Bringing Everyone to the Field: G42's Annual Sports and Family Day
Some corporate events are about the staff. This one is about the staff and everyone who goes home with them at the end of the day. HARAKA has organised and delivered the G42 Annual Sports and Family Day for two years running, in 2024 and 2025, and it's grown into one of the biggest single-day activations we run anywhere in the UAE...
The scale of it is worth spelling out. Up to 2,000 people take part each year, and 900 of them are family members rather than employees. That ratio matters. It’s not a token “bring your kids” add-on bolted onto a staff event, it’s built from the ground up as a day for households, not headcounts. Partners, children and parents are on the field alongside colleagues, which changes the whole tone of the day from the moment people arrive.
To make that work at that size, you need more than one or two activities to keep people occupied. The day features over 10 different sports, and across the day that adds up to nearly 800 matches and races. That’s a genuinely large operation to schedule, staff and referee, with heats, brackets and timings running in parallel across multiple age groups and skill levels, all while keeping the atmosphere loose and fun rather than feeling like a logistics exercise.
Alongside the competitive sport, there’s a full programme built specifically with families in mind. A Kids Zone gives younger children their own space and activities. Giant inflatable obstacle courses are always a highlight, drawing queues of both kids and adults having a go. A couples fitness challenge gets partners competing together rather than watching from the sidelines, and a family mini Olympics turns the day into something a household can take part in as a unit, parents and children on the same team. All-day entertainment runs through the programme to keep the energy up between events, so there’s never a dead patch where people are standing around waiting for the next thing to start.
What comes through in how we describe this event internally is the energy of it. It’s a brilliant opportunity for employees and their families to come together, stay active and enjoy a bit of friendly competition, and the feedback we hear afterwards consistently points to fantastic energy from the moment gates open to the moment the last race finishes. For G42, the day is a clear expression of the company’s commitment to fostering connection and vitality among its staff and their families, not as a slogan but as something you can actually watch happen across a field for a full day.
Running it for two consecutive years has let us build on what worked the first time round. Repeat events like this are where you learn the small things: which sports draw the biggest crowds, how to stagger start times so families aren’t torn between two activities happening at once, where the Kids Zone needs to sit relative to the main pitches so parents can keep half an eye on both. None of that shows up in a highlight reel, but it’s the difference between a big event that runs smoothly and one that just looks busy.
The G42 day is a good example of what we mean when we talk about team building at HARAKA, because it’s not really about the games. Games are the vehicle. What we’re actually building is collaboration and morale, and we design every event backwards from that goal rather than forwards from a list of fun activities. A couples fitness challenge or a family mini Olympics isn’t there because it photographs well, it’s there because it puts people in situations where they’re relying on each other, cheering for each other and remembering why they like working alongside these people in the first place.
That’s also why we push clients towards thinking about families rather than just employees whenever the format allows it. A team building day built purely around colleagues tends to stay inside the office frame, people are still slightly “at work” even when they’re playing a game. Bring partners and children into the picture, and the day becomes something else entirely. People see their manager cheering on their kid in an obstacle course, or their colleague’s partner competing in a relay, and that changes the working relationship in ways a standard offsite never quite manages.
We work across the full range of what team building Abu Dhabi organisations tend to ask for, from a single one-day event like G42’s Sports and Family Day through to ongoing in-office programmes that run monthly or quarterly and build momentum over a longer stretch. Some clients want the big annual moment, others want something steadier that keeps people connected between the big moments, and quite often the answer is both. We’ve delivered this kind of work for organisations including Aldar, Miral, Yas Bay Waterfront, Mubadala, Sanad, the World Tennis League, Ma’an, the Department of Education and Knowledge and the Department of Community Development, each with its own version of what “bringing people together” should look like.
This sits alongside the rest of what HARAKA does as a wellbeing company Abu Dhabi organisations turn to for more than one thing at a time. We run our flagship gym at the International Tennis Centre in Zayed Sports City, and beyond team building we work across Gym & Physical Wellness, Employee Wellbeing, Events Management, School Outreach and Active Youth Holiday Camps, with individuals, corporate teams, schools and government entities across the UAE. After more than 15 years in the region, corporate wellbeing Abu Dhabi teams tend to come to us already knowing that a good team day needs proper sports delivery and genuine warmth in equal measure, not one at the expense of the other.
If you’re thinking about what a sports and family day, or any other team building event, could look like for your organisation, get in touch with us and we’ll talk through what would actually work for your team and their families.
Written by Rensché Graham Corporate Wellness Manager, HARAKA, October 2026
Reviewed by Sam Bolger, Managing Partner, HARAKA, October 2026