ALULA: The fifth AlUla Arts festival began last weekend. Until Feb. 14, the ancient oasis has become a living backdrop for bold land art, workshops, dance and musical performances inspired by the area’s majestic desert canyons and lush palm groves.
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Sumantro Ghose, the arts and creative industries programming director, said: “We started in 2022 with 19,000 visitors. In 2025 (we had more than) 70,000. So we’re a growing festival. And what makes us unique is that we’re very rooted in the local community, but we’re also global.”
“We believe that AlUla, as a destination, was built by artists for artists,” Hamad Alhomiedan, director of arts and creative industries at the Royal Commission for AlUla, told Arab News. “That’s why we have this amazing program this year, which will be our largest art festival yet, and it’s basically focused on three cultural assets that we’re developing,” he continued. Those three assets are: AlJadidah Arts District, Wadi AlFann, and the upcoming Contemporary Art Museum of AlUla.
Aseel Alamoudi, AlUla Design Residency Artwork 2025, displayed at AlUla Design Space. (Courtesy of the RCU and Lorenzo Arrigoni)
