Why Saudi Arabia is the market for immersive tech right now

Four numbers that explain our diary

A company our size cannot be everywhere, so we choose markets by asking where the buyers, the budgets and the appetite for something new are all present at once. In 2026 that is Saudi Arabia, and four figures from our market brief show why.

Tourism. The Kingdom recorded 60 million tourists and USD 38.13 billion in tourism spending in the first half of 2024, according to figures from the Minister of Tourism cited in our brief, with a national target of 100 million tourists a year by 2030 and investments in tourism projects put at USD 800 billion. Every visitor centre, heritage site and airport in that programme is a candidate for a hologram guide or a virtual tour.

Events. The Saudi events management market was estimated at USD 2.38 billion in 2024 by Mordor Intelligence, as cited in the brief. Events are where holograms, AI presenters and virtual exhibition platforms are bought first.

Digital transformation. Research and Markets, cited in the brief, put the Saudi digital transformation market at USD 18.4 billion in 2023, and MarketsandMarkets gives the global segment a 24.1 per cent compound annual growth rate. Digital twins and VR training sit inside that spend.

Metaverse. Statista, cited in the brief, estimated the Saudi metaverse market at USD 23.0 billion in 2024; PwC expects the metaverse to add USD 15 billion to GCC economies by 2030, with Saudi Arabia taking about USD 7.6 billion — more than half.

We are a vendor quoting figures that flatter our market, so we will be careful with them. But the direction is not in doubt.

The technologies themselves are compounding

The Saudi figures describe demand. The technology forecasts describe supply catching up with it, and they matter because a buyer wants to know that what they install this year will still be current in three.

Our market brief cites Grand View Research on virtual reality growing from USD 13.63 billion in 2023 to USD 79.36 billion by 2030, a 27.5 per cent compound annual rate; Allied Market Research on the hologram market growing from USD 3.50 billion to USD 13.63 billion over the same period at 21.49 per cent; and Allied Market Research again on virtual tours at 27.9 per cent a year. Virtual events, per Grand View Research, grow at 18.8 per cent. The brief's own summary is that the immersive sectors we work in exceed 11 per cent average growth, with the fastest close to 28 per cent.

Two demographic facts from the same research make Saudi Arabia a better fit than the global average. Sixty-five per cent of the population is under 35, which is the cohort that treats a 3D browser experience or a talking hologram as normal rather than novel. And the Kingdom accounts for 51 per cent of GCC metaverse investment, ahead of the UAE at 22 per cent — the money for immersive projects is disproportionately here.

We wrote about the metaverse side of this in our post on Saudi Arabia and Vision 2030. This post is about the practical consequence: what a company in Riyadh should buy first.

Why the buyers are ready, not just the budgets

Numbers describe capacity. What makes a market is willingness, and our Saudi kick-off assessment listed the reasons we found it here. The Kingdom is “witnessing remarkable progress and development across diverse sectors”; government “prioritizes innovation and actively supports it” and “allocates significant budgets for innovation and digital transformation”; and, importantly for us, the market “lacks a sufficient number of companies specializing in innovative transformation”. Demand outruns local supply.

There is also a structural fact that shaped our company: Saudi Arabia allows Jordanian companies to register with full ownership. Jordan's IT sector is strong and its workforce skilled, but the home market is small and competitive, with no large-scale public IT companies and limited access to capital. So we develop in Amman and deliver in Riyadh. The engineering, the 3D studio and the platform work happen where the talent is; the sales, installation and support happen where the projects are.

The buyers themselves have changed. Five years ago a hologram was a launch-night novelty. Today procurement teams at tourism authorities, developers and universities ask about content pipelines, uptime and analytics — the questions of someone who intends to run the thing for three years. That shift from spectacle to operations is the clearest sign that a market has arrived.

Three things Saudi buyers are actually commissioning

Across our enquiries in Riyadh, three categories recur, and each ties back to one of the figures above.

Hologram technology for tourism and events. A life-size Halo Box with an AI avatar at a visitor centre, a launch or an exhibition stand, speaking Arabic and English from the client's own knowledge base. The tourism and events figures are why; the fact that the box ships complete and needs only power and internet is how. Our post on AI holograms for Saudi events covers the event side in detail.

VR training simulators. Industrial, medical and safety training where the real equipment is expensive or dangerous. A VR training simulator in Saudi Arabia is bought by the training department, not the marketing department, and it is judged on hours of safe practice per trainee. The digital transformation budget is where it sits.

Digital twins for giga projects and facilities. Developments that do not yet exist need to be sold, planned and later operated. A digital twin serves all three: a virtual showroom before construction, a planning model during it, and a facilities-management twin afterwards. The scale of the Kingdom's development programme makes this the category with the longest runway.

Behind all three sits the same platform work — 3D content, avatars, cloud management — which is why a client who starts with one usually ends up with two.

Riyadh for delivery, Amman for building

Our approach in the Kingdom follows the plan we set ourselves: find the right partner in each industry, build a product ecosystem for that industry rather than selling isolated gadgets, earn credibility with delivered projects and case studies, and keep development capacity in Amman so that market feedback turns into product changes quickly.

In practice that means a client in Riyadh deals with a local team for scoping, installation, training and support, while the 3D studio and the platform engineers in Amman do the building. Demos are run on real hardware, with the client's own content, before anyone signs. And we price to make a first project easy — a rental, a pilot, a single site — because in this market the second project is where the relationship is decided.

If you are weighing an immersive project in Saudi Arabia this year, our advice is to ignore the trillion-dollar forecasts and ask a smaller question: which one project, in one location, would pay back within a season? In this market, in 2026, there are several honest answers. We would be glad to help you find yours.