The story of the hand-painted map of Yas Island: The Word · Map Details · Changelog · Sources
If you have never been to Yas, start here. The tour goes round the island in twenty-two short stops, from the airport where most visitors land to the plot where Disneyland is still to come. At each stop the camera circles the place while a voice gives it two sentences, about two minutes in all; the place cards carry the longer story.
Over the grid at Yas Marina Circuit hangs a START board with a row of lamps chasing round its edge. Press it (or the Formula 1 track label on it) and it breaks up into its lamps, the camera glides up to the TV helicopter, and as it settles five red lights come on one by one and go out together. Eight cars race a lap of the Grand Prix circuit, the helicopter follows the leaders and the camera rides along with it. Every start draws new pace for each car, so any of them can win: the winner gets a label in its colour (“Orange wins”), confetti goes up at the line and the W hotel waves a chequered flag in the winner’s colour. Then a cool-down lap, and the cars park back on the grid. At night the cars light the track ahead with their headlights, and the helicopter keeps a searchlight on the leader.
How to see it: Zoom in on the grid and press START.
When a race on the map finishes, the W hotel over the track celebrates: its gridshell turns into a chequered flag in the winning car’s colour and waves over the whole shell. By day the squares are painted on the glass, at night the shell lights them. Then the helicopter flies home to its pad with the camera on board, the flag waving behind it, and the flag comes down once it lands. It is a nod to the first Abu Dhabi Grand Prix in 2009: when Sebastian Vettel won, the real shell lit up as a chequered flag.
How to see it: Press START over the grid, watch the W.
The map opens at the real time in Abu Dhabi, with the real sun: its height and direction, the long shadows of the evening, the paper going pink at dusk. After sunset the street lamps, the windows and the landmarks light up, and the rest is cool moonlight. Some things only happen at certain hours, and this page tells you when.
Someone keeps watch over the island at night: a small caped figure on the roof edge of The WB hotel, next to the big logo, lit from below, its cape streaming in the wind. It only comes out at night, from midnight to 5 AM. By day the roof is empty.
How to see it: Midnight to 5 AM, zoom in on The WB’s roof.
A drone show over SeaWorld: a couple of thousand lights forming a blue whale that swims a slow loop along the building, its body bending into the turns and its flukes beating. By day it barely shows; at night it glows.
How to see it: After dark, zoom in on SeaWorld.
On the map there is a concert on the lawn under the Ferrari roof every evening from 9 PM to midnight, just for fun. The band walks on at 9:03 and plays a full set: fans of white beams, flame jets along the front of the stage, a crowd with phones up, an intermission from 10:15 to 10:20. In real life the stage only goes up for Grand Prix week. The card lists this year’s Yasalam after-race concerts, 3 to 6 December 2026, and each one drops off once its night has passed. Its Show me button sets the map’s clock to the show and flies you there.
How to see it: Scrub the time to 9 PM, zoom in south of Ferrari World.
The hotel over the circuit, under its gridshell of diamond glass panels. At night the whole shell glows one colour and drifts slowly through violet, blue and magenta, with a detour to another hue every few minutes. Its light on the marina water follows the colour. When a race on the map finishes, it waves a chequered flag in the winner’s colour (see The chequered flag).
How to see it: After dark, zoom in on Yas Marina.
A small white cabin cruiser shuttles between two pontoons: one on the Water’s Edge canal, the other at Yas Bay beside Hunter & Barrel. It sails down the canal and the channel with a white wake spreading behind it, ties up alongside, waits a moment and sails back. It keeps to the real clock, so wherever you look the boat is where it should be. At night its cabin windows glow and it shows its navigation lights.
How to see it: Zoom in on the Water’s Edge canal and wait.
A sailing boat goes round the lagoon off Yas Links, a motorboat circles Yas Bay, and a jet ski, its rider in an orange life vest, loops off Al Bandar. Each keeps to a loop in open water, clear of the mangroves and the sand bars, with a white wake behind it. At night the motorboat and the sailing boat show a white light; the jet ski goes dark.
How to see it: Zoom in close on the lagoon off Yas Links, or on Yas Bay.
Sphere Abu Dhabi, announced in 2026 for the plot between Yas Mall and SeaWorld, drawn at the size of the one in Las Vegas. When you come close its screen starts the show: the name travels round the ball while slow bands of warm and violet colour drift through the dusk picture behind it. At night it is the brightest thing on the island: six searchlights at its foot sweep the sky, and its light pools on the car parks round it.
How to see it: After dark, zoom in north of SeaWorld.
Formula Rossa, Flying Aces and Fiorano GT Challenge at Ferrari World run their trains, in and out through the edge of the red roof. The Manta at SeaWorld loops outside and dives back into the building, where its station is. Yas Waterworld has Bandit Bomber, which leaves its fort and swings round the pearl mountain.
How to see it: Zoom in on Ferrari World or SeaWorld.
Turbo Track launches along the floor of the Ferrari World hall and bends straight up into a vertical spike, 64 metres high, that rises through the glass funnel in the middle of the roof.
How to see it: Zoom in on the funnel in the red roof.
After dark the whole track is floodlit, a ribbon of cool white light round the island, with a dotted ring of lights on the masts along it.
How to see it: Scrub the time to the evening.
Etihad Arena on Yas Bay is an angular box with chamfered corners: roof and walls are one skin of gold aluminium ribs with scattered diamond patterns, lifted over a dark glass ground floor, with a big screen under the overhang on the plaza side. After dark it glows, but calmly: the gold walls are lit scallop by scallop from the edge of the overhang, a warm white LED band runs round the fold in the skin, the glass and the screen glow, and a soft warm light falls on the plaza and the bay without outshining its neighbours. Along the promenade: EL&N, the pink café with its sequinned fascia, parasols and hydrangeas; and by the Warehouse Gym a white astronaut with cat ears on the helmet, waving.
How to see it: After dark, zoom in on Yas Bay.
A low block on the Yas Bay Waterfront, near Etihad Arena and across from the Emerging Man. Its ground floor is clear glass, and close up you can see inside: rows of treadmills and bikes facing the glass, racks and benches, a turf lane for pushing sleds, plants, pendant lamps under a dark ceiling with ducts, and a few people in the middle of a workout. The side facing the astronaut has no glass: it is a wall with a pastel mural of orange, teal, pink and grey blocks, under the gym’s sign. Nothing I could find shows the floors above, so they look like every other block on the map. The gym stays lit until midnight, then drops to a night light.
How to see it: Zoom right in on the promenade next to Etihad Arena.
With its back to the Warehouse Gym’s pastel mural, an astronaut about two and a half metres tall stands on the Yas Bay Waterfront and waves at everyone who walks by. The suit is white, trimmed in light blue at the cuffs, the knees and the soles of its high-top sneakers, with round blue buttons on the chest, a pack in front and another on the back, and dark grey gloves. The helmet is where it stops being serious: two cat ears on top, and in place of a glass visor a faceted mask of small triangles in every colour, like a disco ball pressed flat.
It stands on a short brick walk between clipped hedges and small round trees, on two steel plates, with a little dark plaque on a post beside it. I could not read the plaque or find the name of the work or who made it, so on the map it is simply the astronaut. After dark a lamp set in the paving lights it softly from below.
How to see it: Zoom right in on the walk along the Warehouse Gym’s mural.
A giant bald man in swimming goggles is pulling himself out of the bay onto the Yas Bay promenade, behind Etihad Arena. Only the top of his head shows, the water at the middle of his goggles, and his two hands gripping the stone edge of the quay. The head is 8 metres from chin to crown, most of it under water. He is sprayed concrete on glass-fibre rebar, made to stand salt water and heat, with a smooth terracotta finish. The artist is Fathima Mohiuddin, Fatspatrol, and he has been there since 2021. At night a lamp on the shore shines on him.
How to see it: Zoom right in on the water behind Etihad Arena.
The round drum by Etihad Arena at Yas Bay is WHITE Abu Dhabi. By day it is just the drum with its mural of tall black and white figures. From 11 PM to 3 AM the show goes on outside: colour washes over the mural, searchlights and a fan of lasers from the roof, a queue along the rope line with bouncers at the doors and taxis waiting.
How to see it: After 11 PM, zoom in on Yas Bay.
The outdoor karting track at the north end of Yas Marina Circuit, with its kerbs, tyre walls and blue run-off. Karts lap both loops and brake before every corner.
How to see it: Zoom in close by the North Grandstand.
In the middle of the park stands Jebel Dana, a dark slate mountain with carved spires. The smooth white pearl sits on the tallest spire and the falcon’s nest, a woven bowl with a thatched hut, on the broad one. Every slide starts from a deck with a stair up to it. Sebag’s six mat lanes come down in red and yellow colour blocks, with Hamlool’s Humps and Jebel Drop in blue beside them. Dawwama’s green and yellow tube runs into a red, blue and white striped sphere. Slither’s six striped tubes curl down to a splash pool and end in snake heads with open jaws. Falcon’s Falaj leaves from the nest, and Liwa Loop’s capsule waits on top of its own tower.
The souk by the entrance fort is under dense shade sails, and the wave pool opens like a fan from under the pearl to its beach. South of the old fence is the 2025-26 expansion: a white lattice tower with a blue and white helix, six racing lanes, the Lost City, and Bahamut, a purple fish whose flume comes out of its open mouth.
The park closes around dusk, but on the map it glows all night. The pools, the lazy river and the wave pool are lit turquoise from below. The pearl, lit by washes, is the brightest thing in the park, and warm uplights climb the spires. The slide towers, Dawwama’s sphere and Slither’s tubes take colour washes in magenta, cyan, violet and amber. Lanterns hang under the sails of the souk and along the fort walls.
I found no night photo of the pearl, so the light follows what the park’s lighting designers wrote about it. After midnight the floods ease off a little; the water and the pearl stay on until dawn.
How to see it: Zoom in west of Warner Bros. World and turn the map round the mountain.
A suspended coaster with a water fight, built by Vekoma and opened with the park in 2013. Single four-seat cars hang under the white track. Each car takes on water in the station, and riders press a button to drop it on the people below. They also shoot at targets beside the track, which set off water cannons, and the people on the paths have cannons of their own.
On the park map the track goes into the Bandit fort through an arch, so the station is inside the fort. Here it stands under a terracotta roof, and the track climbs out over the wall, swings round the pearl mountain and comes back between Slither’s tubes. The real ride is about 515 metres and this one about 370. I found no plan of the real route, so the route is mine.
How to see it: Zoom in on the fort south-west of the mountain.
In front of Warner Bros. World stands its 61-metre silver water tower: two slender columns tied by thin platforms under a wide twin drum. The WB shield on the drum is built in raised relief on three sides, gold rim and letters on a blue field, and after dark the tower is floodlit from below.
How to see it: Zoom in on the Warner Bros. World entrance.
Marco Cianfanelli’s Falcons: 132 steel columns on a grassy mound by the mall. From one direction the slabs on the columns line up into a falcon taking flight; walk round (here, turn the map) and the next falcon comes into focus. At night uplights in the dune turn the columns into a lit grove.
How to see it: Zoom in by the mall and turn the map.
Over the Grand Entrance drive stand two runs of big square portals in pale metal panels, three over the road in and three over the road out. After dark an LED strip lights up round the inside of every opening, and all of them change colour together every five seconds.
How to see it: After dark, zoom in on the mall’s entrance drive.
The UAE flag waves over the long reflecting pool in front of the main entrance and its big canopy. The mall stays lit until 1 AM. The glass roof over Yas Square lets you look down into the atrium: the café umbrellas, the kiosks and the gallery ring.
How to see it: Zoom in on the north side of Yas Mall.
Over Yas Square, in the middle of the mall, sits a glass pyramid. Like the real one, its white frame is not a regular grid: the triangles twist round three centres, so the lines bend and swirl as they go. Through the glass you see the atrium below, and at night the panes glow warm while the mall is open.
How to see it: Zoom in on the middle of Yas Mall.
The white crystal next to Yas Mall is CLYMB: walls folded into big flat triangles, some leaning out, some tucked in. It is 45 metres high, just over the 43-metre climbing wall inside, the tallest indoor one in the world, and there is an indoor skydiving tunnel too. An enclosed bridge brings you in from the mall above the road.
How to see it: Zoom in south-west of Yas Mall.
Aldar’s head office fills the east end of Yas Mall, and its roof is busy: a padel court and a basketball half court with ball-stop fences, a paved terrace, a glass pavilion for the gym, a timber deck with planters and a slatted pergola with benches. From dusk until midnight the courts are floodlit.
How to see it: At dusk, zoom in on the east end of Yas Mall.
The beach club on the west shore of Yas Bay: loungers and parasols on the sand, a swim platform 40 metres out with a canopied daybed and a line of floats round the swim area, two padel courts on the sand, and under the big sail a rock waterfall pouring into a shallow pool.
How to see it: Zoom in on the shore south of Yas Links.
The islands in the lagoon in front of Yas Links, and the flats along the north-west shore, are mangrove forest standing in shallow water. OpenStreetMap draws those islands as sea, so at first the map had none. I found the forest in satellite data, ESA’s land cover map and Sentinel-2 pictures from August and September, and painted it over the water: a dark canopy of crowns about 7 metres across, lighter at the edges where young trees and saltmarsh thin out, with the tidal creeks left open. At night nothing lights them but the moon.
How to see it: Zoom in on the lagoon west of Yas Links.
Planes land and take off on runway 31, the direction in use most of the year: arrivals on one runway, departures on the other. They taxi to the stands at Terminal A, push back and climb out past Yas. At night the runway edges light up and the aircraft blink their navigation lights and beacons.
How to see it: Zoom in on the airport, south-east of the island.
Cars drive the streets, stop at red and amber at the 384 traffic lights, queue behind each other and pull away one by one when the light turns green.
How to see it: Zoom in on a junction with traffic lights.
The roads run the way they do in real life. Each half of a dual carriageway, like Yas Leisure Drive or the E10, carries one direction, slip roads go one way, and cars go round the roundabouts anticlockwise. Wide roads have up to four lanes, each with its own queue at the lights. It shows best at night: white headlights coming towards you on one side, red tail lights going away on the other.
How to see it: After dark, zoom in on Yas Leisure Drive.
Across the channel at Al Raha stands the round “coin”: Aldar’s head office, a disc 110 metres high standing on its edge, with a steel diagrid behind the glass and no columns inside. Like the Sphere, it is not stretched with the rest of the map, so it stays round.
How to see it: Look across the water, south-west of Yas.
The verges and roundabouts west of the circuit carry sculpture. White marble stelae on beds of gravel: a stack of rough slabs with a drum lying on top, a tall slab split by an oval hole, an upright disc like a millstone, a granite cube balanced on one corner with a tunnel through it. The word Yas in thick granite letters, a curved stone blade on the Yas Plaza roundabout, and by Ferrari World a long ridge of mirror-polished steel crystals that reflect the sky. At the Yas Links clubhouse, a tiled fountain in the drop-off loop, lit until midnight, and a red sports car parked by the door.
How to see it: Zoom right in on the roundabouts along Yas Street.
Three bird murals on two blocks near Yas Acres: two birds in flight on a starry navy wall, a falcon over coral and blue clouds, and a flamingo standing in turquoise water. They are my own pictures, painted onto the walls for this map. The windows sit on top of them, and at night a soft light washes up the walls.
How to see it: Zoom in by the Tesla site, north-west of the island.
The golden murals of cartoon scenes either side of the Warner Bros. World entrance. Padel courts in their glass cages. The mosque at Ansam, between the terracotta roofs. NOWHERE, the coffee place at the circuit’s west gate, and the old wooden dhow on show beside it, lit with lanterns in the evening.
How to see it: Zoom in and wander.