What is the official language of Qatar?

The official language of Qatar is Arabic.

This status is established in Article 1 of Qatar’s Permanent Constitution, which identifies Arabic as the state’s official language. It is used in government, legislation, courts, formal education, and official public communication. The constitutional wording remained in place after Qatar’s 2024 constitutional amendments.

In everyday conversation, many Qataris speak Qatari Arabic, a Gulf Arabic dialect with vocabulary influenced by Persian, Turkish, and English. Modern Standard Arabic is generally used in formal writing and official settings, while Qatari Arabic is common in informal speech.

English is widely used in business, tourism, medicine, higher education, and workplaces because Qatar has a large international expatriate population. Urdu, Hindi, Malayalam, Persian, and other languages are also spoken by resident communities, but they are not Qatar’s official language. Qatar is a peninsula in the Arabian Gulf and shares its only land border with Saudi Arabia.