A few years ago, Saudi Arabia was best known in Western media for oil money, human rights violations, and its ultraconservative society. Today, Saudi Arabia is building towards becoming the global cultural hub in the middle east, hosting international concerts and comedy events , the 2034 FIFA World Cup, and being home to some of the biggest boxing matches on the planet and global superstar Christiano Ronaldo. That didn’t happen by accident.
This is the story of Vision 2030; Saudi Arabia’s ambitious and calculated plan to remake itself on the world stage.
Why Saudi Arabia Needed a Makeover
By 2016, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) was facing a triple crisis. Oil prices had crashed by over 50% in 2014 as U.S. fracking flooded the market and OPEC refused to cut production. A barrel that cost $110 in mid-2014 was worth about $50 by year’s end. For a country where oil makes up more than 90% of public revenue this dip was a threat to the nation’s economic stability.
Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia’s international image was in shambles. Lingering fallout from 9/11 (15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi nationals), combined with the 2018 murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi inside a Saudi consulate in Istanbul, had eroded whatever goodwill remained with Western governments. Canada, Europe and the U.S. all placed sanctions against Saudi Arabia.
At home, a young and growing population with an average age of 25 years old was frustrated by the lack of good jobs available. The education system wasn’t preparing graduates for private sector work. Youth unemployment for 15 to 39-year-olds sat at 12.3%. The old bargain, where oil money bought loyalty, had stopped working.
Vision 2030 was MBS’s answer to all three problems at once.
The Plan: Build Gigacities, Buy Sports Leagues, Change the Story
Launched in April 2016, Vision 2030 is a sweeping economic and social overhaul with a price of over a trillion dollars already committed to the project. The centerpiece is economic diversification: get Saudi Arabia off oil by building entirely new industries around technology, tourism, and entertainment.
The mega-projects are genuinely staggering in ambition. NEOM is a $500 billion futuristic city being carved out of the northwestern desert, designed around AI, green energy, and new models of urban living. The Red Sea Project is a luxury tourist destination under construction along the western coast. Qiddiya is a massive entertainment and sports complex intended to become a regional hub for culture and recreation. The goal is to create engaging and exciting jobs that will please young Saudis and build spectacles to attract tourism.
The strategy goes beyond colossal construction projects. Saudi Arabia has invested billions into sports. Not just as a form of entertainment, but as a tool for narrative control. The Saudi Pro League spent over a billion dollars recruiting global stars, most famously Cristiano Ronaldo. Saudi Arabia has purchased boxing and wrestling events, international concerts, comedy tours, a stake in Newcastle United, and is pursuing ownership in Formula 1. The country is also scheduled to host the 2034 FIFA World Cup.
Sportswashing: What It Is and Why It Works
There’s a term for this strategy: sportswashing. It describes how governments use major sporting events and investments to distract from human rights records and improve their image internationally. Saudi Arabia hasn’t invented this playbook, Qatar’s 2022 World Cup and China’s 2008 Olympics raised the same questions, but the kingdom is executing it at an unprecedented scale going beyond just a single sporting tournament.
The strategy is working on multiple levels. For young Saudis, watching Ronaldo play domestically builds national pride and a sense that their country is on the global stage. For international audiences, the spectacle of Saudi-hosted events and Saudi-owned teams creates a more modern, open image. And for MBS, it signals strength and legitimacy framing him as a ruler who can make things happen.
In 2017, MBS reinforced his image domestically with a dramatic anti-corruption sweep. MBS detained nearly 400 Saudi princes, ministers, and businessmen at the Ritz-Carlton in Riyadh. For young Saudis who had grown up watching elites escape accountability, it read as proof that change was real. It also sent the message that power in Saudi Arabia is concentrated.
The Social Freedoms — And Their Limits
Beyond sports, Vision 2030 has delivered genuine social changes. Cinemas are open. Women can now drive, travel without a male guardian’s permission, and enter the workforce at much higher rates. Entertainment restrictions have loosened significantly. These are not nothing, for millions of Saudis, daily life looks meaningfully different than it did in 2015.
But a closer look reveals the limits. The Kafala system, which ties migrant workers’ legal status to their employer and has been widely compared to indentured servitude, was partially reformed. These changes only applied to private sector workers. Around 3.7 million domestic workers remain fully under the old system.
Women’s rights present a similar pattern. Even after the driving and travel ban have been lifted, Saudi law still explicitly states that “a woman owes her husband obedience in return for financial support.” More telling: female activists who campaigned for the very rights that Vision 2030 later claimed credit for are currently serving decades in prison. Activists Nourah al-Qahtani, Sukaynah al-Aithan, and Fatima al-Shawarbi face over 30 years each for social media posts advocating for women’s rights.
The message from the regime is unmistakable: these freedoms are gifts from your government, not rights you can demand. And demanding them will cost you.
So What Is Vision 2030, Really?
Vision 2030 is a masterclass in selective modernization. It opens cinemas but closes dissent. It invites the world in for sporting events while hiding jailed activists who asked for basic freedoms. The economic diversification and investment is real, but it sits alongside a political system that has become, if anything, more concentrated in power under MBS than before.
The question isn’t whether Vision 2030 is changing Saudi Arabia. It clearly is. The question is will the fundamental authoritarian rule in Saudi Arabia change and what freedoms will be ignored.