Issue 12June 2026Cities & Culture
LEAP 2026: Riyadh at the Heart of Tech’s Next Chapter
Latest Stories
See all
Sports
Al Hilal and Aston Villa Close to Agreement for Ollie Watkins Transfer
Al Hilal have completed the signing of English striker Ollie Watkins from Aston Villa in a major move that strengthens the Saudi club’s attacking options.
Politics
Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s Visit to Paris
Saudi Arabia and France have renewed their commitment to strengthening bilateral cooperation through a series of agreements and memoranda of understanding covering several strategic sectors.
Sports
Saudi Arabia Officially Joins the 2027 CONCACAF Gold Cup
Saudi Arabia’s national football team is set to officially participate in the 2027 CONCACAF Gold Cup, which will take place next year in the United States.
Events
Crown Prince in Paris for the 2026 Esports World Cup Ceremony
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman attended the 2026 Esports World Cup ceremony in Paris, joining a high-profile gathering that brought together prominent figures from the worlds of politics, sports and esports.
Sports
Saudi Football Calendar Updated for 2026–27 Season
The Saudi football calendar for the 2026–27 season has been officially updated following a request from Saudi national team head coach Georgios Donis, with revised dates announced for several major domestic competitions.
Fashion & Beauty
Riyadh Fashion Week 2026 Applications Are Now Open
Riyadh Fashion Week 2026 is set to return to the Saudi capital from October 15–20, bringing together designers, fashion brands, industry leaders, and fashion enthusiasts for another celebration of creativity and innovation.
Architecture & Design
NHC’s Khuzam Welcomes Riyadh Academy as Part of Its Growing Community
Khuzam is taking another step toward becoming more than a residential destination. With the opening of Riyadh Academy, affiliated with Misk Foundation, NHC is bringing education closer to everyday life within the community, adding a new dimension to a destination designed around living, services and quality of life.
Culture
Lubna Abdulaziz Takes on “Al Sahira” for Ramadan 2027
Lubna Abdulaziz is stepping into a new dramatic territory for Ramadan 2027 with “Al Sahira,” an upcoming series inspired by the real-life case widely known as the “Witch of Al Qurayyat.” Set against a story rooted in northern Saudi Arabia, the project marks a different turn in Abdulaziz’s career, bringing her into a darker and more suspense-driven world.
Architecture & Design
The New Era of Saudi Architecture: A Silent Revolution in Stone
The desert wind carries more than sand across the sweeping plains of the Najd region; today, it carries the quiet echoes of a profound architectural transformation. For decades, the skyline of Riyadh was characterised by utilitarian structures and ambitious, albeit sometimes disjointed, modern towers. Yet a new aesthetic paradigm is taking root — one that eschews ostentation in favour of restrained, almost meditative elegance.
Sports
How the Gulf Became Global Sport's New Centre of Gravity
A decade ago, global sport organisers viewed the Arabian Peninsula as an emerging market — promising but peripheral. Today they view it as the market. The transformation has been swift, deliberate, and extraordinarily well-funded, but it would be a mistake to reduce it to cheque-writing. The Gulf's rise in sport is also a story of infrastructure, hospitality, and a genuine cultural enthusiasm for competition that predates Vision 2030 by generations.
Events
Riyadh Season: Inside the World's Largest Entertainment Programme
Each October, Riyadh undergoes a metamorphosis. The city's already frenetic energy doubles, then doubles again, as the season's programme unfolds across more than fourteen distinct entertainment zones. Last year's edition drew eleven million visitors over three months — a number that exceeds the permanent population of many European capitals.
F&BSponsored
The Chefs Redefining Saudi Cuisine One Plate at a Time
There is a moment in many Saudi kitchens when the smell of cardamom and dried lime hits the air and something ancient stirs. The new generation of chefs working across Riyadh and Jeddah knows this moment well — they have trained in Copenhagen and Paris and Tokyo, yet it is always this smell, and the memory attached to it, that pulls them back to their own culinary roots.
Culture
AlUla: Where the Desert Remembers Everything
Drive north from Medina for four hours and the land changes its mind about what a landscape should be. The flat plains give way to sudden mountains of striated sandstone, their faces carved by wind into abstract sculptures that dwarf everything human. This is AlUla — a valley inhabited continuously for more than two hundred thousand years and now, improbably, one of the most discussed cultural destinations on earth.
Headlines
The Cities Saudi Arabia Is Building from Scratch
Somewhere in the northwest of Saudi Arabia, an army of engineers is building a city that does not yet exist — and may not exist in full for decades. NEOM, the flagship megaproject of Vision 2030, has become the most discussed, most debated, and most photographed urban concept of the twenty-first century. Its ambition is almost impossible to process: a linear city one hundred and seventy kilometres long, entirely car-free, powered entirely by renewable energy, housing up to nine million people.
Interviews
Hessa Al-Suwaidi: Designing Modest Fashion for a World Audience
When Hessa Al-Suwaidi shows her collections, the garments move the way water does — with an unhurried deliberateness that seems to resist the frantic pace of the fashion calendar. There is something deliberate about her fabrics, her silhouettes, her insistence on construction over decoration. It has made her one of the Gulf's most celebrated designers and one of its most misunderstood.
Events
MDL Beast: How a Festival Became a Movement
In December 2019, roughly four hundred thousand people descended on a tract of land on the outskirts of Riyadh for a three-day music festival that nobody quite knew how to categorise. Was it a concert? A cultural statement? An experiment? MDL Beast — named after the Arabic word for 'beast,' reimagined as a sound-beast — was all three, and the world took notice.
Culture
The Red Sea International Film Festival and Arab Cinema's New Confidence
Cinema arrived late to Saudi Arabia — commercially, at least. The first licensed multiplex opened in 2018, ending a thirty-five-year ban on public film screenings. But the creative energy that had accumulated during those decades of absence has erupted with an urgency that surprises even those who anticipated it.