The UAE's New Birthday Song is a Small Tweak for a Sweeter Tradition

There’s a familiar rhythm to birthdays—dimmed lights, glowing candles, and the collective, slightly muddled singing of a tune that is recognised the world over. It’s a lovely ritual, but it has always been a borrowed one.

This year, in an initiative for the UAE’s Year of Community, the nation has been given its own official birthday song. It’s a small shift with a rather lovely premise: that the soundtrack to personal milestones can also sound like home.

The project, developed with social enterprise Ferjan Dubai, is a melody stitched together from the voices of schoolchildren, poets, and musicians from across the Emirates blended with the everyday sounds of UAE life, from the clinking coffee cups, to the bustling streets, and laughter spilling from family gatherings. The lyrics, which wish for years “to continue in goodness,” carry the gentle, blessing-like quality of a heartfelt “Yislamo.”

The song is now available for everyone, a public invitation to weave a more local kind of warmth into celebrations.