Talay at Marsa Al Saadiyat

LOCATION — MARSA AL SAADIYAT, ON SAADIYAT ISLAND

Aldar inaugurated Marsa Al Saadiyat on 22 July 2026 as the final phase of the Saadiyat Island masterplan, with a stated gross development value of AED 100 billion (USD 27.2 billion). On the figures reported at the announcement, it takes in 8 km of coastline, 5.6 km of beaches, a 1 km waterfront promenade, and Abu Dhabi's largest marina at more than 350 berths for boats and superyachts. Three schools are planned across it, homes for more than 58,000 residents, and the connections announced with it include new roads, tunnels, a bridge and an underground Etihad Rail high-speed station. The first phase of home sales was scheduled for the second half of 2026 — which is this release. Those are Aldar's own figures as reported by World Construction Network and Yahoo Finance, both accessed 21 September 2026.

The AED 100 billion is the gross development value of the whole destination — a planning figure covering a build-out that spans many years, and Aldar's own measure of the scale it is committing to Marsa Al Saadiyat.

What Aldar's launch release gives for Talay's own position within that masterplan:

Aldar's factsheet gives the same picture in its own terms: beach up to 1 km away, a retail hub up to 1 km away, a school planned within the Talay community, and six leading educational institutions close by, including NYU Abu Dhabi just 1 km away — the others shown are the American Community School of Abu Dhabi, Muna British Academy, LFITM/AFLEC and Cranleigh Abu Dhabi.

Two of those distances corroborate the masterplan independently: the marina at roughly 1 km is the 350-berth marina announced in July, and the Etihad Rail point at roughly 1.5 km is the underground station announced with it. Read as a set, they put a family villa inside walking range of a school and a beach club, on an island whose institutional anchors are already open. That, rather than any single number, is the location case.

PRICING AT LAUNCH

Prices start at AED 13.5 million, which is Aldar's factsheet figure and is independently matched by the launch release's four-bedroom entry. Aldar's per-bedroom entry prices are:

The AED 13,500,000 entry is stated by both Aldar's factsheet and the launch release of 21 September 2026. The AED 15,500,000 and AED 17,200,000 figures are Aldar's launch release figures, published here as it gives them. These are Aldar's starting prices per villa type: the plot, its position and its orientation move the number.

What the entry price implies on area, and on which area. Aldar prices Talay per home. Where a rate is useful, it has to be calculated, and it has to name its basis. Against Aldar's own published four-bedroom gross saleable areas, AED 13,500,000 works out at AED 2,498 per square foot on Talay's 502 sq m (5,403 sq ft) and AED 2,479 per square foot on Talay Beach's 506 sq m (5,447 sq ft) — a band of roughly AED 2,479 to 2,498 per square foot, or AED 26,680 to 26,892 per square metre. That is Mitchell's arithmetic on Aldar's figures, calculated on gross saleable area — Aldar's own basis, and the basis every area on this page is published on. The house basis for a price per square foot elsewhere on this site is built-up area, which is a different measure.

The recurring cost. The service charge is AED 84.61 per square metre of gross floor area, which is AED 7.86 per square foot on the same basis. That is Aldar's published rate for Talay, charged on the gross floor area of the home you buy, and it is the figure to carry into any running-cost calculation.

THE HOMES — WHAT THE AREAS MEAN, AND THE TWO PLOT MEASURES

Every villa type in both collections is published with a ground floor and a first floor plan, so these are two-storey family houses rather than single-level homes. Aldar's description is "two distinct collections of 4 to 6-bedroom homes designed for families", with expansive layouts and private backyards.

The sizes Aldar publishes per type are gross saleable area, in square metres, and they run from 502 sq m (5,403 sq ft) on a four-bedroom to 634 sq m (6,824 sq ft) on a six-bedroom. The two collections are within a few square metres of each other at every bedroom count.

There are two different plot measures in circulation, and they are not in conflict. Aldar's floor plans publish an average plot area for each bedroom count in each collection — an average across the collection. Aldar's launch release publishes approximate starting plot sizes — the small end of the range, not its middle. Both are true, they measure different things, and neither substitutes for the other:

Read the table as two different questions. The starting column answers "what is the smallest plot I might be allocated at this price"; the average columns answer "what does a typical plot in this collection look like". On the five and six-bedroom villas the gap between them is wide — 51 to 93 square metres, or 549 to 1,001 square feet — which is a garden's worth of difference between one plot and another. Tell us the collection, the bedroom count and the plot position you want and a Mitchell's adviser will come back with the plans for the villas that fit — get in touch.

TWO KITCHENS — THE MOST USEFUL LINE IN THE SPECIFICATION

Aldar's material finishes schedule describes a show kitchen and, separately, a daily kitchen with a pantry, and it finishes them differently: wood veneer joinery, engineered stone and tinted glass upper cabinets in the show kitchen; engineered stone counters with laminate above and high-pressure laminate below in the daily kitchen and pantry.

That is a decision about how the house is lived in rather than a cost saving. The show kitchen opens to the living space; the daily kitchen and pantry are where the cooking, the appliances and the storage go, out of the main room. Households that entertain, or run a house with staff, want precisely this and are disappointed by a single open-plan kitchen at this price. Households that do not will be paying for a room they use as storage. Walk both before you commit to a type.

THE MATERIAL FINISHES SCHEDULE

Aldar publishes one specification in two palettes — a Villa Light Scheme and a Villa Dark Scheme — with the same schedule of materials under each:

Aldar's Talay material finishes specification, 2 pages, supplied 21 September 2026. The schedule names materials rather than brands or model numbers, and it is reproduced here at that level. Both palettes carry the identical schedule.

AN EMIRATI DESIGN PROGRAMME, AND WHAT IT ACTUALLY BUILDS

Aldar frames Talay as "rooted in Emirati tradition", and unusually for a line of that kind it attaches to three specific built elements rather than to a mood board:

• The outdoor majlis pavilion — the community's shaded gathering structure, published as an amenity in both collections.
• The aflaj water feature — the traditional falaj irrigation system reinterpreted as a flowing feature that cools the environment around it. In a villa community on an island, shade and moving water are thermal infrastructure as much as they are landscape.
• Areesh — woven palm-frond elements drawn from traditional building techniques and reinterpreted into the community's boundary walls and screen design, by Emirati designer Abdalla Almulla.

The point for a buyer is that the third of these is what you look at from your own plot every day. Boundary treatment and screening are the difference between a villa row that reads as a scheme and one that reads as a street, and Aldar has put a named designer on it.

AMENITIES AND SERVICES

Aldar publishes the amenity schedule across the community, with three items assigned to one collection only:

Landscaped green spaces · a community pool and a kids' pool · a landmark fountain (Talay only) · a kids' play area · a jogging track · cycling loops · picnic areas · padel courts and a multi-purpose court (Talay Beach only) · gym and fitness facilities · the outdoor majlis pavilion · a harvest garden (Talay Beach only) · the aflaj water feature · beach up to 1 km away · a pet park · EV charging stations.

On services, the community is gated with 24/7 security, with close access to cafés, dining and retail, a retail hub up to 1 km away, and community maintenance.

If the padel courts or the harvest garden are what sells the community to your household, that decision points at Talay Beach and therefore at the Q4 2030 handover. If the fountain and the earlier delivery matter more, it points at Talay. It is worth settling that before you look at plots.

THE INVESTMENT CASE

APPLICABLE STRATEGIES

• Family owner-occupation on Saadiyat, held long. This is the product the scheme is built for: 351 four to six-bedroom houses on 736 to 883 square metre (7,922 to 9,505 sq ft) plots, gated, inside walking range of a school and a beach club, on an island whose cultural and education anchors are already trading rather than announced.
• Choosing the handover date as a variable. Two collections, one year apart, at closely comparable areas and configurations. A buyer with a 2029 requirement and a buyer with a 2030 one can both be satisfied inside the same community, and the choice is worth making deliberately rather than by whichever plot is shown first.
• A deferred capital profile. Only 20% of the price falls due across the first eighteen months, with the rest of the construction half loaded into 2028–29 and 50% at handover. For a buyer weighing the cost of money over a three to four-year horizon, that is an unusually back-ended shape for a villa release at this level.
• Scarcity within a large destination. Marsa Al Saadiyat is planned for more than 58,000 residents; Talay is 351 villas inside it, in the first phase of home sales. The scarcity that matters is the product type and the phase, not the destination.

ALDAR, AND WHERE TALAY SITS IN THE ABU DHABI PIPELINE

Aldar is the developer of Marsa Al Saadiyat, which it inaugurated on 22 July 2026 as the final phase of the Saadiyat Island masterplan at a stated AED 100 billion gross development value — the figure and the date as reported by World Construction Network, accessed 21 September 2026. That figure is Aldar's own claim for its own masterplan and is stated here as such.

Aldar also develops in Dubai, and three of its masterplans there have investor guides on this site: Haven by Aldar, Athlon by Aldar and The Wilds by Aldar. Where Marsa Al Saadiyat sits against the rest of the emirate's committed pipeline — Al Maryah, Yas, Fahid and Hudayriyat — is set out, with its sources, in our guide to Abu Dhabi's masterplan projects to watch.

COSTS AND WHAT MOVES THE PRICE

• Registration in Abu Dhabi is 2%, not Dubai's 4%. The fee is 2% of the purchase price, payable to the Department of Municipalities and Transport, and it applies to off-plan purchases as it does to completed ones — AED 270,000 on the AED 13.5 million entry villa, where a 4% schedule would take AED 540,000.
• The service charge is AED 84.61 per square metre of gross floor area, which is AED 7.86 per square foot on the same basis. That is Aldar's published rate for Talay, charged on the gross floor area of the home you buy.
• Plot, position and orientation move the price. Aldar's figures are the starting price in each bedroom band. Tell us which collection, bedroom count and plot position you want and we will come back with what fits — get in touch.

THE RELEASE SCHEDULE

Aldar has set the Talay release out in three stages:

The first two days are transacted through brokers holding an allocation rather than through a public queue, and on a release of 351 villas the four-bedroom band — 141 homes across both collections — is where that concentrates. If a specific collection, bedroom count or plot position matters to you, the time to say so is before the 23rd. Get in touch and a Mitchell's adviser will come back with what is available against your brief.