DeepFest 2026 returns to Riyadh from 31 August to 3 September, the dedicated AI stream of LEAP 2026 taking over the Riyadh Exhibition and Convention Centre in Malham with more than 1,800 global technology brands on the show floor. The conference is the first to run under Saudi Arabia’s official Year of Artificial Intelligence, an initiative backed by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud in his capacity as Prime Minister and Chairman of the Saudi Data and Artificial Intelligence Authority (SDAIA).
Basma Dawwas, Director of LEAP Events, set the tone in the official announcement. “This year’s programme is focused on real-world application, from infrastructure and governance to the technologies people can experience live on the ground. The conversation around AI has evolved quickly, and DeepFest reflects where the industry is heading next.” The four-day agenda, per the official DeepFest 2026 announcement, runs from AI governance and sovereign infrastructure to live demonstrations of real-time deepfake detection and AI-generated music on stage.
DeepFest 2026 Returns to Riyadh With a National Mandate
DeepFest launched in 2023 and is now heading into its fourth edition, according to the event’s own site. The 2025 edition in Riyadh drew attention for humanoids and coffee-slinging robot baristas on the show floor. The 2026 edition, scheduled for 31 August to 3 September at the Riyadh Exhibition and Convention Centre in Malham, is the first to run under the official Year of Artificial Intelligence branding.
The official announcement positions DeepFest as the principal platform through which that national agenda meets the global AI community. Live demonstrations anchor the programme: real-time deepfake detection sits alongside AI-generated music performances on the same stages that host policy talks. The Year of AI framing puts state backing behind a commercial show floor that DeepFest’s 2026 event page says will host 68,000+ visitors, 180+ speakers, and 120+ brands. Sector tracks cover healthcare, supply chains, media, and the creator economy, with talks running alongside technical deep dives, training sessions, and startup pitches.
What the Year of AI Declaration Actually Unlocks
Saudi Arabia formally designated 2026 as the Year of Artificial Intelligence in March 2026. The Saudi Council of Ministers made the designation under the patronage of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, who also chairs SDAIA, the body established by royal decree in 2019 to run the Kingdom’s National Strategy for Data and Artificial Intelligence, according to an analysis of Saudi Arabia’s Year of AI strategy. The Year of AI sits alongside Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 economic diversification programme.
SDAIA’s National Strategy has produced measurable outputs. The SAMAI mass AI literacy programme has trained more than 1 million citizens in a single year, the strategy document says. The Saudi Data and AI Authority, chaired by the Crown Prince, also runs the National Data Lake, into which more than 430 government systems have been integrated. Saudi Arabia was the first Arab nation to join the Global Partnership on AI, and Riyadh now hosts the UNESCO-sponsored International Center for AI Research and Ethics. The PIF, the Kingdom’s sovereign wealth fund, has allocated more than $40 billion to AI-related ventures including HUMAIN, according to OECD.AI, with earlier reporting on the PIF’s strategy as additional context.
The buildout has already produced concrete numbers. The four milestones below come from official statements and the Year of AI analysis. The trajectory runs from the May 2025 launch of HUMAIN to the early 2026 opening of Hexagon, with the SAMAI mass training programme and the 2025 AI funding rounds filling the middle. DeepFest 2026 is the first DeepFest to run during that buildout cycle.
| Saudi AI milestone | Date | Scale |
|---|---|---|
| HUMAIN full-stack AI company launches | May 2025 | Owned by PIF; Tareq Amin appointed CEO |
| SAMAI mass AI literacy programme | 2025 | Trained more than 1 million citizens in a single year |
| Saudi AI sector funding | 2025 | $9.1 billion across 70 investment deals |
| Hexagon government data center opens | Early 2026 | 480 MW capacity, the world’s largest government data center |
The Sovereign Compute Stack Behind the Headline
HUMAIN, the full-stack AI company owned by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, is the operational face of the Year of AI buildout. Tareq Amin was appointed CEO in May 2025, and OECD.AI reports the PIF has allocated more than $40 billion to AI-related ventures including HUMAIN. The company is the Global AI Partner of DeepFest 2026, per the event announcement, and runs operations across data centers, cloud, models, and applications.
The physical layer is already in place. Hexagon, inaugurated in early 2026 in Riyadh, is described as the world’s largest government data center with a capacity of 480 megawatts, a figure that would place it among the largest single-facility installations on the planet by conventional yardsticks. HUMAIN has separately announced a first AI Zone in Riyadh in partnership with AWS, designed to host hundreds of thousands of AI chips and provide enterprise-level access to foundation models. The company has also deployed NVIDIA GB300 AI platforms and Nemotron technologies to build sovereign infrastructure and digital twin systems, per a profile of HUMAIN CEO Tareq Amin.
Saudi Arabia now has the energy, the infrastructure and the sovereign architecture to become a global exporter of AI capability. DeepFest plays a critical role in bringing the global builders and the global deployers into the same physical space to accelerate collaboration and real-world AI progress.
Tareq Amin, CEO of HUMAIN and Global AI Partner of DeepFest 2026, made the statement in the official announcement ahead of the 31 August opening at the Riyadh Exhibition and Convention Centre in Malham. HUMAIN’s ALLAM large language model, aimed at serving Arabic speakers worldwide, is the model-layer counterpart to the data center buildout. A US$1.2 billion framework signed with Infra to hyperscale Saudi Arabia’s AI data centre capacity adds commercial weight to the sovereign stack.
A commercial hyperscale layer is being bolted on top of the sovereign stack. Microsoft has confirmed its Azure Saudi Arabia East region will be available to customers from Q4 2026, with three availability zones in the Eastern Province. Amin sits at No. 10 on AI Magazine’s Top 100 AI Leaders 2026 list.
First-Time Exhibitors and the Speaker Roster
The DeepFest 2026 floor is the most international to date, per the official announcement. Eight companies are joining DeepFest for the first time: Google Cloud, AMD, Salesforce, EY, Cerebras, Supermicro, Blaize, and Xerox. Their participation is being read by the organisers as a signal of international momentum around Saudi Arabia’s AI buildout and the wider Gulf region. The wider exhibitor base spans both DeepFest and LEAP, drawing enterprise buyers, investors, and policymakers from the region and beyond, with training sessions, live demos, startup pitches, and a curated AI exhibition running throughout the four days.
Four confirmed speakers are named in the DeepFest 2026 announcement:
- Michio Kaku, Professor of Theoretical Physics, City College of New York
- Chandra Donelson, Global Award-Winning Data and AI Strategist, Bestselling Author and 3x CDAO
- Daniel Bedingfield, singer, songwriter, and record producer
- Dr. Jack McCauley, Innovator in Residence and Board Trustee at UC Berkeley, and former Co-Founder and Engineer of Oculus VR
Co-Located With the World’s Most-Attended Tech Event
DeepFest sits inside a much larger platform. LEAP, the tech event DeepFest co-locates with, drew an attendance of more than 200,000 in 2025, making it the most attended tech event in the world, per the DeepFest 2026 announcement. LEAP 2026 is expected to welcome more than 201,000 visitors, more than 600 startups, and 1,900 investors. Both events are organised by Tahaluf, a Riyadh-headquartered joint venture between Informa PLC, the Saudi Federation for Cybersecurity, Programming and Drones (SAFCSP), and the Events Investment Fund (EIF). LEAP also features sectors beyond AI, including fintech, health technology, cybersecurity, climate technology, and smart cities.
DeepFest’s own floor is a fraction of LEAP’s by attendance, but a dense one. The DeepFest 2026 site says the show will host 68,000+ visitors, 180+ speakers, and 120+ brands across four days. The DeepFest programme covers AI governance, ethics, sustainability, security, and robotics, with the robotics track a continuation of the humanoids-and-baristas flavour of the 2025 edition.
The co-location matters because it concentrates three constituencies in one place: the global AI builders, the regional enterprise buyers, and the Saudi state. Tahaluf, the Riyadh-headquartered joint venture that runs both events, also produces Money 20/20 Middle East, the Global Health Exhibition, Cityscape Global, Black Hat MEA, and CPHI Middle East. By the numbers the organisers publish, the combined 2026 footprint includes more than 201,000 visitors at LEAP, 1,900+ investors, more than 600 startups, 68,000+ visitors and 180+ speakers at DeepFest, and 120+ brands on the DeepFest floor. Sela, the Saudi-owned event production company, has stated its intent to join the Tahaluf joint venture in the near future, per the DeepFest 2026 announcement.
A Gulf-Wide Race for AI Compute
Saudi Arabia’s buildout is the largest in a Gulf-wide race for AI infrastructure. The UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman, and Kuwait are all pursuing their own strategies, but Saudi Arabia’s combination of sovereign compute, hyperscale partnerships, and a dedicated state authority is the most concrete. The PIF, the Kingdom’s sovereign wealth fund, has allocated more than $40 billion to AI-related ventures including HUMAIN, per OECD.AI.
The pivot is visible in the Kingdom’s largest construction project. After The Line was suspended in September 2025, areas originally earmarked for its residential towers were reconsidered for large-scale digital infrastructure, according to the same Year of AI analysis. The coastal location along the Red Sea allows seawater cooling, a major advantage in one of the world’s most water-scarce regions. A $5 billion deal between NEOM and DataVolt for data center construction in the Oxagon industrial zone is the most concrete signal: the first phase of the DataVolt facility is expected to become operational by 2028.
Saudi Arabia’s buildout adds a commercial hyperscale layer on top of the sovereign stack. Microsoft has confirmed its Azure Saudi Arabia East region will be available to customers from Q4 2026, with three availability zones in the Eastern Province. PIF, SITE, and Microsoft signed a memorandum of understanding in November 2025 to explore sovereign cloud services. That gives Saudi Arabia access to Microsoft’s technology stack while maintaining data residency and regulatory control. The SDAIA’s National Strategy targets AI sector contribution of more than 74 billion riyals (approximately $19.7 billion) to the national economy by 2030, per the strategy as summarised in the same Year of AI analysis.
DeepFest 2026 is the first conference to run under the Year of AI branding, in a Gulf region that now hosts the world’s largest government data center and PIF’s $40 billion AI allocation. Amin sits at No. 10 on AI Magazine’s Top 100 AI Leaders 2026 list. The official announcement frames DeepFest as the principal platform where that national agenda meets the global AI community.
Frequently Asked Questions
When and where is DeepFest 2026?
DeepFest 2026 runs from 31 August to 3 September 2026 at the Riyadh Exhibition and Convention Centre in Malham, co-located with LEAP 2026. The venue is the same Riyadh complex that hosted the 2025 edition, which drew headlines for humanoids and robot baristas on the show floor.
What is Saudi Arabia’s Year of Artificial Intelligence?
The Saudi Council of Ministers formally designated 2026 as the Year of Artificial Intelligence in March 2026. The designation sits under the patronage of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, who also chairs the Saudi Data and Artificial Intelligence Authority (SDAIA), the body established by royal decree in 2019 to run the Kingdom’s National Strategy for Data and Artificial Intelligence.
Who is speaking at DeepFest 2026?
The DeepFest 2026 announcement names four confirmed speakers: Michio Kaku, Professor of Theoretical Physics at the City College of New York; Chandra Donelson, a three-time chief data and analytics officer and Global Award-Winning Data and AI Strategist; Daniel Bedingfield, singer, songwriter, and record producer; and Dr. Jack McCauley, Innovator in Residence and Board Trustee at UC Berkeley, and former Co-Founder and Engineer of Oculus VR.
Which companies are exhibiting at DeepFest for the first time?
Eight companies are listed as first-time DeepFest exhibitors and sponsors in the official announcement: Google Cloud, AMD, Salesforce, EY, Cerebras, Supermicro, Blaize, and Xerox. The wider partner and exhibitor base across DeepFest and LEAP now spans more than 1,800 global technology brands.
How does DeepFest relate to LEAP?
DeepFest is the dedicated AI stream of LEAP. Both are organised by Tahaluf, a Riyadh-headquartered joint venture between Informa PLC, the Saudi Federation for Cybersecurity, Programming and Drones (SAFCSP), and the Events Investment Fund (EIF). LEAP 2025 drew more than 200,000 attendees, and LEAP 2026 is expected to welcome more than 201,000 visitors, more than 600 startups, and 1,900 investors.
