The Saudi Falcons and Hunting Exhibition 2026 closed after receiving 765,000 visitors in 10 days at the Riyadh Exhibition and Convention Center in Malham, with 1,450 exhibitors and brands on 200,000 square metres. A Mongolian falcon sold for SAR 1.4 million, the highest price in the auction's history, and auction sales exceeded SAR 7 million; the Al-Malwah race carried SAR 723,000 in prizes.
765,000 visitors alongside a single SAR 1.4 million falcon shows the exhibition serves a mass audience and a high-spending niche at the same time.
Explore more signals
Saudis are sending more abroad
Saudi nationals' remittances abroad rose 20% year on year to SAR 5.8 billion in August, and expatriate remittances rose 1% to SAR 13.5 billion. Over eight months, expatriates sent around SAR 113 billion. Saudi nationals sent around SAR 44.1 billion, down from SAR 47.5 billion a year earlier.
Expatriate flows have stayed steady at about SAR 113 billion over the past eight months. For a payments company looking to grow, it makes more sense to focus on better fees and faster service for Saudi senders instead of waiting for the market to get bigger.
Furniture up, education down
Point-of-sale spending for the week ended 19 September broke down to show furniture and home supplies rising 11.4% to SAR 503.8 million and electronic devices up 5% to SAR 203.45 million, while education spending fell 42.8% to SAR 180.69 million and books and stationery fell 18.4% to SAR 113.31 million. Total spending was $3.44 billion, or SAR 12.92 billion, across 241.1 million transactions, with food and beverages down 9% to SAR 2.07 billion and restaurants and cafés down 6.7% to SAR 1.58 billion; economist Talat Hafiz linked the furniture rise to National Day promotional campaigns.
Education falling 42.8% while furniture rose 11.4% in the same week is a calendar effect in both directions, and it is why weekly retail data should be read by category rather than in total.
$167 billion, and whose calendar it sits on
Kamco Invest puts Saudi bond and sukuk maturities for 2026–2030 at $167.4bn, the largest in the GCC, 64.5% of it dollar-denominated, with 73.5% of the corporate share held by banks and financial institutions.
When we opened Issue 01 with record credit of SR3.2tn, that was the top of the curve. The banks have their own maturities to meet now; price anything you plan to borrow for off the next two years of lending, not the last two.
