Dubai International Airport opened on September 30, 1960, built on the order of Sheikh Rashid bin Saeed Al Maktoum on a stretch of wasteland roughly 4 kilometres from the edge of the city. The original facility was minimal: a compacted-sand runway 1,800 metres long, capable of handling only aircraft up to the size of a Douglas DC-3, and a single small terminal. The inaugural landing was made by a Middle East Airlines flight. By 1969, the airport was serving just 9 airlines connecting 20 destinations. It would not stay modest for long.

The airport sits in Dubai's Al Garhoud district, at the geographic midpoint between Europe, Asia, and Africa, a location that proved decisive as global long-haul travel expanded. An asphalt runway opened in 1965, Terminal 1 followed in 1971, and a second runway came in 1984. Emirates airline launched the following year, and the two grew in lockstep. Terminal 3, built exclusively for Emirates, opened in 2008 and is the largest airport terminal in the world by floor space. Concourse A, purpose-built for the Airbus A380, opened in 2013.

Today, DXB connects over 270 destinations across more than 100 airlines. Emirates accounts for roughly 51% of all passenger traffic at the airport, while low-cost carrier flydubai handles another 13%. Nearly half of all travellers passing through are connecting passengers, a figure that underlines the hub's role as a transit engine rather than merely a gateway to Dubai itself. In 2025, the airport handled 95.2 million passengers, the highest annual international passenger volume ever recorded by any airport in history, and retained its title as the world's busiest airport for international traffic for the 11th consecutive year.