Returning for its fifth edition, AlUla Arts Festival (until 14 February 2026) is gaining momentum, steadily cementing its presence on the international art scene. As part of Saudi Arabia’s 2030 vision to reshape its cultural landscape, AlUla takes centre stage as a focal point for art and heritage and there’s no better setting than this ancient desert town, with its towering rock formations that dramatically rise above lush pockets of palm tree oases.
The headline act this year is ‘Arduna’, an exhibition curated by the soon-to-open AlUla Contemporary Art Museum, together with Paris’ Centre Pompidou. Its title meaning ‘Our Land’ in Arabic, the exhibition, which runs 1 February – 15 April, explores our relationship with nature and land, and features over 80 works from both institutions, alongside masterpieces from Musée National d’ Art Moderne.
The Holy Wadi, Ayman Zedani, Arduna, 2025
In keeping with its longer-term ambitions, land art is at the centre of the programme, and the festival has kicked off with Desert X AlUla, the international biennial exhibition, which transforms the local valleys and canyons into an open-air museum. Here, large-scale installations, earthworks and sculptures by a roster of 11 Saudi and international artists unfold within the dramatic landscape. Among them are Saudi-Yemeni artist Sara Abdu’s A Kingdom Where No One Dies: Contours of Resonance, which takes the shape of rammed-earth walls, carved to trace the soundwave of a poem.
Elsewhere, Cuban-born, US-based Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons channels the intense hues of AlUla’s sunsets with Imole Red, a larger-than-life garden-like sculpture centred around the native flowering plant, allium. Meanwhile, further away in a peaceful oasis alive with birdsong, Hungarian-American pioneer of ecological land art Agnes Denes reveals her latest iteration of The Living Pyramid, a towering structure planted with local rosemary, verbena and wild grasses, that will explore the cycle of life over the year.
This all comes together as a snapshot of what to expect when Wadi AlFann is unveiled in 2028. Meaning ‘Valley of the Arts’, the ambitious open-air art initiative – set within a spectacular 65 sq km valley – will feature permanent site-specific works by some of the world’s pioneering artists, including Denes, as well as James Turrell, Michael Heizer, Ahmed Mater, and Saudi-born Manal AlDowayan, whose dazzling white labyrinth, inspired by AlUla’s Old Town, will be etched with stories and drawings by the people of modern-day AlUla.
Tarek Atoui, Desert X AlUla 2026
During the opening week, we saw ‘Vertigo’, a spectacular one-off aerial performance exploring gravity, presented by Villa Hegra, a recently opened Saudi-French cultural hub that hosts artist residencies and studios, an exhibition hall, workshop spaces, and AlUla’s first indoor cinema and performing arts studio. Another highlight is AlJadidah Arts District, which is alive with new artworks, alongside workshops, live performances and a curated programme of art-focused documentaries and films.
AlUla Arts Festival 2026 runs until 14 February, experiencealula.com