Dubai gets official Guinness World Record for fireworks

Fireworks going off over The Palm Jumeirah (foreground) and the islands of The World in the attempt to break the Guinness World Record for the 'Largest Firework Display'. Simon Brooke-Webb/DubaiworldrShow more

Dubai’s New Year’s Eve fireworks extravaganza has officially been confirmed a Guinness World Record, with the governing body counting 479,651 shells successfully released in the six-minute show.

Within the first 60 seconds, Dubai fired enough shells to break the previous record, a 64-minute show of 77,282 fireworks displayed by Kuwait in November 2012.

About 80,000 shells were fired in the mega show each minute and 1,332 fireworks a second.

Adjudicators for Guinness have been scouring the sites around the Palm and World Islands in the emirate trying to physically count and verify the final numbers for the record attempt, which had been 10-months in planning with 5,000 man hours to pull it off.

Talal Omar, a Guinness adjudicator, said: “This is an iconic record title that has been challenged and broken on a phenomenal scale by Dubai. I am pleased to confirm that Dubai has achieved a Guinness World Record title for the largest fireworks display.”

The show was spread over 95 kilometres of seafront with a team of more than 1,000 experts and 200 pyrotechnicians from the UAE and abroad.

The event marked the end of a year which had seen Dubai awarded World Expo 2020.