Paris, Nov 28 (IANS) Dubai won the right to host World Expo 2020 at the 154th General Assembly of the Bureau International des Expositions in Paris Wednesday.
In the third and last round of voting, Dubai beat Russia’s Yekaterinburg city, becoming the first Middle Eastern city to host the event, Xinhua reported.
The other two candidate cities — the Brazilian city of Sao Paulo and Turkey’s Izmir — were eliminated in the first and second round respectively.
Dubai Expo 2020 is scheduled to be held from Oct 20, 2020 to April 10, 2021 with the theme “Connecting Minds, Creating the Future”.
According to the Dubai World Expo 2020 Bid Committee, 25 million visitors are expected to visit the event.
Dubai is home to around 2.2 million people, of which 90 percent are foreigners. The emirate has established its economy as a hub for trade, tourism, banking and civil aviation in the Middle East.