Family Office Summit Dubai agenda

Because one of those has a governance structure, an investment committee, and a CIO. The other has strong opinions and no minutes.

The most fundamental question in any family office is not what to invest in. It is how decisions actually get made. This panel explores the spectrum between professionalised, process-driven family offices that operate with institutional discipline, and the ones where the founding generation still makes every call over a family dinner and calls it consensus. Both models exist. Both have produced extraordinary results. And both have produced spectacular failures. The question is which one your family office actually is, and whether that is a conscious choice or something that just happened.

GPs calling everything proprietary does not make it proprietary. It makes it Tuesday.

Family offices are fundamentally rethinking how they access private markets. Co-investments, secondaries, evergreen funds, club deals, direct lending. The toolkit has expanded. But so has the competition, the complexity, and the number of GPs who describe every deal as proprietary. The uncomfortable question on the table: is too much family capital trapped in PE structures that no longer serve them, and how do you get out without admitting you should never have gone in?

If every family office is now an AI investor, who exactly is the contrarian?

What is driving renewed appetite for venture capital, and how much of it is genuine conviction versus fear of missing the AI wave? A grounded look at valuation resets, sector concentration, manager selection, and why the families generating real returns are allocating selectively and globally, well beyond Silicon Valley. The session will also address the question nobody wants to ask out loud: if every family office is now an AI investor, who exactly is the contrarian?

They moved for the structure, the neutrality, and the fact that you can get a serious meeting in 48 hours.

While conflict reshapes the wider region, the UAE has quietly done what it always does. Kept the lights on, the airport busy, and the regulatory framework one step ahead of wherever capital was trying to go next. This session explores why Dubai continues to draw serious private wealth from London, Geneva, Singapore, and everywhere in between, what the DMCC framework offers that other jurisdictions cannot replicate, and whether a UAE-centric structure is genuine strategic diversification or concentration risk dressed up as safety and very good weather. Spoiler: the work is never done. But this is a very good place to start.

Trump, war premiums, and a commodity cycle nobody fully priced. The answer depends on which side of the trade you are already on.

Energy markets repriced by the Iran conflict. Gold at historic highs. Agricultural supply chains under pressure. A US administration with a creative relationship with trade policy and an even more creative relationship with consistency. This panel maps where family offices are positioning across hard assets, oil, gold, agricultural commodities, and the infrastructure behind them, and asks whether the commodity cycle has further to run or is already in the price. This session will help you work out which side of that trade you should be on.

Until someone runs the numbers on what ignoring it is actually costing you. Then it gets interesting.

The UAE gives every family office in this room a structural advantage that London and New York would genuinely envy. The families capturing it fully are a small minority. This session addresses the gap: DIFC, DMCC, and ADGM structures, the management versus holding layer distinction, the control trap, CRS and offshore asset visibility, and the outsourced services question. What to build in-house, what to outsource, and what the honest cost looks like at different AUM levels. Because every family office is different, and the structure that works brilliantly for one family creates unnecessary complexity and cost for another.

Is the money stuck or are the assets actually there? A frank conversation about whether good deals still exist or whether we are all just competing for the same ten opportunities.

Volatility makes winners and losers. The question is which side of that equation you are currently on, and whether it was skill or timing.

Elon Musk: genius, showman, or both? And more importantly, how do you invest around someone who moves markets with a single post at 2am?

The least glamorous table. Also the one that will save or cost you the most money. Choose accordingly.

Phones away. Conversations on.

The next generation has entered the chat. Literally.

The next generation has never known a stable macro environment. Their instincts were built through financial crisis, a pandemic, zero interest rates, and now regional conflict, and they have had access to the world’s most powerful information tool since they were teenagers. This fireside brings NextGen principals to the table not to be observed, but to lead the conversation. What do they actually think about the portfolios they are inheriting? Where do they disagree with the decisions made before them? And when Dad says “we have always done it this way” and ChatGPT says something entirely different, who wins?

Opening questions to the panel:

1. What is the one part of the portfolio you inherited that you would not have built yourself, and have you actually changed it yet, or are you still having that conversation over dinner?
2. The NextGen narrative always emphasises impact, technology, and sustainability. But the mandate is still to preserve and grow capital. Where does the idealism meet the spreadsheet, and who wins?
3. What does the actual handover of real decision-making authority look like in your family, and what is the hardest part that nobody prepares you for?

Because good intentions and a strong IRR are not mutually exclusive. Apparently.

Impact investing has matured. The era of accepting below-market returns in exchange for a good story is largely over. The families committing serious capital to impact in 2026 are doing so because they believe the return thesis stacks up, not despite it. This panel explores how sophisticated family offices are approaching impact with the same rigour they apply to any other asset class: measurable outcomes, credible governance, and a genuine understanding of where the financial return actually comes from. The panel covers healthcare access, education, climate infrastructure, and financial inclusion, and addresses the question the room is quietly asking: how do you tell the difference between genuine impact investing and philanthropy with better branding?

Opening questions to the panel:

1. Walk us through a specific impact investment your family office has made. What the thesis was, what the return target was, and whether it has delivered. No case studies. A real deal.
2. Measurement is the hardest part of impact investing. Every manager has a framework, but very few are comparable. How do you actually assess impact in due diligence, and what do you do when the numbers do not add up?
3. The criticism from the traditional investment community is that you are either accepting lower returns or kidding yourself about the impact. How do you respond, and is there a version of that criticism you think is fair?

Still dominant. But on points, not knockouts.

Property has dominated Middle Eastern family allocations for decades. The question in 2026 is whether that dominance reflects genuine conviction or the gravitational pull of familiarity. This debate covers yield compression, risk concentration, global exposure, and leverage assumptions. The panel will also address the question that tends to come up after the second coffee: if you were starting from zero today, how much of the portfolio would actually be in property?

Opening questions to the panel:

1. Strip out capital appreciation and look at net yield after financing, management costs, and vacancy. What does the honest return number look like, and does it still justify the concentration?
2. Dubai residential has had an extraordinary run. Where are families in this room actually finding genuine yield in global real estate right now, and where are they quietly reducing?
3. The case for real estate has always been that it is tangible, understandable, and generationally transferable. Is that still a valid investment thesis in 2026, or is it a comfort blanket dressed up as a strategy?

Drug discovery, diagnostics, longevity, and where the disruption creates stranded assets rather than returns.

AI is compressing drug discovery timelines, transforming diagnostics, and restructuring hospital operations at scale. This fireside separates the durable return opportunities from the noise, covering the verticals where family office capital has a genuine edge, and the ones where the hype has already outrun the science. Not every AI healthcare company is going to cure cancer. Some of them are just going to send you a very expensive app notification.

Opening questions to the panel:

1. Drug discovery AI requires enormous capital and long timelines. Where in the healthcare stack is the more accessible, nearer-term return opportunity for a family office without a $500M allocation and a team of scientists?
2. Healthcare is one of the most regulated industries in the world. How do you underwrite regulatory risk in an AI healthcare investment when the frameworks themselves have not caught up with what the technology can actually do?
3. Longevity science is attracting serious family office capital. Is this a genuine investment theme with a return thesis, or is it wealthy people spending money on their own health and calling it a portfolio?

The spreadsheet is not dead. But it is on notice.

Automated reporting adoption jumped from 46% to 69% in a single year. Generative AI is now used by nearly a third of family offices for investment research. This fireside explores what a genuinely integrated family office technology stack looks like in 2026, from portfolio aggregation and consolidated reporting to AI-powered deal sourcing, and which investments are delivering measurable ROI versus a very impressive demo and a very complicated implementation.

Opening questions to the panel:

1. You have implemented a portfolio aggregation platform. What does the honest version of that story look like, the data migration, the staff resistance, the things the vendor did not mention in the demo?
2. How do you govern generative AI for investment research? Who is accountable when it surfaces a recommendation, and how do you stop the team treating it as a shortcut rather than a tool?
3. How are you thinking about data sovereignty, and is there a version of the modern family office operating system that does not require handing your most sensitive financial data to a vendor you met eighteen months ago?

Find your table. The conversations get smaller, more honest, and considerably more useful. Also the chairs are more comfortable.

After years of reduced exposure, family offices are returning to public markets with renewed conviction, or at least renewed curiosity. This roundtable explores what has changed, where confidence is building across equities, listed credit, and hedge funds, and how families are constructing portfolios for a volatility-driven environment. The key question: are we re-engaging because the opportunity is genuinely there, or because the alternatives have become complicated?

A candid examination of what GCC private equity actually looks like in 2026. Deal flow quality, manager depth, realistic exit timelines, and how it compares to international PE. This is not a promotional conversation about the regional opportunity. It is an honest one about whether the deal flow justifies the allocation, and what to do when it does not.

With valuations reset and selectivity returning, venture is back on family office agendas. This roundtable explores how families structure VC exposure, balance fund and direct strategies, manage vintage diversification, and align innovation capital with long-term objectives. Plus the question everyone is quietly asking: how much of the current enthusiasm is genuine AI conviction, and how much is a cycle repeating itself with better branding?

Real estate remains central to most Middle Eastern family portfolios, yet the assumptions that justified those allocations are under pressure in ways that were not fully priced three years ago. This roundtable examines where property still works, where risks are being quietly underestimated, and how families are beginning to reposition within genuinely diversified portfolios.

How are family offices moving beyond pilots to genuine AI-driven advantage in deal sourcing, risk monitoring, and investment decisions? A practical roundtable on tools that actually work, governance frameworks, vendor selection, and how to maintain human judgment when the algorithm is increasingly confident it knows better.

Digital assets are evolving from speculative exposure to institutional infrastructure, slowly, then quickly. This roundtable explores what belongs in a long-term family portfolio, how families are managing custody and regulation in the UAE, and what structural mistakes early movers made that everyone else can now avoid. Bring your real questions. Leave the talking points at the door.

A focused discussion on hard asset exposure in 2026. How much of current pricing is a genuine structural shift and how much is a conflict premium that will eventually normalise? And what does the portfolio look like on the other side of that normalisation?

India has the demographics, the growth trajectory, the technology talent, and the domestic consumption story every long-term investor wants exposure to. It also has regulatory complexity, capital controls, and a business environment that rewards patience and local relationships above everything else. For families genuinely interested in India as a portfolio allocation, not just as a theme, this is the honest conversation about how to build it properly.

Private credit has attracted record capital and the quality gap between managers is widening faster than most allocators have noticed. This roundtable explores where yield is genuinely justified, how structures behave under stress, and how to assess downside protection before, rather than during, the next dislocation. The best time to stress-test a credit book was two years ago. The second best time is this afternoon.

A peer conversation for NextGen principals on risk appetite, governance structures, succession planning, and what responsible ownership actually looks like when the founding generation steps back. No senior family members in the room. No filter required.