Topic
Vision 2030
22 articles tagged "Vision 2030".
Saudi Arabia enters Kearney FDI top 10 — climbing from 24th to 10th in three years
Saudi Arabia ranks #10 on the 2026 Kearney FDI Confidence Index — its first appearance in the global top 10, ahead of South Korea, Australia, Switzerland, and Spain. The kingdom climbed from 24th in 2023 to 13th in 2025 to 10th in 2026, with Kearney singling out Saudi Arabia alongside Singapore as the year’s standout "middle powers." Investors cite economic performance (33%), tech innovation (27%), and ease of doing business (27%).
SAR 133B· Global capital coming to Saudi
Vision 2030's halfway report card
Nine years in, fifteen years out — what does the kingdom's 93%-achieved-or-on-track number actually look like across sectors?
93%· Vision 2030 delivery
The SAR 3.4 trillion story — how the kingdom stopped receiving capital and started directing it
PIF assets quintupled from SAR 720B in 2017 to SAR 3.41T in 2025. Non-oil exports tripled. FDI inflows quintupled. Regional HQs grew from 44 to 700+. The numbers describe a structural shift in how the Saudi economy interacts with global capital.
SAR 3.41T· PIF: from sovereign fund to sector builder
The kingdom you can go out in: what 89 million entertainment visits actually mean
From zero public cinemas in 2017 to a year-round entertainment economy hosting 89 million visits in 2025 — the cultural transformation has been more dramatic than any other Vision 2030 number. What it looks like from inside a Saudi life.
89M+· An entertainment industry, built from zero
The kingdom that started teaching itself
1.1 million Saudis trained in AI in five years. 23,400 currently abroad on the Custodian Scholarship. Madrasati reaching 6 million K-12 students during COVID and staying. The human-capital arithmetic is the longest bet Vision 2030 is making — and the one that has to pay off for everything else to.
1.1M+· 1 million+ Saudis trained in AI
The kingdom you can do in an app: from outside the global top 50 to top 6 in seven years
License renewals that used to take three Ministry visits. Residency permits that used to need stamps from four agencies. Medical records you couldn't see. Vaccination certificates you carried as paper. The 2025 Saudi citizen does all of these in three apps. The infrastructure underneath is one of Vision 2030's quieter triumphs.
430M+· 430 million government transactions, done from a phone
The kingdom that started living longer: six extra years in a decade
A Saudi born in 2016 had a life expectancy of 74. A Saudi born today is expected to live to 79.7. That gain — almost six years in a decade — is unusually large for a country at this income level, and it isn't an accident. Universal coverage, the Sehhaty platform, and the unified insurance scheme are the visible mechanism. The structural cause is the decision to treat healthcare as an indicator that gets measured.
79.7 yrs· Saudis living longer
The 17%-to-36% decade: how Saudi women joined the formal economy
Female labor force participation moved from 17% in 2017 to 36.3% by Q1 2025. That's roughly 3.4 million additional women in the formal workforce in eight years — the largest such shift in any G20 economy this decade. The mechanism wasn't just one law. It was a coordinated stack of legal, financial, infrastructural, and cultural changes that compounded.
36.3%· Women in the workforce
The Saudi sports ledger: how a kingdom became the most-discussed sports investor on earth
F1 in Jeddah. LIV Golf. Ronaldo, Benzema and Neymar in the Saudi Pro League. The 2034 World Cup. The 2029 Asian Winter Games at Trojena. The Esports World Cup. Few national rebrandings have happened as visibly or as fast — and both the real economic activity and the contested international debate belong on the same ledger.
89M+· An entertainment industry, built from zero
The 18-million pilgrim year: religious tourism as the kingdom’s oldest industry
Saudi Arabia hosted 18.03 million Umrah pilgrims in 2025 — more than three times the 2022 figure. The capacity infrastructure is two decades of planning, but the simplification is a Vision 2030 deliverable: one app, one visa, one process where there used to be four.
18.03M· 18 million Umrah pilgrims welcomed from abroad
Riyadh Metro and the post-car kingdom
Six lines, 85 stations, 176 km — the largest single metro inauguration in modern transit history opened in Riyadh from December 2024. For a country that built its capital around the car and then changed who could drive it in 2018, the metro is the logical next step.
−60%· 60% fewer deaths on Saudi roads
How Saudi finance got an app layer
In 2017, Saudi retail payments were roughly 70% cash. By 2024, cash had dropped to under 20%. mada became the backbone, STC Pay became the first Saudi fintech unicorn, Tabby and Tamara built BNPL into a category, and SAMA’s sandbox processed more than 100 firms through to licensing.
$1.72B· MENA's #1 venture market — Saudi startups, Saudi capital
When MBC came home: the Saudi content turn
In April 2023, MBC Group — the largest Arabic-language broadcaster in the world — moved its headquarters from Dubai to Riyadh, ending three decades of regionally-decisive Saudi media being made on someone else’s territory. It is one part of a broader content turn: a domestic film industry, a gaming sector with a $38 billion commitment, and a publishing landscape rebuilt around digital products.
89M+· An entertainment industry, built from zero
If you’re 18 in Saudi Arabia today: notes on the first Vision-only generation
A Saudi turning 18 in 2026 was nine when the Vision 2030 reforms started accelerating. They have no working memory of pre-Vision Saudi Arabia. The cinemas, the women drivers, the metro, the F1 weekends, the digital government — these aren’t reforms to them. They’re the country.
93%· Vision 2030 delivery
If you’re 55 in Saudi Arabia today: the generation that remembers both
A Saudi turning 55 in 2026 was 46 when the Vision 2030 reforms started accelerating. They built their careers, raised their families, and formed their assumptions in a kingdom that no longer exists — and they did it as adults. The 18-year-old knows only the new; the 25-year-old felt the transition; the 55-year-old remembers both.
93%· Vision 2030 delivery
The generation that learned to drive in their 40s: Saudi women turning 55
A Saudi woman turning 55 in 2026 was 46 when the driving ban lifted in June 2018. Some women in this cohort became grandmothers before they got driver’s licenses. They have lived through a more compressed legal and economic transformation than any other adult population segment, and the data alone doesn’t capture what that took.
36.3%· Women in the workforce
The Saudi defense ledger: industrial buildup, the 50%-by-2030 target, and the international debate
Saudi Arabia spent decades importing essentially 100% of its defense materiel. In 2017 it announced a 50%-by-2030 localization target and stood up SAMI and GAMI. Local content has moved from under 2% to roughly 19–20%. The industrial story and the international debate around Saudi procurement both belong on the same ledger.
70%· 70% of Aramco's supply chain — Made in Saudi
The kingdom that bought its homes
From 47% to 65% in nine years — how Sakani turned a structural homeownership gap into one of Vision 2030’s cleanest delivery arcs, and what the remaining points to the 70% target will actually require.
65.4%· Saudis owning their own homes
The localization decade
Read separately, IKTVA, Nitaqat, GAMI, and Made-in-Saudi are four different Saudization tools. Read together, they’re a stacked, decade-long attempt to localize a national value chain — an industrial-policy experiment whose cumulative effect has moved the headline numbers further than any peer effort in the same window.
70%· 70% of Aramco's supply chain — Made in Saudi
The hosting decade
F1, the Saudi Cup, LIV Golf, the Pro League signing wave, COP16, Expo 2030, and the 2034 World Cup. Read separately, the events read as sportswashing. Read together, they’re a twelve-year, coherent international-visibility strategy aligned with three Vision 2030 pillars: tourism arrivals, foreign-investment signaling, and domestic quality-of-life.
89M+· An entertainment industry, built from zero
The Tadawul decade
Between 2015 and 2026, the Saudi Exchange went from a closed national bourse with marginal international weight to the largest emerging-markets equity destination outside the BRIC economies. MSCI EM inclusion, the Aramco IPO, the post-Aramco listing wave, and the PIF anchor-investor model rebuilt Saudi capital markets in a decade.
SAR 133B· Global capital coming to Saudi
Women in authority
The female labor-force participation story traced the move from 17% to 36%. This piece traces the parallel arc that doesn’t appear in the participation curve: what happened to Saudi women’s representation in positions of authority during the same period — Shoura Council, cabinet, ambassadorial, judicial, and corporate.
≥20%· Saudi women in the Shoura Council