Each winter, Riyadh transforms itself into an entertainment venue that aims to attracts citizens and foreigners alike, mostly through a series of annual events, gatherings, and celebrations that are organized as part of the Riyadh Season. This initiative is part of the Saudi Vision 2030, which, among other things, wants to put the Kingdom on travellers’ radars. Let us now find out just how Riyadh Season helps make winter the best time to enjoy Riyadh.
On paper, most countries south of the Mediterranean Sea are excellent spots for winter tourism, at least in my humble opinion. Unless you want to ski or see the Christmas markets, there is very little point in visiting cities like London, Berlin, Paris etc. in December. The sun will set too soon, making your days noticeably shorter, and temperatures will not be ideal for most holidaymakers to wander around these towns comfortably. This is not the case in southern destinations. Cities like Riyadh are scorching hot during summer and yet offer fantastic weather in winter months. I was there at the end of October myself and I could not believe just how lively all the green spaces were, how radiant the sun was, and how warm even the nighttime temperatures were for some long walks.
However, good weather is not the only reason to visit Riyadh in winter. Since 2019, Riyadh Season provides entertainment of all sorts to the locals and visitors of the Saudi capital. From October to March, the city becomes home to a plethora of events, pop up restaurants, brand new entertainment centres, or older ones that are given a second life with new events, as well as a bunch of international gatherings and so on.
For example, Al Suwaidi Park was chosen as one of the venues for Riyadh Season for the 2025-2026 period. It was open for all, completely free of charge, and within its premises you could enjoy celebrations of one culture after another over the winter, according to their event calendar. I was lucky enough to be there for its opening ceremony, which involved numerous TV crews from across the Kingdom, reporting on the ongoing preparations and overall plans for the park in the upcoming months.
There were concerts, dance parties, street food vendors, and a big playground for children to enjoy in this expansive park. I once heard that this place was off limits for bachelors’ prior to my visit, thankfully, that was not the case anymore. I should probably thank the Riyadh Season for this rule change as well. While I am more than happy to accept and respect the local customs and would be fine putting this park out of my itinerary, if necessary, I must admit that it was nice not being refused entry just because I was a solo male traveller.
As far as I could tell, while Riyadh Season is a citywide celebration, much like the Dubai Shopping Festival, its impacts on Riyadh are more visible in certain parts of the city than others. One such zone, the best one for yours truly, is the Boulevard City. Frankly, I do not know the best word to describe this spot accurately. It is an extensive entertainment venue that likely offers something for everyone, so let us explore it together to see whether it is of any interest to you or not. You are greeted with what appears to be a miniature Times Square as you enter this zone for free.
While it is completely free to visit the Boulevard City, do be ready to spend some money inside. At the end of the day, this is not a museum to check out. It is a massive entertainment complex that is full to the brim with fancy eateries, fancier shops, and tourist attractions that are mostly geared towards a richer clientele. Food prices here were not what I was accustomed to from my previous dining experiences in Riyadh, and everything else was likewise priced slightly higher than usual, at least as far as I could tell at the time.
In the main food court, which surrounded a big fountain of sorts, even some chain restaurants had higher prices for the very same items that they sold across the Kingdom. Therefore, the initial impression I got from my visit to Boulevard City was one of visiting a theme park, but for free. This is quite ideal if you just want to see what this zone offers but are not necessarily interested in spending much time or money there.
I did a tour of the premises in under two hours and that included a visit to an exhibition and a rather decent time spent window shopping. Boulevard City turned out to be a home to a lot of artistic installations such as this one, though some such pieces were admittedly quite kitsch and often felt out of place. Having generally low expectations from life is the best, so such stuff seldom bothers me, alas someone who loves to turn living into a never-ending painful experience could have a different opinion on this matter.
Speaking of window shopping, there were some decent places to buy a gift or two in the Boulevard City, and not all items seemed to be that expensive, at least not more expensive than their counterparts elsewhere. I suppose locals would know the best places to buy their bobbleheads from, but for us foreigners, some zones of Riyadh Season bring many interesting items together so that one can decide what to buy and bring back home more conveniently.
There are also a lot of these gaming machines scattered around the Boulevard City, though I have never seen a single person actually using any one of them. I would love to find out if those things generate any sort of revenue given how these games are, for all intents and purposes, can be found on any mobile device today. Each to their own, maybe some are swayed easily by these bigger screens. I do miss the variety and uniqueness of arcade machines back in my childhood quite a bit though, now those offered games that we could not play anywhere else.
Moving on, there is an entire alley in Boulevard City that is dedicated to escape rooms, VR experiences, short rides, and so on. You can access it through this gate.
This corner of the zone is full of interesting design elements, though I cannot say that I recognize most of what they referred to. Funny enough, this particular plane was found just across the newly opened Minecraft Experience, and my millennial brain could not help but wonder whether they would think about renovating this area to include some animatronic creepers instead.
Well, as I wondered about that, I was asked who my favourite WWE wrestler was by a stranger. I, sadly, do not have the time to explore the lore behind WWE, so I just said that I always liked Undertaker as a kid. Well, I was immediately rushed into a free exhibition on WWE, complete with a full remake of an actual stage where WWE “fights” would take place in. This exhibition was quite new, an expansion to the already existing WWE Experience in Boulevard City which itself is a rather new addition to this zone, a result of the Saudi state’s continuous efforts to own and sponsor different sports and entertainment platforms in the recent years. In fact, it was here that I found out that the next WrestleMania would take place in Riyadh in the following Riyadh Season. I sort of wished I visited the city a year later, though in reality, in Riyadh’s case, this is probably true for a number of reasons. The Saudi capital is becoming more and more tourist friendly as the time goes on, and even the metro system that I relied on during my visit simply did not exist just a year before my arrival.
Well, let us now go back to that WWE Experience. This place was really surprising, in the best way possible. They actually curated the first ever proper museum on WWE, complete with authentic items from across different periods of the show. I obviously did hear and see something about most of these actors, so seeing their very own costumes, props, medals, and so on was not a boring experience in the slightest. I could not help but think that in a time and age where most people have job insecurity, the future might be more generous to these actors than the rest of us. I was surrounded by people of all ages who were salivating over the items on display as if they were some religious relics, and being able to generate that sort of following from crowds that you never met in real life is an incredible skill on its own, something that the AI should not be able to do so easily, unless of course people are satisfied with a bunch of somewhat sentient robots wrestling one another.
After all, us humans are very fickle creatures. Perhaps we will forget about WWE and its many actors soon enough as well. This was what I realized when I ran into a sculpture of the baby hippo Moo Deng on my way out of the Boulevard City. Who among you even remembers this name today? This cute baby hippo was all over my social media just a year ago, and today, it is nigh impossible to run into it online without doing some research manually. There are now newer babies to think about, and other cute things to gasp at. We excel at consumption.
It is exactly this line of thinking that leads me to believe that Riyadh, with the help of projects like Riyadh Season, and with its interesting history and friendly locals that offer something slightly new to most foreigners, will make its way into many travellers’ radars soon enough. New is often better, both in imagination, and at times in reality. Riyadh is a new travel destination. Moreover, its unique in the sense that the hospitable Saudi culture and the arid desert climate is quiet “alien” (in the best way possible) to those that live outside of this part of the world. I for one appreciate the Saudi effort to turn this already unique destination into a more entertaining one by initiatives such as Riyadh Season. While I was there mostly to enjoy Riyadh itself and thus did not necessarily engage much with what Riyadh Season offered at time, just knowing that I could theoretically do a ton of things that I could not do so easily back home was a passive boon to my overall travel experience. I hope to be back to Riyadh in a few years so that I can see the latest developments across the town, when I also intend to enjoy Riyadh Season more properly. Who knows, perhaps I may even be able to catch a WWE match in real life.