Saudi Arabia Retail Market: Demand Measured, Supply Not

Saudi Arabia publishes a weekly official measure of what shoppers spend and no measure at all of the space they spend it in. SAR 707.15 billion went through Saudi point-of-sale terminals in 2025, with a further SAR 325.20 billion of mada card e-commerce beside it (SAMA). No authority publishes national retail sales, mall floorspace, occupancy or rent, so the disclosed supply side of the Saudi Arabia retail market is what listed landlords say about their own assets. The largest held roughly 1.25 million sqm across 20 assets at 91.2% like-for-like occupancy on 30 June 2026 (Cenomi Centers). Every single-number "Saudi retail market size" in circulation is a private model.

Key figures at a glance

Sizing the Saudi Arabia retail market from card spending

SAR 707.15 billion passed through Saudi terminals in 2025, 2,330,051 of them installed by 31 December, and the first half of 2026 carried SAR 368.70 billion against SAR 347.44 billion a year earlier, up 6.1% (SAMA, Table 30c). The latest published week, 16 to 22 August 2026, carried SAR 14.17 billion on 237.3 million transactions (SAMA weekly).

It is the best free official demand series in the region, and it is not retail sales. It misses both ways. Cash is outside it, and so is international-scheme e-commerce: SAMA's own footnote says the online column counts mada cards and "does not include transactions by Visa, MasterCard and other credit cards". Business-to-business card spend runs through the same terminals and is inside. A city row counts terminals, not residents.

Two official series then part company, and the gap between them is the most useful thing on this page. Card spending grew 6.1% in the first half of 2026, while real value added in wholesale and retail trade, restaurants and hotels grew 2.16% year-on-year in Q1 2026, down from 6.45% in Q2 2025, the slowest activity in GASTAT's table apart from agriculture and government. Real private consumption in the same quarter accelerated to 5.29% (GASTAT). Payment migration reconciles most of it: terminal value rises when cash converts to card, value added does not. Underwrite on POS growth alone and you have underwritten the payment mix as much as the shopper.

Omran computation on two published SAMA columns. Divided against each other, mada card e-commerce has gone from 25.6% of terminal value in 2023 to 29.5% in 2024 and 46.0% in 2025, and the true share is higher, since international schemes are excluded from the e-commerce column but not from the terminal total.

Where the money goes, and the trap in the category table

Food and beverages was the largest named activity of 2025 at SAR 105.51 billion, 14.9% of POS value, ahead of restaurants and cafés at SAR 84.83 billion (SAMA, Table 30e). "Largest named" is doing real work there: the biggest single line in the table is the unclassified "Others", at SAR 109.87 billion and 15.5% of everything.

Others grew 31.4% in 2025, and not organically. Quarter by quarter it steps from SAR 21.34 billion in Q4 2024 to SAR 25.89 billion in Q1 2025, the exact quarter electronic and electric devices step down from SAR 2.87 billion to SAR 2.34 billion. A second break runs from Q3 2025 through lines nobody stops buying: pharmacies and medical supplies fall from SAR 4.55 billion in Q2 2025 to SAR 2.97 billion in Q1 2026, professional and business services from SAR 14.72 billion to SAR 10.69 billion, and Others climbs to SAR 30.26 billion in that same quarter (SAMA, Table 30e).

So the much-repeated line that Saudi electronics spending collapsed 22% is one quarterly step, taken in the same quarter the unclassified bucket jumped 21%. Publish the level, SAR 9.64 billion, and drop the story about people buying fewer televisions. Kingdom totals survive, since the movement is between categories, but every 2024-to-2025 activity growth rate on that sheet carries the break.

Over the four weeks to 22 August 2026, Riyadh took 33.9% of national POS value and Jeddah 13.2%, with Dammam at 4.7% and Makkah 4.0% (SAMA weekly). The tables count terminals, so pilgrimage cities read as spending by people who do not live in them; and each row is one city, Al-Khobar carrying its own line at 2.7%, so Dammam is not an Eastern Province total. The restaurants and cafés cut is in the Saudi F&B market.

How much mall space exists, and how full it is

No Saudi authority publishes national retail floorspace or occupancy. The largest disclosed portfolio in the Kingdom held roughly 1.25 million sqm across 20 assets in nine cities on 30 June 2026, at 91.2% like-for-like occupancy, the lowest print in a two-year series that read 94.4% at December 2024 and 94.2% at December 2025 (Cenomi Centers).

Here is the number professionals misread, and the owner prints both halves of it on one page. The 94.4% in circulation is like-for-like, covering 1,177,151 sqm. The same annual report gives the whole estate as 1,352,724 sqm at 90.6%, on the same 31 December 2024 occupancy column (Annual Report 2025). Those 3.8 points are definition, not performance, and the wider one is what a lender needs (gross leasable area separates them).

The dating is the worse trap. For all 21 malls appearing in both the FY2025 annual report and the sukuk base prospectus, the report's occupancy reproduces the 31 December 2024 figure digit for digit, while the floorspace column beside it was refreshed for 20 of the 21 (prospectus, Table 3.2). Its own narrative agrees: occupancy "remained stable at 94.17%, compared to 94.4% in 2024". Read it as a 2025 reading, as most do, and you are a year out asset by asset.

Omran computation on the disclosed mall table. Weighting each of the 22 assets by its own floorspace gives 90.59% on 1,377,963 sqm at 31 December 2024, the same 90.6% the company prints. Both readings use one occupancy column, so the match proves only that the answer is insensitive to the floorspace vintage. The finding is the distribution. 41.8% of that floorspace, 575,386 sqm in eight of the 22 assets, sat below 90%, from U Walk Jeddah at 68.8% up to Salaam Mall Jeddah at 88.9%. Mecca Mall and Nakheel Mall Dammam, both 99.1%, sit at the far end of the same column.

Occupancy says who is in the unit, not who pays. Impairment on receivables, related parties and accrued revenue ran to SAR 315.7 million in FY2025 against revenue of SAR 2,288.3 million, 13.8% (FY2025 release). At Alandalus Property, audited retail revenue was flat at SAR 160.16 million while the retail credit-loss allowance rose to SAR 9.83 million from SAR 1.44 million (Note 24). And Alinma Retail REIT, the only listed fund with retail in its name, reported its two remaining malls at 87% and 64% in 2024, excluded a third "due to its closure", and sold a Riyadh mall to buy offices (2024 report; more in Saudi mall occupancy and REIT disclosures).

What retail space rents for in Saudi Arabia

One official Saudi price series touches retail property, and it is tiny inside its own index. GASTAT's gallery and shop component printed 101.74 in Q2 2026, up 0.4% year-on-year and 3.8% on the quarter, on a weight of 0.553% of the Real Estate Price Index (GASTAT REPI).

The commercial sector carries 25.404% of that index, of which commercial land plots alone are 22.836 points and shops 0.553. Nine tenths of any Saudi commercial property price headline is bare land. Widen the window and something appears that nobody quotes: on annual averages the shop index went from 94.94 in 2021 to 101.18 in 2025, up 6.6% in four years, while the commercial index went from 84.35 to 112.51, up 33.4%. Saudi shop units never took part in the commercial boom quoted at them. A retail thesis built on that index is quoting the price of dirt.

For rent levels the record holds one card, published by a landlord. At 31 December 2024, average rental revenue by tenant category ran from SAR 458.9 per sqm for hypermarkets and SAR 651.5 for entertainment to SAR 3,956.6 for health and personal care, on a portfolio average of SAR 1,876.3 (prospectus). The shape matters more than any row. Entertainment takes 17.2% of the floorspace and apparel 40.7% at SAR 1,945.4, and the same document prices space by unit size instead: SAR 648 per sqm for anchor stores above 2,000 sqm, across 413,650 sqm of occupied floorspace, against SAR 2,957 for line stores (prospectus, Table 3.8). Big boxes buy cheap floor and pull the footfall. The small units pay for it.

Omran computation: one portfolio, three rent measures, a 28% spread. Dividing FY2024 net rental revenue by disclosed floorspace mall by mall gives SAR 1,647 per sqm, on a twelvefold spread from Mecca Mall at SAR 3,693 to Sahara Plaza at SAR 306. The tenant-mix card above averages SAR 1,876.3, and the owner's like-for-like measure excluding media income reads SAR 2,101 at June 2026. Ours is gross revenue over total floorspace, adjusted for neither vacancy nor service charge, which is why it sits lowest. Picking the wrong one of the three moves a rent line by more than a quarter, and all three are "the rent" in somebody's model.

What is coming, and what it opens at

The disclosed pipeline is large and sits with one owner. Cenomi Centers says it is on track to grow floorspace by 50%, to 1.9 million sqm by 2029: Westfield Jeddah, 104,000 sqm, went operational on 30 July 2026 at pre-leasing near 96%, and Westfield Riyadh, 220,000 sqm, is structurally complete at about 94% pre-leased for Q4 2026 (Q2 2026 release).

Set that against the same company's own record. Its prospectus states an average first-year occupancy of 70% to 75% for each new mall opened since 2017 (prospectus). Pre-leasing counts commitments. First-year occupancy counts what trades.

Omran estimate: what the pipeline does to the headline occupancy. Add the two Westfield assets, 324,000 sqm, to the disclosed 1.25 million sqm at 91.2% (30 June 2026), and fill them at the company's own historical 70% to 75%. Occupied space moves from about 1.14 million sqm to roughly 1.37 million, against the 1.57 million sqm base guided for December 2026: a blended 87% to 88%. Guidance for that date is 94.0%, which needs two flagships to break the pattern the prospectus records. This is arithmetic on published disclosures, not a forecast. Read the next two years of headline occupancy as a measure of lease-up speed at two buildings, not of demand for standing space.

Riyadh's rent freeze lands in the middle of that lease-up. From 25 September 2025, annual increases in the rental value of residential and commercial lease contracts inside Riyadh's urban boundaries were suspended for five years, existing and new alike (REGA). Whether a unit inside a mall counts as a commercial lease contract here is not stated, and mall leases have historically sat outside Ejar altogether. State the exposure, not a ruling: six of that portfolio's assets are in Riyadh, and 31.0% of its rental revenues fall due for renewal in 2026 (H1 2026 presentation).

Where the public record stops

Most of what a retail case turns on is published by nobody we may cite: no national retail sales index, no floorspace, no occupancy, no rent by city, no footfall, no e-commerce market size. Resident and visitor spending are never separated either, though travel credits of SAR 159.86 billion in 2025 (SAMA, Table 7-1) show the magnitude folded into a terminal series.

Omran coverage note, and why we publish no national total. Everything in Saudi Arabia carrying both a published floorspace and a published occupancy is 22 named malls totalling 1,377,963 sqm at 31 December 2024, all in one company's portfolio, and one of the 22 it manages rather than owns. Add the four malls and three neighbourhood centres Alandalus lists in its 2025 annual report (Alandalus, served from an Azure host) and Alinma's two remaining malls, and the count reaches 31, the nine additions carrying no published floorspace at all. A coverage ratio needs a denominator, no authority publishes one, and the national figures in circulation trace to unnamed commissioned market studies, so we publish the numerator and stop. For scale, not share: that owner's FY2025 revenue of SAR 2,288.3 million is 0.32% of the SAR 707.15 billion that went through Saudi terminals in 2025.

That boundary is the work. The demand series is excellent and routinely misused; the supply record is one issuer deep and gets stretched into a country. Omran assembles the Saudi retail picture from SAMA, GASTAT, REGA and issuers' own disclosures, dated and sourced, and labels an estimate as an estimate where the record runs out. The primary sources here are public; the assembled version is not. Ask for the mall-by-mall table, or scope a retail data brief against your own catchment.

FAQ

How big is the Saudi Arabia retail market? Only one of the two questions people ask has an official answer. SAR 707.15 billion passed through Saudi POS terminals in 2025, plus SAR 325.20 billion through mada cards online. Neither is retail sales, no Saudi authority publishes retail sales, and any single riyal headline for the market is a private model.

Is SAMA's point-of-sale report the same thing as retail sales? No, and it misses in both directions. Cash sits outside it, international-scheme e-commerce sits outside it on SAMA's own footnote, and business-to-business card payments through the same terminals sit inside it. It is still the best free official weekly demand series in the region, broken down by activity and by city.

How full are Saudi malls? There is no national figure. The largest listed owner reported 91.2% like-for-like at 30 June 2026 against 94.2% at end-2025, while its own annual report prints 90.6% for the whole portfolio on the 31 December 2024 column. Alinma Retail REIT reported 87% and 64% at its two remaining malls in 2024, with a third excluded because it had closed.

Why does the commercial property price index say nothing about shops? Because 22.836 of its 25.404 percentage points are bare commercial land. The component that measures retail units, gallery and shop, carries 0.553% of the index, printed 101.74 in Q2 2026 and rose 0.4% year-on-year while the commercial headline fell 3.2%. On 2021 to 2025 annual averages the shop index rose 6.6% and the commercial index 33.4%.

What do retail units rent for in Saudi Arabia? No authority publishes a rent level. The one published landlord card, at 31 December 2024, runs from SAR 458.9 per sqm for hypermarkets to SAR 3,956.6 for health and personal care, on a portfolio average of SAR 1,876.3. Omran's division of disclosed revenue by disclosed floorspace gives SAR 1,647 and the owner's like-for-like measure reads SAR 2,101 at June 2026, so name the definition before quoting a number.

Is e-commerce pulling demand out of Saudi malls? The published record shows online growing far faster than terminals: mada card e-commerce rose 64.7% in 2025 while total POS value rose 5.8%, and 37.0% of wholesale and retail establishments sold or displayed goods online in 2025 on GASTAT's survey. The same documents have the largest mall owner planning to grow floorspace by half by 2029, and planning for shops to be less than half of it.

Sources

• SAMA, Monthly Bulletin June 2026, Tables 30c, 30d and 30e (POS value, transactions, terminals, activity lines, mada e-commerce) and Table 7-1 (travel credits): link
• SAMA, Weekly Points of Sale Transactions report, week ending 22 August 2026 (weekly total, city split): link; index page: link
• GASTAT, Gross Domestic Product Q1 2026 (growth by activity, contribution to growth, private consumption): link
• GASTAT, Real Estate Price Index Q2 2026 (gallery and shop component, index weights, commercial series): link
• GASTAT, Establishments ICT Access and Usage Statistics 2025 (share of establishments selling online, by activity): link
• Cenomi Centers, H1 2026 earnings presentation (occupancy and floorspace series, rent per sqm, lease expiries): link
• Cenomi Centers, Q2 2026 press release (pipeline, pre-leasing, Westfield handovers): link
• Cenomi Centers, FY2025 earnings release (revenue, receivables impairment, portfolio count): link
• Cenomi Centers, Annual Report 2025 (like-for-like versus whole-portfolio occupancy, category blocks, retail-share target): link
• Arabian Centres (Cenomi Centers) sukuk base prospectus, CMA-hosted (22-mall table, tenant-mix and store-size rent cards, head leases, first-year occupancy): link
• Alandalus Property, audited consolidated financial statements FY2025, Note 24 (retail segment revenue and credit losses): link
• Alandalus Property, Annual Report 2025, "Our Retail Destinations" (four malls and three neighbourhood centres), hosted on Azure rather than the company domain: link
• Alinma Retail REIT, Annual Report 2024 (mall occupancy, closure, asset rotation): link
• REGA, Riyadh five-year rent freeze effective 25 September 2025 (residential and commercial contracts): link