UAE’s Majid Al Futtaim Launches World’s First Metaverse Shopping Mall in Decentraland

The Emirati mall, Majid Al Futtaim, unveils the first virtual mall in Dubai, known as the Mall of the Metaverse, based in Decentraland.

Following multiple testing stages, the Mall of the Metaverse will offer visitors digital experiences in retail, entertainment, and leisure. Inside the mall, customers’ avatars will have access to popular brands such as Carrefour, VOX Cinemas, THAT Concept Store, Ghawali, and Samsung Store, with more brands to join. 

The announcement was made during the World Government Summit. The event takes place from February 13 to 15 and brings together a group of 10,000 international government officials, thought leaders, global experts, and decision-makers. Currently, the mall is in its early stages of development, and the group is examining customers’ needs and expectations.

“We work to leverage behavioural science and data to deliver customers what they want and desire. Our swift consumer observations, followed by an action plan and a series of testing stages, has now led to a fully-fledged project that is a step ahead of online shopping — Mall of the Metaverse,”

said Fatima Zada, director of Omnichannels and Digital, Majid Al Futtaim Shopping Malls. She added that there had been an increasing demand for digital experiences in the past years.

The UAE has been making significant progress in the metaverse. In November of 2022, Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum authorized a new phase of the Dubai Metaverse Strategy. The goal of this strategy is to improve the digital economy and take steps to enable the use of the metaverse and future technologies.

XR firm MetaVRse last year revealed its photorealistic 3D shopping center TheMall, which was set to launch by the end of 2022 but never did. The metaverse shopping center sought to feature 100 floors and 100 million square feet of retail space. Co-founder Alan Smithson of MetaVRse said the size of TheMall was going to be eight times larger than the world’s biggest shopping center, located in Dubai.

Last December, the Mall of the Emirates in Dubai established the world’s first physical NFT store, the “ftNFT Shop.”