Dubai kicks off Expo 2020 with star-studded opening ceremony after year-long delay
Dubbed as the ‘greatest show in the world’, the fair runs until 31 March 2022 and will feature pavilions from 192 nations
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After eight years of planning and billions of dollars in spending, the Middle East's first world's fair opened Friday in Dubai, with hopes that the months-long extravaganza will draw both visitors and global attention to this desert-turned-dreamscape. AP
The six-month-long exhibition, which was pushed back owing to the coronavirus pandemic, saw artists perform during the opening ceremony. At first, the site of the 1,080 acre (438 hectare) Expo was barren desert. Now, it's a futuristic landscape buzzing. AP
Flags of the Expo Dubai 2020 are unfurled at the opening ceremony. The event will see more than 190 nations using their pavilions to spotlight their greatest tourist attractions, discoveries and ambitions. AP
The event will probably contend with a global reluctance to travel and many events will be streamed live online. But the Expo was expected to attract more visits than Milan received and more than twice the population of the UAE. AP
Before the pandemic, the consultancy firm EY forecast that the Expo would over the course of its six months contribute 1.5 percent of the UAE's gross domestic product. AP
General view of the opening ceremony of the Dubai Expo 2020 in Dubai. The UAE's falcon-shaped pavilion, by far the site's largest, takes visitors on a two-hour-long immersive experience through dunes of real orange sand and footage from the country's 50-year history. AP
The event will go on until March 2022. For more than a century, global exhibitions have captured the imagination and showcased some of humanity’s most important innovations. The first world's fair held in the United States in 1876 debuted Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone, the typewriter, a mechanical calculator and Heinz Ketchup. One of its main buildings, Memorial Hall, is now a museum. AP