Gulf States Invest in Culture Abroad as Soft-Power Strategy

Saudi Arabia took part in 71 international cultural events in 2025, more than double its target of 34, according to the Saudi Press Agency. Cultural events inside the kingdom spanned 6,314 days, compared with a target of 3,010. Those figures frame this month’s cluster of Gulf cultural showings from Paris to Rome to London. They also point to a state-directed push to shape how the region is seen abroad.

Culture as Statecraft

At Paris International, an art fair running Oct. 20-24 at 187–189 Quai de Valmy alongside Art Basel Paris, Saudi artist Ayman Zedani presents “In the Bellies of the Rocks.” The installation, commissioned as part of AlUla’s Cultural Season in Paris, pairs a two-channel video with newly unveiled sculptural interventions, drawing on architectural 3D renderings, archival footage and speculative science fiction. Positioned at the fair’s entrance, the work asks international audiences to consider human-nature symbiosis and the Gulf’s ecological future.

Saudi artist Sarah Brahim’s “Let us Love the Distance” opens Oct. 26, 2026 at Forof in Rome and runs through July 27, 2027. Visitors descend to the remains of the Basilica Ulpia, part of Trajan’s Forum, where ceremonies once legally freed enslaved people. In London, Mohammed Alfaraj presents his first institutional solo exhibition in Europe at the Delfina Foundation, running until Nov. 22, 2026. For the inaugural Frieze Abu Dhabi, Nov. 19-22 at Manarat Al Saadiyat, Athr and Galleria Franco Noero present a joint booth featuring Emirati artist Rami Farook and five Saudi artists, alongside rare works by the late pioneering female Saudi artist Mounira Mosly.

The same strategy reaches beyond galleries. Saudi businessman Turki Faisal Al-Rasheed’s book “Saudi Arabia’s Transformation,” published by Routledge in March to coincide with the 10th anniversary of Saudi Vision 2030, examines the kingdom’s effort to diversify its economy away from oil. At Maiz on Bujairi Terrace in Diriyah, a curated menu represents dishes from all 13 Saudi provinces.

Abu Dhabi Courts Global Artists

Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week has opened its fourth Global Digital Art Competition. Anyone 18 or older can enter by Nov. 16. One winner and two finalists will receive honours in Abu Dhabi on Jan. 13. This year’s theme is “Securing Systems. Sustaining Growth.” Entries may address future energy, advanced technology and AI, water, food and resource security, investment and infrastructure, and human development. Artists using AI or other generative tools must declare their use and explain what the tools contributed.

The jury includes Dyala Nusseibeh, Director of Frieze Abu Dhabi, and Kawthar Bin Sulayem, Founder and CEO of District1795, among others. Masdar hosts the competition with District1795, a technology platform for arts and culture in the Middle East and North Africa.

Scholarship in Berlin

Six days ago, on Oct. 16, 2026, the inaugural Riwaq Prize for Science and Culture was presented in Berlin during Der Divan’s fourth Arab Book Fair. Der Divan – The Arabic Cultural House and the German Orient Institute Beirut established the €3,000 prize, divided equally among Arabic, German and English categories. Clemens Hach, Deputy Head of the Middle East and North Africa Division at Germany’s Federal Foreign Office, spoke at the ceremony.

The Arabic-language award went to Dr Raed Al-Samhouri for a 2024 book on Ibn Taymiyya. It challenges readings that reduce the medieval thinker’s work to violence and takfir, the practice of declaring another Muslim an unbeliever, or use passages to justify present-day conflicts. Al-Samhouri’s stated aim is to “free Ibn Taymiyya from our time—or perhaps free our time from him.” Prof. Dr Yvonne Albers won the German-language award for a 2023 study of the Beirut journal Mawaqif, covering 1968–1994, while Nora K. Schmid won the English-language award for “The Ascetic Qur’an and its Kharijite Readers.”

Dr Lorans Al Hennawi, Director of Der Divan, said research realises its value when it has “the methodological courage to question assumptions, restore historical contexts and open up questions obscured by hasty or reductive interpretations.” Prof. Dr Jens Hanssen, Director of the German Orient Institute Beirut, said the prize highlights research that treats Arab cultures and societies as subjects of critical inquiry rather than fixed images or closed narratives. The prize will be awarded every two years, alternating between humanities and social sciences.

Why This Matters: Gulf governments are spending heavily to present themselves abroad as patrons of art, ecology and scholarship, rather than as petro-states or security problems. That investment tracks a real shift: economic diversification, as the anniversary of Vision 2030 underscores, and a bid to gain influence through culture rather than force. The Berlin prize adds a harder edge. Scholarship that pulls religious texts back from violent, ahistorical readings directly serves the contest over how contemporary movements invoke Islamic tradition. Whether the soft-power push translates into lasting regional stability remains an open question. But the scale of the effort, measured in event days and international showings, shows these states see cultural reputation as a strategic asset.