Ramadan 2027 Influencer Marketing in Qatar: The Creator Calendar
On the fourteenth night of Ramadan, children across Qatar put on traditional dress, pick up cloth bags and go from door to door singing for sweets and nuts. Garangao falls on the 14th evening of the month, and Qatar Museums calls it one of the country’s special celebrations, “especially loved by children”. It is also a night made for the camera: costumes, a song everyone knows, a doorstep and a full bag.
In 2027 that night is expected to fall on Sunday 21 February. The brands that appear in it will have booked their creators before the year is out.
In short: Ramadan 2027 is expected to begin on Monday 8 February, Garangao on the evening of Sunday 21 February and Eid al-Fitr on 9 or 10 March, all subject to the moon. The latest research says planning content should be live four to six weeks before the month, which puts creator briefs in early January and bookings in November and December. Gulf creators treat Ramadan as a series, not a post, and the brands that do well are the ones written into the series.
When is Ramadan 2027? The dates that matter
The UAE’s Astronomy Centre expects Ramadan to begin on 8 February 2027, with Eid al-Fitr on Tuesday 9 March if the Shawwal crescent is seen, otherwise on Wednesday 10 March. In Qatar the start is announced by the Crescent Sighting Committee at the Ministry of Awqaf, so treat every date below as the forecast it is.
| Moment | Expected date | What creators make of it |
|---|---|---|
| 1 Billion Followers Summit, Dubai | 8 to 10 January 2027 | The region’s creators in one place, a month before Ramadan |
| First day of Ramadan | Monday 8 February | Episode one: the first iftar, the first late suhoor |
| Garangao, the 14th night | Sunday 21 February, evening | Children, costumes, the song, the sweets bag |
| The last ten nights | From about 27 February | Eid shopping and preparation content begins |
| Eid al-Fitr | Tuesday 9 or Wednesday 10 March | Outfits, gifts, family visits, “get ready with me” |
The Garangao and last-ten-nights dates are ours, worked out from the forecast: the fourteenth of a month that begins on 8 February is the 21st, and if Ramadan begins a day later, so does everything after it. Elsewhere in the Gulf the same midpoint is Gergaoon in Bahrain, Qaranqasho in Oman and Gargee’an in Saudi Arabia, so one regional idea can travel under a local name.
The summit row is in the table for a practical reason. The 2027 edition is set for 8 to 10 January, and the 2026 edition was set to bring together more than 15,000 creators. If your Ramadan shoot is pencilled in for that week, ask before you book the studio.
A Ramadan is a series, not a post
The defining craft of Ramadan content in the Gulf is the series. Google’s Ramadan guide for brands describes the creator Saba Shamaa, who usually uploads one or two videos a month; in Ramadan she turned to food content and made seven, to form a series. That is the shift in one sentence. The month is not thirty chances to post. It is one story with thirty episodes.
The formats repeat across the region because audiences come back for them:
- The daily appointment. TikTok’s 2025 Ramadan slate included “Fawazeer Ramadan”, daily riddles before iftar hosted by Saudi creators, and “Khaleek Jahez”, a street-interview series filmed in Riyadh. In Qatar, Ooredoo built its Ramadan 2025 campaign around “Rafeeq Al-Haz”, a daily interactive programme on social media hosted by Abdullah Al-Ghafri.
- The scripted mini-series. Sunsilk and the creator Rana Al Khodari made “Everything is Under Control”, an eight-episode TikTok series for Saudi Arabia, in which her character, Sara, gets through Ramadan’s family moments with the product built into her routine in every episode. In Qatar, Vodafone made “Al Bayt Al 3oud”, a five-episode Ramadan sitcom, with the Qatari filmmaker Hamida Issa.
- The recipe cycle. Baladna’s Ramadan 2026 campaign ran the third season of “Recipes from Different Cultures”, seven episodes with influencers as its ambassadors.
- The night itself. Garangao, the iftar table, the suhoor that runs past midnight. No brief needed, only a creator whose family already celebrates it on camera.
When the format is done well, juries notice: Visit Qatar’s “Reframing Ramadan” won Gold for Influencer and Creator Partnerships at The Drum Awards Festival 2025.
What a brand rarely sees is what the series costs the creator. Thirty days of content, made while fasting, around family iftars and late nights, is a production schedule a television channel would staff with a crew. The creators who carry it plan the arc before the month begins: the opener, the Garangao episode, the Eid finale. A brand that arrives in week two is asking to be written into a story already halfway told.
What the numbers say, and what they do not
- 7 in 10 people in both the UAE and Saudi Arabia engage with influencer content during Ramadan, according to the 2026 report by ArabyAds and Ipsos.
- The same report’s more useful finding: after seeing a Ramadan product from an influencer they follow, people in the UAE were more likely to search for it on a retailer’s app (22%) than to buy it on the spot through the creator’s link or code (13%). In Saudi Arabia, searching, sharing with family and saving for later (18%, 18% and 17%) each beat buying immediately (10%).
- 68% of users in the region actively search for Ramadan content on TikTok, according to TikTok’s own research with Ipsos.
- More than 7 in 10 Snapchatters in the GCC use the app to shape their Ramadan celebrations, purchases, outfits and gifts, and 40% of Snapchatters in the region start planning Ramadan three months or more ahead, by Snap’s account.
- In the GCC, most browsing happens between 8pm and 2am, with 38% of engagement after Taraweeh and 24% peaking before suhoor, MEmob data cited by Google.
For Qatar itself, 99.0% of the population is online, YouTube’s ads reach 2.31 million people (73.8% of the population), Instagram’s 1.70 million and Snapchat’s 1.24 million, in DataReportal’s late 2025 figures. We found no published Ramadan viewing study for Qatar alone, so read the bullets above as the region’s habits, measured in its two largest markets.
The search figure is the one to pin above the desk. If the first thing a Ramadan audience does after a creator’s video is search, save or share, then a campaign judged only on discount-code sales in week one will report that creators “did not convert”, and the report will be wrong about the creators. Measure branded search, saves and shares across the whole month, and make sure the product is easy to find when they go looking. That last part is not the creator’s job.
When to book creators for Ramadan 2027
Working back from 8 February:
| When | What happens |
|---|---|
| November 2026 | Decide the idea and the platforms, and shortlist creators. Snap’s early planners are already deciding theirs. |
| Late November to mid December | Book. Garangao and Eid are the dates every brand wants, and a creator only has one Garangao night. |
| Late December to early January | Planning content goes live: ArabyAds and Ipsos advise launching guides and planners four to six weeks before Ramadan. Briefs are signed. |
| 8 to 10 January | The summit in Dubai. Keep shoots off that week. |
| Mid to late January | Shoot what can be shot early: the series opener, the product scenes, the Eid look. |
| From 8 February | The series runs. Approvals come back in a day, not a week. |
| 21 February | Garangao. |
| 9 or 10 March | Eid al-Fitr. |
What we would push back on
- Booking in the first week of Ramadan. By then the arc is planned and the good slots are taken. What is left is the slot nobody else wanted.
- Scripting the iftar table. A creator’s audience knows that family’s table. A brand that rewrites it gets noticed for the wrong reason.
- Treating Garangao as a product drop. It is a children’s tradition, and its charm is the song and the doorstep. The product can be in the bag. It should not be the song.
- Week-long approvals for a daily series. An episode approved three days late airs after the moment it was made for.
Quick answers
When does Ramadan 2027 start in Qatar? Astronomers expect Monday 8 February 2027. Qatar’s Crescent Sighting Committee at the Ministry of Awqaf confirms the date, so plan for the 8th and keep a day of slack.
When is Garangao 2027? On the evening of the 14th of Ramadan. If Ramadan begins on 8 February, that is Sunday 21 February 2027. If it begins a day later, Garangao moves to Monday 22 February.
When should brands book influencers for Ramadan 2027? Decide the idea in November, book creators by mid December and sign briefs in early January, so that planning content can go live four to six weeks before the month, as the 2026 ArabyAds and Ipsos report recommends.
Which platforms matter most in Ramadan in Qatar? In DataReportal’s late 2025 figures, TikTok’s ads reach the most people in Qatar, 2.95 million aged 18 and over, ahead of Facebook’s 2.40 million and YouTube’s 2.31 million (73.8% of the population). TikTok is also where Ramadan content gets searched, and Snapchat is where Gulf users turn for ideas for the month. The campaigns that work give each platform a different job.
Planning Ramadan 2027 in Qatar? Send us your brief and we will come back within 24 hours with a shortlist of creators matched to the dates above. Our guide to influencer marketing in Qatar has the platforms and the audience in more detail.
What none of this research settles is the share that matters most in this month: the one to the family group. The numbers say a Ramadan audience searches, saves and shares. They do not say what makes a grandmother forward a creator’s episode to twenty relatives, and no planning grid has found it yet.
When the children knock on the fourteenth night, will your brand already be part of the evening, or still looking for a door to knock on?