The museum is set to become a global hub for creativity, dialogue, and artistic exploration.
Saudi Arabia continues to invest heavily in culture, and AlUla is right at the heart of that momentum. The latest announcement is the AlUla Contemporary Art Museum, a new institution backed by Arts AlUla that aims to place the region at the centre of global conversations around contemporary art.
Set to sit “under the palm canopy of the AlUla Oasis”, the AlUla Contemporary Art Museum draws on AlUla’s long-standing identity as a meeting point for people, ideas and exchange. Historically, AlUla gained prominence as a key stop on incense trade routes, welcoming travellers and traders from different regions.
Rather than operating as a static, four-walls institution, the AlUla Contemporary Art Museum has been envisioned as a “living platform”, engaging audiences through exhibitions, commissions, research, publications and artist residencies ahead of its physical opening.
The museum’s name and wider ambition were unveiled during the opening of Arduna, a landmark exhibition forming part of the fifth edition of the AlUla Arts Festival. Arduna translates to “our land” and brings together more than 80 artworks from Saudi Arabia, the MENA region and beyond, co-curated in collaboration with the Centre Pompidou and supported by AFALULA (the French Agency for AlUla Development). The exhibition runs from 1 February to 15 April 2026.
What sets the curatorial approach apart is its focus on process as much as presentation. Alongside finished works, the museum plans to spotlight the materials that rarely make it into public view, from early concepts and private sketches to archives, offering insight into the “full arc of an artist’s journey”.
GO: Visit www.experiencealula.com for more information.