Trade License Modification
Change an activity, name, address, partner, manager or legal form on a live mainland licence.
Changing a Dubai mainland license
A licence is a snapshot of a company on the day it was issued, and companies do not stay still. The law treats that gap as something you have to close rather than something you may: a change to the information or documents the licence was granted on has to be notified to the department (Law No. (13) of 2011, Article 19(3)), and no change may be made to the licence or the legal form “without first obtaining the approval of the DED and Competent Entities” (Article 10(a)).
Which is why a modification is not one job. Adding an activity, changing the trade name, moving the licensed address, bringing a partner in, replacing the manager, moving from a professional licence to an LLC — these need different papers, different approvals and, in some cases, a different authority. Lumping them into a single “documents required” list is the standard way this subject is written up online, and it is the reason owners arrive at a counter missing one thing.
So this page is split the way the work is actually split. Pick your change below. Each section says what it is, what the law requires for it, and what we need from you — and the guide linked at the foot of the page covers what each change costs.
What we change for you
- Activity added to, or removed from, the licence
- Trade name change, including the signboard consequence
- Licensed address change when the business moves
- Partners and shareholding — in, out, or a different split
- Manager added, removed or replaced
- Legal form — including the move from a professional licence to an LLC, and a change of local service agent
- Signing and special powers of a partner or a manager: bank account operation, borrowing, dealing with the tax authority
- The external approval, where the activity you are adding is one somebody else regulates
- The knock-on work a change creates: the tenancy registration after an address change, the establishment card after a manager change
Get this quoted
Itemised in writing, government charges shown separately, before anything is filed.
Which one do you need?
Who needs a modification
- Mainland licence holders whose company has changed in any respect the licence records
- Businesses that have started doing something their licence does not cover — the common one, and worth fixing before an inspection finds it
- Companies where a partner is leaving, joining, or changing their share
- Owners moving premises, including into or out of a shared office
- Professional licence holders considering an LLC
- Companies that need a manager's banking or signing authority changed on the record
- Not for e-Trader licences. On the files we handle, an e-Trader licence is renewed or cancelled rather than amended; a change of substance means moving to a full licence. Ask us before assuming either way.
What we need from you
The three that open any modification file:
- Trade licence copy
- Passport, visa and Emirates ID of the partners the change involves
- A new Ejari, if the change is a move of address
Each section below adds what its own change needs on top of that. We ask for those once we know which change you are making, rather than listing forty documents and letting you work out which nine apply.
The reason a modification file is heavier than a renewal file is the approval requirement: the Law does not permit a change to the licence "without first obtaining the approval of the DED and Competent Entities" (Law No. (13) of 2011, Article 10(a)). "Competent Entities" is the part that varies — it is whichever other authority regulates what you are changing.
How a modification runs
- Say what is changing, in one sentence. "Adding a partner", "moving office", "adding food trading". That is enough to tell which route the file takes.
- We tell you which approvals your change triggers. This is the step that decides the timeline, and it is the one most owners have no way of predicting.
- Written quote, government charges itemised apart from our fee.
- Papers prepared in the right order. A notarised document that has to exist before the application cannot be chased afterwards.
- Filed, followed, and the amended licence to you — along with the list of other records that now disagree with it. A changed licence usually means a changed establishment card, and sometimes a changed tenancy registration and bank mandate.
Turnaround and fees
- Fees: quote on request. A modification's charges depend entirely on which change it is — adding an activity and changing a shareholding are not comparable pieces of work. Itemised in writing first.
- Our typical turnaround: four to five working days for a change that needs no outside approval. A change that does need one runs to whatever that authority takes, which we cannot commit to on their behalf.
- One cost that is easy to miss and is not ours: the Law provides that the department publishes a licence modification, including the revocation of a licence, in at least one daily newspaper at the owner's expense (Law No. (13) of 2011, Article 10(b)(4)).
Adding or removing an activity
This is the change businesses need most and notice last. A company starts offering something adjacent to what it was licensed for, it goes well, and a year later the licence still does not say so. The activity you add has to exist in the department's classification directory, which is where the Law sends you: licences are granted per "the relevant Economic Activities classification directory of the Emirate of Dubai issued by the DED" (Article 5), and the department is the body that will "determine and classify the Economic Activities authorised in the Emirate" based on international standards (Article 4(5)). Two things decide how heavy the job is. Whether the activity you want sits in a group that can share a licence with what you already hold, which the directory determines. And whether it is regulated by somebody other than the economic department: "Some activities require additional approvals from government entities related to that particular business" (u.ae, 8 April 2026). An activity with an outside regulator is not a harder filing — it is a longer wait on someone else's desk.
What we need
- Trade licence copy
- The activity you want, described in your own words — we will find its classification
- Passport, visa and Emirates ID of the partners, where the file needs them
Removing an activity is the quieter half of this section and worth doing deliberately. An activity you no longer carry on can still carry obligations and can still attract an approval requirement at renewal.
Changing the trade name
The trade name is the one your customers see, and on a Dubai licence it is the field that has to match your signboard. Changing it touches more than the licence: the signboard, the tenancy paperwork, the bank, the invoices, the domain, anything printed. The licence change itself is a modification like any other and sits under the same prior-approval rule in Article 10(a). The name has to be available and acceptable before anything else happens, and the Law's framing of what a trade name is for — the UAE Government portal puts it as "A trade name distinguishes one business from another" (u.ae) — is the test the department applies in practice.
What we need
- Trade licence copy
- The name you want, and a second choice. Availability is the usual obstacle, not eligibility
- Passport, visa and Emirates ID of the owner or partners
The part people forget: a renamed company still has the old name on its establishment card, its tenancy registration and its bank mandate the day after. We give you that list with the amended licence.
Changing the licensed address
A move is two jobs in sequence and they cannot be swapped. The premises have to be specified for the activity — an applicant "must specify the premises in the Emirate through which its Economic Activities will be conducted" (Article 17) — and in Dubai the agreement "must be registered with Ejari" (u.ae, 8 April 2026). So the new tenancy is registered first, and then the licence is amended onto it. There is a second line in Article 17 worth reading if you are moving into a space that was not built for your activity: the premises must suit the licensed activity, and "may not be used for purposes other than those determined in the Licence issued by the DED".
What we need
- Trade licence copy
- The new Ejari
- Passport, visa and Emirates ID of the partners, where the file needs them
Timing advice, from doing this often: start the address change before the old tenancy ends, not after. A licence whose registered premises have lapsed is a harder conversation than a licence being moved between two live registrations.
Partners and shareholding
A partner joining, a partner leaving, or the same partners holding different shares — all three are modifications, and all three reach further into the company's constitution than the other changes on this page. The legal form decides how far: the Law permits the sole proprietorship, the civil works company, the commercial company and the branch (Article 14), and what has to be executed and notarised follows from which of those you are. The prior-approval rule in Article 10(a) covers both halves of this — the licence particulars and the legal form — so a share transfer agreed privately between partners is not effective against the licence until the department has approved the change.
What we need
- Trade licence copy
- Passport, visa and Emirates ID of every partner the change touches, incoming and outgoing
- The constitutional document as it stands, so we can see what has to be amended
On absent partners: there are routes that work when somebody cannot attend, and they depend on the legal form and on where the person is. We would rather establish which route fits your file than publish a method that turns out not to apply to you.
Changing the manager
The manager on the licence is who the department, and in practice the bank and the authorities, treat as running the company. Replacing that person is a licence modification and it has consequences past the licence itself. It is a small filing with a long tail. The establishment card usually names the same person; so does the bank mandate; so do the authority portals the company uses. Changing the licence and nothing else leaves a company whose records disagree with each other, which surfaces at the worst moment — usually when a transaction needs the authorised person and the authorised person is the one who left.
What we need
- Trade licence copy
- Passport, visa and Emirates ID of the incoming manager, and of the outgoing one where the file needs them
- The constitutional document, where the manager is named in it
Nobody searches for this change — there is no measurable search demand for it in either English or Arabic — and it is still one of the most frequent pieces of work on a licence. That is the honest reason it is a section here and not a page of its own.
Legal form, and the local service agent
The heaviest change on this page. Moving a professional licence to an LLC, or changing the local service agent arrangement, changes what the company is rather than what the licence says about it, and the Law brings it inside the same prior-approval requirement as everything else: no change to the legal form "without first obtaining the approval of the DED and Competent Entities" (Article 10(a)). The forms the Law permits are set out in Article 14: a sole proprietorship, a civil works company, a commercial company, and a branch of a national, foreign or free zone company. Article 15 adds the partnership arrangements available for occupational or artisan activities, which is the category the Law uses for work done by natural persons relying on "physical or intellectual efforts" (Article 2) — the nearest published concept to what the department calls a professional licence.
What we need
- Trade licence copy
- Passport, visa and Emirates ID of every owner and partner, incoming and outgoing
- The current constitutional document and any existing service agent agreement
Before you start: this is the one change on the page where the right first step is a conversation, not a document list. What a change of form does to your visas, your bank account, your tax registration and your existing contracts is the substance of it; the licence amendment is the easy part.
Signing powers and special authorities
Who may open and operate the bank account. Who may borrow. Who may deal with the tax authority. These are recorded, and they are changed by a licence modification together with the constitutional documents — not by a letter to the bank. It is the least discussed change in this whole subject and one of the most practical. A company where one person holds every authority has a single point of failure, and the moment it matters is always a moment when that person is unreachable. Splitting or adding an authority is a routine filing done in advance.
What we need
- Trade licence copy
- The constitutional document as it stands
- Passport, visa and Emirates ID of the person gaining or losing the authority
Like the manager change, this has no search demand behind it at all, in either language. It is here because it comes up constantly in the work, not because anyone looks for it.
Modification questions, answered from the law
What counts as a licence modification?
Any change to the particulars the licence records, or to the legal form. The Law puts it as a duty to "notify the DED of any change in the information and documents based on which the Licence has been granted" (Law No. (13) of 2011, Article 19(3)), and separately forbids making the change without prior approval (Article 10(a)).
Do I need permission before I change something?
Yes, and that is the heart of it: no modification to the licence or the legal form may be made "without first obtaining the approval of the DED and Competent Entities" (Article 10(a)). Doing the thing first and updating the licence later is the wrong order, not a shortcut.
Is my change published anywhere?
It can be. The Law requires the department to publish a licence modification — the same article names the revocation of a licence as one of the things published — in at least one daily newspaper, at the owner's expense (Article 10(b)(4)). It is rarely mentioned anywhere online and it is worth knowing before you are surprised by a charge.
Can I add any activity I like?
The activity has to exist in the department's own classification. Licences are granted per "the relevant Economic Activities classification directory of the Emirate of Dubai issued by the DED" (Law No. (13) of 2011, Article 5), and the department is the body that will "determine and classify the Economic Activities authorised in the Emirate" (Article 4(5)). Which activities can sit together on one licence is decided by that directory, so the practical answer comes from checking your licence against it rather than from a rule of thumb.
Which changes need an approval from another authority?
It depends on the activity, not on the type of change. The UAE Government portal puts it plainly: "Some activities require additional approvals from government entities related to that particular business" (u.ae, 8 April 2026). Tell us the activity and we will name the authority.
What do I need to change the licensed address?
A new tenancy registration. The Law requires the premises for the activity to be specified (Article 17), and in Dubai the agreement "must be registered with Ejari" (u.ae). So a move is really two jobs in sequence: register the new premises, then amend the licence.
Can a partner be added or removed while one of them is abroad?
Often, but how depends on the legal form and on what has to be notarised. There are routes that do not require everybody in the room, and there are documents that have to be executed and attested where the person is. We will tell you which applies once we know the legal form and where the partner is — rather than promising a method that may not fit your file.
Can I move from a professional licence to an LLC?
It is a change of legal form, which the Law brings squarely inside the prior-approval requirement in Article 10(a). The forms the Law permits are sole proprietorship, civil works company, commercial company and a branch of a national, foreign or free zone company (Article 14), and moving between them changes what the company is, not just what the licence says. It is the heaviest change on this page and the one most worth a conversation first.
Can I change who operates the bank account or signs for the company?
Yes — that is a change to a partner's or manager's powers, and it is recorded on the licence and the constitutional documents rather than only at the bank. It is one of the quieter modifications and one of the most useful, because the alternative is a company that cannot transact when the one authorised person is away.
Can an e-Trader licence be amended?
On the files we handle, no: an e-Trader licence is renewed or cancelled, and a change of substance means moving to a full licence. That is our experience rather than a published rule, so ask us about your specific case before acting on it.
Can a modification be done together with the renewal?
Yes, and it often should be. They are priced as two pieces of work because the change carries its own approvals, but doing them together saves the duplicated trips. The renewal page explains the combination.
What will it cost?
Quote on request, itemised, before anything is filed. Government charges on a modification vary so widely between change types that any single figure published here would mislead most of the people reading it.
Every rule and figure on this page names its source and was checked on 7 November 2026. Authority requirements, charges and timelines are set by the relevant UAE authorities and change without notice. AL HUDHUD Documents Clearing Services is a documents clearing and PRO services company, not a law firm; this page is information, not legal advice. Fees: quote on request.
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