RIYADH, 30 Oct. - (ANA) - Saudi Arabia’s projects market has spent 2026 defying the mood of the people building it. 

 

The Kingdom has awarded $76 billion in contracts so far this year, against $102 billion at the same point in 2025 — behind last year’s pace.

 

This is due to less than a year of regional conflict, cost inflation, and supply disruption might have threatened, Meed’s head of content and analysis Edward James said in a webinar attended by EnterpriseAM. 

 

The business intelligence firm expects a run of awards in November and December to carry the full-year figure to $100 billion — “quite remarkable,” James said, “given the set of circumstances.”

 

Where spending will concentrate in the next two years is Riyadh, driven by deadlines for Expo 2030 and the 2034 World Cup. 

 

Diriyah and Qiddiya are meant to be substantially ready for the Expo, and King Salman International Airport has to be in place for both. 

 

Add Roshn and the National Housing Company — funded by off-plan sales, which insulates them from government budget pressure — and the push behind hundreds of thousands of housing units, and Riyadh holds the bulk of the near-term pipeline. 

 

The Eastern Province is the other bright spot, lifted by Aramco, while Tabuk, Neom’s province, has seen the sharpest provincial decline.

 

Saudi Arabia holds $1.69 trillion of known, planned and unawarded projects — more than the other five Gulf states combined, and ahead of the UAE’s $980 billion — within a record $3.3 trillion regional pipeline. Construction dominates at close to $2 trillion.  - (ANA) - 

 

AB/ANA/30 October 2026 - - -