Emirates has touched down in Finland for the first time, launching a daily, year-round route between Dubai and Helsinki on 2 October 2026. The timing is telling: the airline is now flying at roughly 93% of its pre-disruption capacity and says winter bookings are looking strong despite a rocky year for carriers routing through the Middle East.
The new service fills a gap that opened up when Finnair confirmed in August it would suspend its own Dubai-Helsinki flights from 25 October 2026 to 27 March 2027, citing instability in the region. Emirates announced its route back in January, and now holds the only direct link between the two cities through the entire winter season.
Flights run on the Airbus A350. EK167 leaves Dubai at 8:15 am and reaches Helsinki at 2:30 pm, while EK168 departs the Finnish capital at 4:20 pm and lands back in Dubai at 12:20 am. Helsinki slots in alongside Copenhagen, Oslo and Stockholm on the airline's Nordic map.
The Helsinki launch is part of a broader push. Emirates is planning second daily flights to Accra, Tokyo Narita, Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi, and rolling out the A350 on routes to Larnaca, Malta, Nairobi, Hamburg and Mauritius from late October. From 1 November, the A350 also takes over the daily Orlando service from the Boeing 777 — its first scheduled use in the US.
The demand story behind all this: the airline carried more than 8.6 million passengers in July and August alone, with summer demand beating its own forecasts. Winter bookings are ahead of last year in markets including South Africa, Brazil, India, Portugal and Saudi Arabia, though travellers are increasingly booking late.
There's also a shift in what Gulf travellers want from winter. dnata, part of the Emirates Group, says ski trips — barely a trend among UAE travellers five years ago — are now booming, and it has built a winter programme around roughly 10 ski destinations. Interest is stretching further too, into experiences like chasing the Northern Lights. For Finns and European travellers, the flip side is convenient one-stop access via Dubai to the Gulf, Asia and beyond — plus easy onward connections to Finnish Lapland from Helsinki.
