UAE cargo without the Strait of Hormuz: Fujairah, Khor Fakkan, Oman's ports and Etihad Rail — how goods leave the Gulf by sea in 2026, and when the road through Türkiye is still the better way to Europe

When we wrote earlier this year that sea freight from Dubai had effectively stopped, it was true for the route almost everyone had used until then: out of Jebel Ali, through the Strait of Hormuz, and either up the Red Sea to Suez or east to Asia. The strait has been closed to normal commercial traffic since early March 2026, and the effect on the UAE's own numbers is stark: the country's largest port group handled 573,000 TEU in the second quarter, 65% less than a year earlier, and 67% less bulk and general cargo. What that sentence hides is where the rest of the cargo went — because it did not disappear.

It went 130 kilometres east. The UAE has two working ports on the Gulf of Oman, Fujairah and Khor Fakkan, that face the open Indian Ocean and never needed the strait. In six months they have turned from regional feeder ports into the country's main gateway, fed by a railway that happened to be finished just in time and by a highway across the Hajar mountains. Oman's ports further south have done the same for their own market and for transhipment. This article is about how that bypass actually works, how big it can get, and — from the point of view of a forwarder that moves UAE cargo to Europe and the Caucasus every week — why it changes the answer for some destinations and not for others.

What actually happened to Gulf shipping in 2026

Two of these numbers explain the season. The 65% fall in throughput is a measure of how much cargo Jebel Ali used to handle that now has no direct sea route; it is not a measure of demand, which has held up. And the jump at Khor Fakkan, from 8,000 to 65,000 TEU a week, is the same cargo reappearing where a ship can actually reach it. The bypass is real, it is already carrying most of what moves, and it is congested for exactly that reason.

The UAE's east coast: Fujairah and Khor Fakkan

Fujairah and Khor Fakkan sit on a short stretch of coast between the mountains and the Gulf of Oman, about 130 and 150 kilometres from Dubai by road. Fujairah is the UAE's oil-bunkering port and has a container terminal with capacity of around 720,000 TEU a year, operated by AD Ports Group, which rerouted its feeder network there and to Khor Fakkan in the second quarter, added 400 trucks, deployed 27 container vessels and five bulk carriers on the alternative corridors, chartered six aircraft for food and pharmaceuticals, and expanded warehousing by more than 54,000 square metres. DP World has announced two new terminals on the same coast.

Khor Fakkan, in Sharjah's east-coast enclave, is the bigger story. It is a natural deep-water harbour with six deep-sea berths, operated by Gulftainer, and it was running at about 8,000 TEU a week before the crisis. By July it was handling 65,000 TEU a week with a target of 100,000, and the operator announced a programme of around $2 billion to lift capacity from 3.5 million TEU to 5 million within three months, 7 million within two years and 10 million within three — enough, in its own estimate, to absorb 80–90% of the UAE's container demand if the strait stays shut. Two bonded dry ports inland, Al Dhaid and Sajaa, add 1.5 million and a combined 2.3 million TEU of yard capacity on the Dubai side of the mountains. Gulftainer's chief executive put the aim carefully: not to capture all of the traffic, but to give shippers certainty. That is the right way to read the east coast — an insurance policy that is now being used for the first time at full scale.

Etihad Rail: the piece that makes the bypass work

A port 130 kilometres from the warehouses that feed it is only as good as the road and rail between them, and this is where the UAE had a stroke of timing. Etihad Rail's freight network, running the length of the country from the Saudi border at Ghuweifat to Fujairah and linking Khalifa Port, Jebel Ali and the industrial zones, had been carrying mostly aggregates and sulphur — 10 million tonnes of the first and 6.5 million tonnes of the second in 2025, alongside 148,000 containers. When the strait closed, that spare container capacity became the country's most valuable logistics asset.

In nine days of March the railway ran more than 100 freight trips, moving about 459,000 tonnes and 7,900 containers, and raised service frequency from one to six trips a day to clear congestion at the inland terminals. For a shipper the practical meaning is that a container stuffed in Jebel Ali or Abu Dhabi's industrial zone can reach the east coast without a truck in the mountain queue, provided the rail slot is booked in advance like a vessel slot. Rail does not carry loose or oversized cargo, and it does not go to Khor Fakkan, only to Fujairah — so for the bigger of the two ports, trucks remain the link.

Oman's ports — outside the strait, not outside the risk

Oman is the other half of the map. Sohar, about 200 kilometres from Dubai, Duqm on the Arabian Sea and Salalah near the Yemeni border are the only major ports in the region outside both the Strait of Hormuz and the Bab al-Mandeb chokepoint, and the numbers show them being used that way: Sohar handled 545,000 TEU in the first half of 2026, up 40%, and Salalah 2.33 million TEU, up 15%, after an expansion that lifted its capacity from 4.5 to 6.5 million TEU. But the phrase "outside the strait" needs one correction.

• Sohar — the closest Omani port to Dubai and an industrial zone in its own right; container volumes up 40% in the first half; its industrial area was struck on 13 March 2026
• Salalah — the region's Indian Ocean transhipment hub, now 6.5 million TEU of capacity and revenue up a fifth in the half-year; fuel tanks set ablaze on 11 March and operations suspended, a crane damaged on 28 March
• Duqm — a deep-water port and free zone on the Arabian Sea with room to grow; hit on 1 March, the first day of the strikes on Oman
• The sea lanes themselves — attacks on merchant ships in the Gulf of Oman and the Arabian Sea continued through the spring and summer, including a container ship hit in early May and a freighter sunk in mid-May
• Insurance follows the map — war-risk premiums apply on the Gulf of Oman approaches too, not only inside the strait, and they move with each incident
• Border formalities — trucking UAE cargo to an Omani port means an export from the UAE and a transit through Oman, with the paperwork that implies; it is a real option, not a shortcut

Oman's ports are a genuine relief valve and, for Indian Ocean destinations, often the natural choice. They are not a risk-free alternative to the UAE's own east coast; they are a second set of doors on the same exposed coastline.

How cargo leaves Dubai today, step by step

Read the table as a menu rather than a sequence. Most UAE export cargo this season takes one of three paths: truck or train to the east coast and a vessel from there; truck across Saudi Arabia to Türkiye and on to Europe by road; or air for anything that cannot wait. The choice is made by destination, not by preference — and the sea leg out of the Gulf of Oman is only the start of the problem for European buyers, because the Red Sea is still unsafe and a ship from Fujairah to Rotterdam sails round Africa.

That is why our own answer for Europe and Ukraine has not changed since the spring. The overland route from Dubai — through Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria and Türkiye — takes 14 to 20 days door to door, avoids both closed straits and every congested terminal, and carries the same groupage and full loads we used to put on a vessel. Before the conflict with Iran we ran the shorter overland variant through Iran with transhipment at Poti; that door closed too, which is why the Turkish route is now the standard.

East coast by sea or Türkiye by road: choosing by destination

The point of the matrix is that the east-coast bypass and the Turkish road are not competitors; they serve different destinations. For anything east or south of the UAE the sea has moved 130 kilometres and works. For anything north and west — Europe, Ukraine, the Caucasus — the sea route now involves the Cape, and the road wins on time. Current delivery times from Dubai reflect exactly that split.

Waiting times, surcharges and what to write into contracts

Three things are true at once about the east-coast ports in September 2026: they work, they are full, and they are getting bigger. Shipping press reported in mid-August that vessel waiting times at Fujairah and Khor Fakkan had roughly doubled as the negotiations over reopening the strait stalled; terminal gates in Fujairah run queues that the highway distance does not predict; and congestion and war-risk surcharges have become a standard line on Gulf quotations rather than an exception. None of this is a reason not to ship. It is a reason to write contracts differently.

Practically that means: quote and accept delivery windows, not dates, for anything that touches the east-coast ports; make sure the bill of lading names Fujairah or Khor Fakkan as the port of loading or discharge rather than assuming Jebel Ali; book rail and vessel slots before the cargo is stuffed; and agree in advance who absorbs congestion and war-risk surcharges, because they change between booking and sailing. For Europe-bound cargo, compare the all-in road time against a sea transit that includes the Cape, not against the Suez transit in last year's contract.

What changes for importers from Dubai and exporters to the UAE

For the two groups of clients we work with most — importers bringing goods out of Dubai, and European exporters selling into the UAE — the season changes a handful of concrete things.

• Importers from Dubai to Europe and Ukraine — the working route is road via Türkiye in 14–20 days; sea from the east coast exists but sails round Africa, so use it only for cargo that can wait several extra weeks
• Importers to Asia, India and Africa — sea from Khor Fakkan, Fujairah or Salalah; expect an east-coast port on the documents and a rail or truck leg inside the UAE that did not exist in your 2025 costings
• European exporters to the UAE — shipping from Europe to the UAE now normally discharges on the east coast, with final delivery to Dubai by rail or truck; the road route through Türkiye works in reverse for time-critical loads
• Free-zone stock — goods held in JAFZA and the other Dubai free zones are 130 km further from a ship than they were; the bonded dry ports at Al Dhaid and Sajaa exist to close that gap
• Air freight — air out of Dubai is the one mode the strait never touched and is the right answer for pharma, perishables and high-value electronics
• Documents — port of loading, place of receipt and Incoterms point of delivery all need to reflect the new geography, or a buyer's letter of credit written around Jebel Ali will not match the bill of lading

The common thread is that the UAE remains a functioning hub; what has changed is the last 130 kilometres to the water and, for Europe, the whole sea leg. Plan those two explicitly and the rest of the chain looks familiar.

Capacity limits: why the bypass cannot carry everything

The honest limit of the bypass is arithmetic. Jebel Ali handled about 15.5 million TEU in 2024 with capacity for 19.4 million. Fujairah has around 720,000 TEU of container capacity and Khor Fakkan 3.5 million rising to 5 million this year — together well under a third of Jebel Ali's normal volume even after the first expansion, and the full 10 million TEU at Khor Fakkan is a three-year programme. The railway and the mountain highway are single corridors with finite slots. The second-quarter figures show the result: throughput down two-thirds, not because the bypass failed, but because it is the size it is.

Bulk and project cargo feel this hardest. Containers can be re-routed by rail; a 5,000-tonne bulk parcel or an out-of-gauge machine needs a berth and a crane that the east coast has in limited number, which is why AD Ports' bulk and general cargo fell 67% against 65% for containers. Anyone moving that kind of cargo out of the Gulf this season should expect to wait for a slot or to consider the overland option, which handles oversized loads through Saudi Arabia and Türkiye without touching a port at all.

Development prospects

The east coast is being built out as fast as concrete allows. Khor Fakkan's 5-million-TEU stage is due within months of the July announcement, 7 million within two years and 10 million within three, with the Al Dhaid and Sajaa dry ports adding 3.8 million TEU of bonded yard inland. DP World's two announced terminals near Fujairah would add a second operator to the coast. Etihad Rail is scheduled to add passenger services in 2026 and continues to raise freight frequency, and Oman is expanding Sohar, Duqm and Salalah for a role as the region's Hormuz-independent gateway.

The longer-term lesson the UAE has drawn is the one we described in the article on Abu Dhabi's investments in Georgia: routes are insurance, and insurance is worth paying for at low volume. An overland corridor from the Gulf through the Caucasus to Europe, an east coast that can take most of the country's containers, and a rail network that links them are all pieces of the same strategy. When the strait reopens, Jebel Ali will take its volume back — but the east coast, the railway and the Turkish road will remain in the plan, because 2026 proved they are needed.

In short

The Strait of Hormuz closed in March 2026 and UAE seaborne trade did not stop; it moved 130 kilometres east to Fujairah and Khor Fakkan, reached by Etihad Rail and the mountain highway, and south to Oman's Sohar and Salalah. Khor Fakkan alone went from 8,000 to 65,000 TEU a week and is expanding towards 10 million TEU a year, but the bypass is congested and still a fraction of Jebel Ali. For India, Asia and Africa the sea works from the east coast. For Europe, Ukraine and the Caucasus the sea now means the Cape, and the road through Saudi Arabia and Türkiye in 14–20 days is the faster, plannable option. Tell us what you are moving and where, and we will route it around the strait the way that suits the destination.

See also: Shipping from Dubai overland in 14–20 days · Delivery times from Dubai · UAE – EU cargo via Georgia · Air freight from Dubai · Shipping from Europe to the UAE · Dubai free zones