2,805 Rides in 10 Days: Ultiracer Kiosk at Dubai K-Fest 2026 with KOCCA's KOREA 360
By Michael Jackson
For ten days this autumn, RealDesignTech brought two Ultiracer Kiosk systems to Dubai K-Fest 2026, in partnership with the Korea Creative Content Agency (KOCCA) and its KOREA 360 centre at Dubai Festival City Mall. By the time the festival closed, visitors had completed 2,805 rides and pedalled a combined 446 kilometres - much of it on a brand-new Dubai course built for the occasion.
What Dubai K-Fest 2026 was
Dubai K-Fest 2026 was the first edition of a ten-day celebration of Korean culture in Dubai, held from 25 September to 4 October 2026 under the theme "Discover Korea in Dubai" (Visit Dubai). Organised by the Dubai Festivals and Retail Establishment, part of the Dubai Department of Economy and Tourism (DET), the festival opened at Dubai Festival City Mall with a free K-pop concert at Festival Bay and fireworks over the creek, followed by K-pop performances, Korean film nights, beauty, fashion and food experiences and shopping promotions across the city (TradeArabia). The festival was supported by KOCCA's UAE business centre and the KOREA 360 initiative.
KOREA 360 is KOCCA's permanent Korean culture and content hub inside Dubai Festival City Mall - a space for K-pop, K-drama, food, beauty and lifestyle brands that opened in 2025 (The National). During K-Fest it hosted pop-ups with traditional Korean games, indie beauty samples and giveaways (few.ae) - and, for the first time in the Gulf, a two-bike Ultiracer Kiosk zone.
Two kiosks, one very busy corner of the mall
Ultiracer Kiosk is the self-service version of Ultiracer: a real bicycle mounted on a platform that lets it lean and steer, a screen running our riding games, and sensors that read balance and coordination on every ride. The two units stood on the ground floor beside LuLu Hypermarket, and from the first Friday evening the queue rarely emptied. Children raced their parents, friends raced each other, and plenty of passers-by who had only stopped to watch ended up on a saddle.
The ten days, in numbers:
- 2,805 rides in ten days - an average of 280 a day, with 591 rides on Saturday 26 September alone.
- 26 hours 7 minutes of accumulated riding time.
- 446 km pedalled in total - roughly the road distance from Dubai to Muscat - with the longest single ride reaching 1.18 km and a top speed of 73.2 km/h.
- Riders of every age: 1,504 children under 14 (54% of all rides), 286 teenagers, and more than 1,000 adults from their twenties to their seventies.
- Peak hour: 8-9 PM, on almost every day of the festival.
- 2,613 sessions on Perfect Racer, with Velodrome, Alien Invasion, Signal Racer and Block Buster rounding out the mix.
Balance, measured on every ride
What sets Ultiracer apart from an ordinary exercise bike is what happens underneath the rider. Every session runs through our proprietary motion analysis, which reads how the bicycle sways, leans and is steered in real time and condenses those signals into a single balance-quality score out of 100. Across the festival, the average balance quality was 41. By age group, riders under 14 averaged 33, teenagers 32, riders in their twenties 54, thirties 52 and forties 60, while riders in their fifties and sixties recorded the highest scores at 69 and 70.
These are comparative readings against typical riding, not a medical assessment. But they illustrate why cycling interests us so much: balancing a bicycle calls on the brain as much as the legs, and there is a growing body of research on the link between cycling, balance and cognitive health. If you would like to go deeper, our research page collects the studies that guide our work.
A Dubai map and a Seoul map
For K-Fest we added two new Perfect Racer courses: Dubai, with the skyline rising behind the dunes, and Seoul, the city Ultiracer comes from. Riders in Dubai could pedal through a place they know, then take a lap of Seoul without leaving the mall. It is a small gesture, but it captures what we hope Ultiracer can be in the region: a piece of Korean technology that meets people where they live, and a cultural bridge that runs in both directions.
Why the UAE matters to us
The response confirmed what we saw at K-Expo UAE last year. In a climate where summer temperatures pass 45 °C, indoor exercise is a year-round necessity rather than a seasonal choice, and Dubai's families - more than half of our riders were under 14 - are eager for ways to stay active that are social and fun. The UAE is also investing heavily in preventive health and active lifestyles, which is exactly where Ultiracer's blend of play and balance measurement fits. We left the festival with new conversations under way with partners in fitness, education and senior care, and a clear intention to grow our presence in the Emirates and the wider Gulf.
The kiosks are staying
The best news is that the experience does not end with the festival. Two Ultiracer Kiosk systems will remain on semi-permanent display at KOREA 360 inside Dubai Festival City Mall, so anyone in Dubai can walk in, mount up and try the system for themselves. If you missed K-Fest, the Dubai and Seoul maps are waiting for you.
Thank you, Dubai
None of this would have happened without the people who made the festival possible. Our sincere thanks go to the Dubai Department of Economy and Tourism and the Dubai Festivals and Retail Establishment for creating Dubai K-Fest, and to the KOREA 360 team at the Korea Creative Content Agency (KOCCA) for hosting Ultiracer and supporting us every day of the event. See you on the bike.