The independent field guide to TOKEN2049 Dubai week, and the UAE ESIM you pay for out of your own wallet. Installed before you fly, live the second the plane doors open.
Five Dubai packages, unlimited data for as long as you are here, paid for out of your own wallet. No bank, no card in the right name, no roaming bill next month.
In, conference, out. Nothing either side.
Side events, both conference days and the weekend that follows.
The whole week with a day of slack at each end.
TOKEN2049 and a proper look at the country either side.
Dubai stitched onto a longer run through the Gulf.
All prices in USD and all of them are what you pay. Coverage, hotspot and refund eligibility are set per plan, so read the package details before you buy.
Eleven of the names already confirmed on the main stage, out of 64 announced and more than three hundred to come. Decide who you are flying to meet before you land, not while you are queueing for coffee on floor four.
The main stage is the Wednesday and the Thursday. More than five hundred side events run across the city either side of it, and the good ones fill before the conference doors open.
Over five hundred of them across the city, and the good ones fill before the conference doors do.
Madinat Jumeirah, indoor and outdoor across the resort. Doors early, queues earlier.
The Dubai edition runs as a festival: ziplines, cold plunges, live performances and dining across the grounds, not a hall of booths.
Friday and the weekend are when the after-parties and the beach clubs take over from the agenda.
Six guides, each one written for the week you are actually here rather than for a fortnight of sightseeing.
DXB is enormous, and it moves faster than it looks
Taxis do most of the work, and they are cheap
Cards everywhere, dirhams pegged to the dollar
Two hundred nationalities cook here, and most of it is cheap
Four downloads, then the city works
Heat, custom, and what to do with a spare evening
Careem, Talabat, the side event approval email, the Nol card top-up, the restaurant in Karama somebody told you to find. Every item on that guide is a phone with data. Sort it on your sofa, before you fly.
Over a thousand side events run across TOKEN2049 week and most of them are announced late. Leave an address and you get the list the day it is worth having, plus anything that changes about the programme. Nothing else.
More than a thousand side events run across TOKEN2049 week and there is no single directory for them. We keep one.
An ESIM has to be installed over Wi-Fi before you fly, and nothing starts counting down until you land. Finishing now costs you nothing.