Saudis exploring a changed country

Five years ago, the cultural calendar of Saudi Arabia would have been a short list. Today it's a complicated map: 122 million tourists in 2025, an entertainment sector that did not exist in 2017 drawing 89 million visitors, Umrah pilgrim numbers that rebounded past pre-pandemic levels, and an ambitious environmental program planting hundreds of millions of trees. Whether you're a Saudi attending these things or hosting visitors who come to see them, the country around you has been deliberately, and rapidly, rewritten.