’t unusual for one to move more sharply than the other when supply conditions shift. September 2026 offered a second, smaller version of the same pattern, discussed next.

Diesel’s July correction was also proportionally steeper than petrol’s, falling from AED 4.33 to AED 3.60 a drop of nearly 17%, compared with roughly 14% for Super 98 over the same month. Taken together, April and July show that diesel doesn’t just occasionally diverge from petrol in one direction; it has moved further than petrol on both the way up and the way down at different points in 2026. That pattern of amplified swings, rather than a single unusual month, is the real story diesel tells across the year.

September 2026: When Diesel Rose Faster Than Petrol

In September, petrol rose by AED 0.20 per litre across all three grades, while diesel rose by a larger AED 0.50 per litre, taking it from AED 3.80 to AED 4.30. That gap meant diesel’s percentage increase was more than double petrol’s for the month. Set against April’s far larger divergence, September’s gap was modest by comparison but it confirmed that the pattern of diesel moving independently of petrol wasn’t a one-off event confined to the year’s most extreme month.

The detailed reasons behind this diesel-petrol divergence, including the global supply conditions that put greater pressure on diesel, are explored in Why Diesel Rose Faster. 

What Rising Fuel Prices Actually Mean for UAE Drivers

A change of a few fils per litre is easy to overlook, but the practical effect depends on how much fuel a driver actually buys and how often they refuel. Someone filling a large tank multiple times a month experiences a proportionally larger total cost from the same per-litre change than someone who drives occasionally. This is particularly relevant for high-mileage commuters, delivery drivers, and businesses running multiple vehicles, where even a modest per-litre increase can add up meaningfully across a fleet.

The scale of the swings seen in 2026 also makes budgeting harder than in a more stable year. A household or business that set a fuel budget in February, based on that month’s low prices, would have found it badly out of date by April, and then again by June only for July’s correction to bring costs back down before September pushed them up once more. That volatility is arguably as important as the overall direction of prices, since it’s the unpredictability, not just the level, that makes planning difficult for regular drivers and fleet operators alike.

It’s also part of why some drivers and businesses plan refuelling through fuel delivery services in Dubai, scheduling fuel around the monthly price cycle rather than reacting to it after the fact. The exact scale of that impact for a typical fill-up is broken down separately in AED 12 More Per Tank: What September’s Price Rise Actually Costs a 60-Litre Fill-Up.

The Biggest Price Increases and Drops of 2026

A few records stand out clearly from the verified data. April produced the largest single-month petrol increase of the year, with Super 98 rising just over 30%, and the largest diesel increase by far, at more than 70% in one month. July produced the sharpest reversal, with Super 98 falling roughly 14% and diesel dropping close to 17% from June’s levels. June holds the year’s highest recorded petrol prices across all three grades, while February holds the lowest recorded prices for every fuel type covered in this table.

What these records make clear is that 2026’s most extreme movements were concentrated in a short window between March and July five months that saw both the sharpest rise and the sharpest fall of the entire year. August and September, by contrast, were comparatively orderly, with smaller, more typical monthly adjustments. That distinction matters for expectations going forward: the kind of 70%-plus single-month jump seen in April was clearly tied to an exceptional event, not a routine feature of how UAE fuel prices normally move.

What Caused UAE Fuel Prices to Change in 2026?

UAE fuel prices are reviewed and adjusted by the Fuel Price Committee at the end of every month, with new rates reflecting prevailing trends in global energy markets rather than being fixed in advance. Several broad factors can influence that monthly adjustment, including global crude oil prices, conditions in international refined-fuel markets, and wider geopolitical developments affecting supply. The regional conflict that began in late February 2026 is a clearly documented factor behind the sharp rises seen from March through June, but not every monthly movement in this table traces back to a single identifiable event.

It’s worth being cautious here rather than assigning a tidy explanation to every fluctuation. Some months, like April, have a well-documented external trigger. Others, like the smaller adjustments seen in August, more likely reflect the ordinary push and pull of global oil markets settling after a larger shock, without any single new development driving them. Fuel pricing generally reflects a combination of these broader market conditions rather than one cause acting alone, and readers should be wary of any explanation that reduces a full year of data to a single sentence.

What the 2026 Data Trail Reveals About UAE Fuel Prices

The 2026 data shows that UAE fuel prices did not move in a straight line, and that a single month’s announcement can be misleading without the surrounding context. Major turning points: February’s low, April’s sharp jump, July’s reversal, and September’s renewed increase shaped the year far more than any steady monthly trend. Petrol and diesel, while broadly correlated, did not always move at the same speed, with diesel showing consistently larger swings at the year’s most significant turning points. Even small per-litre changes carry practical consequences once multiplied across real-world fuel consumption, particularly for high-mileage drivers and businesses. UAE fuel prices continue to be reviewed monthly, and while this data trail explains what happened through September 2026, it offers no guarantee of how prices will move in the months ahead.