Expo fans won’t have long to see The World’s Greatest Show return to the Middle East as Riyadh has won the right to host Expo 2030.
Beating off competition from South Korea’s port city of Busan and Rome in Italy, the Saudi Arabian capital swept to victory at the organising committee’s Paris-based vote on Tuesday, winning 119 out of the 182 ballots cast.
Proposed to be the most connected Expo ever with visitors travelling to the site from the new King Salman airport within five minutes by train and from Riyadh on the metro, the theme of the bid was “The Era of Change: Together for a Foresighted Tomorrow”.
Expected to host the event between October 2030 and March 2031, Riyadh will be the second city to host the fair in the Middle East after Dubai did so between October 2021 and March 2022. Previously slated to be held in 2020, Dubai’s Expo was postponed due to the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic.
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“We had a fantastic team of ministers going around the world, engaging our counterparts in a very, very active way to understand what they expected, what they were looking for and what we should deliver in order to gain their trust,” Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud said.
The designation is the next stage in Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 which looks set to welcome the FIFA World Cup in same year.
