The thirty days
What are the ten Dubai30x30 challenges?
Core Direction runs ten public challenges across the thirty days from 31 October to 29 November 2026. Three run the full thirty days, three are ten day step sprints back to back, and four are twenty four hour missions on the only four Mondays inside the window: 2, 9, 16 and 23 November.
Packages
How much does it cost to sponsor a Dubai30x30 challenge?
Sponsorship of a Core Direction challenge leaderboard runs from AED 35,000 for a twenty four hour Mission to AED 250,000 for the flagship 30 Day Step Challenge, exclusive of 5% VAT, with Signature challenges at AED 125,000 and the three ten day Sprints at AED 45,000, AED 60,000 and AED 75,000. Every slot is priced on the same basis: the fee follows the contracted minimum number of active participants, so a larger guarantee costs more and a smaller one costs less.
Sponsorship closes 30 September 2026. Branding and creative are then settled through October for the 31 October launch.
| Package | Fee | Contracted minimum participants | Public prize | What it covers |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 30 Day Step Challenge1 slot | 250,000 | 25,000 | From 10,000 250,000 recommended |
The flagship, and the largest participation challenge in the programme. The biggest guaranteed audience of the ten. |
| Signature2 slots | 125,000 | 12,500 | From 10,000 125,000 recommended |
One thirty day challenge fully branded: Distance, or Core Points. Thirty days of promotion with fresh creative every week. |
| Sprint 11 slot | 45,000 | 4,500 | From 10,000 45,000 recommended |
The opening ten day step sprint, 31 October to 9 November. Launches with the programme, so it carries the opening weekend and the launch coverage. |
| Sprint 21 slot | 60,000 | 6,000 | From 10,000 60,000 recommended |
The middle ten day step sprint, 10 to 19 November. The natural home for a redemption or trial mechanic that has to convert inside a fortnight. |
| Sprint 31 slot | 75,000 | 7,500 | From 10,000 75,000 recommended |
The closing ten day step sprint, 20 to 29 November. The largest audience of the three, and it finishes into the results and winners coverage. |
| Mission4 slots | 35,000 | 3,500 | From 10,000 35,000 recommended |
One twenty four hour Monday Mission: squats, push ups, sit ups or burpees. One day, one city, one leaderboard. Built to be filmed. |
What is included in every package?
Every package includes the branded challenge and its leaderboard, a branded community page, the full go to market plan, the consented participant data for that challenge, and a post campaign report the sponsor keeps and may publish.
Your challenge, your branding
The challenge, its leaderboard and its community page carry your brand. Creative is produced by Core Direction and approved by you: in app pop ups, newsfeed banners, push notifications and email.
Marketing at no extra cost
Direct invitation to more than 100,000 members and over 1,000 live community clients before any paid media runs. Weekly dynamic creative built from real leaderboard movement. Daily community management.
A report you can publish
Participation, activation, activity volumes and retention, delivered after the campaign. Yours to keep and use.
Physical activations, on top of a challenge
Available to a sponsor who has taken a challenge. A one day store activation inside your own retail space from AED 25,000. A community activation, a permitted community walk or a branded space in a mall or public location for up to 500 participants, from AED 75,000. A signature event, a four week run club at Kite Beach or a one off run event, from AED 250,000. A thirty day Fitness Hub in a business district park with ninety staffed sessions, exclusive to one brand, from AED 1,500,000.
Anything physical needs a decision by the middle of September, because permits, site agreements and fabrication run to about six weeks.
The pool and the campaign
Ten prizes, one pool, one campaign
Each sponsor funds the prize for its own challenge, from a minimum of AED 10,000. Together the ten prizes make a pool worth up to AED 820,000, and Core Direction creates and delivers one public campaign around the combined total. Every sponsor is marketed against the whole pool rather than its own share of it.
What Core Direction builds, at no extra cost
A public campaign hub carrying all ten challenges and the combined pool. A campaign identity that holds ten differently branded challenges together. A PR launch built on the pool announcement, then releases through the window: launch, midpoint, a records story, the winners. Press kit and Arabic throughout. Creator seeding weighted to the challenges that film best.
Core Direction deliberately buys no paid media, so your brand strategy and your media buying stay in one pair of hands.
Why the pool matters more than the fee
UAE paid reach is at its most expensive in exactly this window. Measured Meta cost per thousand impressions in the UAE peaked at USD 23.52 in November 2025 against a USD 15.80 trailing year average, on a dataset of three billion dollars of spend. A prize worth several hundred thousand dirhams, across a series the whole city can enter, is a story that press and word of mouth carry without a media plan behind it.
Your prize stays yours
You own it, you hold it and you award it. Core Direction runs the leaderboard, verifies the result and hands you the winner, and never takes custody of prize money. That keeps the mechanic, the branding and the winner moment under your control, and it keeps the structure with the legal team who already know how you run a promotion.
One thing worth knowing from running these: a threshold beats a podium. If everyone who reaches a stated target enters the draw, the participant sitting in four hundredth place still has a reason to finish. If only the top three win, most people stop trying in the first week.
Questions, answered
What sponsors ask first
Is this the official Dubai Fitness Challenge?
No. The Dubai Fitness Challenge and Dubai 30x30 are organised by Dubai Department of Economy and Tourism with Dubai Sports Council. Core Direction is not the organiser and does not offer DFC rights, branding or event access. What is on offer here is sponsorship of Core Direction's own public challenges, which run during the same thirty day window.
That distinction is the opportunity rather than a caveat. The official event does not run a public leaderboard, so this is not a smaller version of an official partnership. It is the thing an official partnership does not include, and it is open to any brand, including brands that already sponsor the official event. See the official Dubai Fitness Challenge site for the city programme.
How many people will actually join my challenge?
The minimum is contractual, not a forecast. The flagship 30 Day Step Challenge carries a floor of 25,000 active participants and a thirty day Signature challenge carries 12,500. The three ten day Sprints carry 4,500, 6,000 and 7,500, ascending because each one inherits the audience the campaign has already built. A twenty four hour Mission carries 3,500. Across the ten challenges the programme contracts 82,000 active participations.
Before any paid media runs, the challenge is invited directly to more than 100,000 Core Direction members and over 1,000 live community clients, plus the corporate clients enrolled on the programme. The sponsor also markets it to their own database, which is the point: both audiences grow. An active participant is defined as someone who joined the branded challenge and logged at least one qualifying activity from a connected phone or wearable.
What data does a sponsor receive?
Four fields plus activity in your own challenge: first name, last name, mobile number and email address. Nothing else. No wider platform activity, no history from before the campaign, nothing from any other community, and no financial data at any point.
The invitation is a link, not a data transfer, so no customer list moves in either direction. A participant creates their own profile, then agrees to a single named statement on your own community page: I agree to join your community and receive its communications. That is a named consent screen, not a clause buried in general terms. Withdrawal is real: leave the community, revoke the wearable permission, or delete the account. Core Direction is happy to be documented as processor or joint controller under your own agreement and to complete your vendor security and privacy assessment.
Why fund a prize on top of the fee?
Because the prize is not a cost of the sponsorship, it is your share of the thing that makes the programme work. Ten brands each funding a proportionate prize creates a pool none of them would fund alone, and every one of them is then marketed against the full total rather than their own contribution.
The two purchases are separable and usually come from different budgets. The fee buys the platform, the audience and the campaign. The prize buys the participation.
How is this different from a sponsored challenge on Strava?
Three differences. A global platform's entry level challenge reaches a targeted slice of a worldwide user pool, so almost none of it is a UAE consumer. Those platforms publish that they do not guarantee engagement, they estimate it, whereas the minimum active participation here is written into the agreement. And a challenge on someone else's platform hands over no first party record, so when it ends there is nothing left.
What a sponsor keeps here is a named, consented community they own, plus a report they can publish.
Can two competing brands both sponsor?
No. Each sponsor receives category exclusivity within their own grade, so two brands in the same category cannot both hold a Mission, for example. Only one apparel brand is sold across the whole series. Slots close in the order they are taken.
When do I need to decide?
The challenges open on 31 October 2026. Branding and creative need to be settled through September, so a digital sponsorship can close into late September. Anything physical needs a decision by roughly the middle of September, because permits, site agreements and fabrication run to about six weeks.
Who runs it, and what have they delivered?
Core Direction is a Dubai wellness technology company founded in 2008. It has been an approved Dubai Fitness Challenge technology partner for four years, powering corporate wellness programmes, community activations, brand launches and thousands of delivered physical events across 73,000 DFC participants.
Other delivered programmes include the Dubai Health Authority Health and Happiness campaign at 43,000 participants across 155 schools, and Dubai Holding Real Estate at 33% workforce adoption against a 6 to 12% industry norm, followed by 167% participation growth into year two. Roughly 95% of the wearable market is integrated: Garmin, Apple Health, Google Health Connect, Fitbit, Samsung Health and WHOOP. Core Direction is an official Garmin Connect Developer Program partner.
Track record
Delivered for
Government entities, Fortune 500 companies and industry leaders across the UAE and Saudi Arabia.
Engaged members
Across 117 countries, concentrated in the UAE.
Steps tracked
Architecture load tested beyond 100,000 users, with citywide leaderboards and anti gaming weighted scoring that favours wearable verified activity.
Live communities
Corporate, government and community programmes running on the platform today.
Ten challenges. Ten brands.
Twenty minutes and we will put the whole thing on the table: the challenge that fits, the participation floor we will contract to, the prize that carries it, and the creative you would be approving.
Sponsorship closes 30 September 2026. Book before then to see which challenges are still open in your category.
Or leave your details
Tell us who you are and we will come back within one working day with the challenges still open in your category.