This is a big deal for Dubai and the UAE — winning a vote to stage the 2020 World Expo.

No event of this magnitude has been awarded to the city or the country. So that would explain the thousands of people in the streets of Dubai, celebrating.

It isn’t quite the Olympics or the World Cup, in the sense of global cachet.

Those two events have higher intensities, and your city/country is far more likely to be seen, via TV, as a backdrop for a really big event. Live TV coverage and all.

However, a world expo (aka, world’s fair) may be more important in the plain ol’ dollars-and-cents (dirhams and fils) world because it lasts longer and has a more mercantile aspect to it.

Dubai is aiming to have 26 million people come to the expo, over a span of six months (and a cost of $8 billion), seven years hence. No World Cup or Olympics gets that many visitors.

But, yeah, the word came in around 9 (local time) tonight and they were shooting off fireworks from the Burj Khalifa, and school children were given the day off tomorrow from school.

What is a world expo about? Well, the Eiffel Tower, for one, and the Seattle Space Needle and waffle cones. It’s inventions, and looking ahead to the future. Progress. That sort of thing. And the UAE is very much into the notion (now mostly lost in the West) of steady progress.

Countries from all over the world are invited to build a exhibit. Selling themselves as interesting places, as well.

Here is a photo gallery of past fairs/expos.

And here is the wiki version of what a world’s expo/fair is about. And where they have been held in the past. And who chooses to give an event that name, etc.

This is a big deal for the UAE, as well as Dubai.

Will it be the first of several big events in the next few decades? Maybe an Olympics?

Could be.