Saudi Mall Occupancy Rate: 91.2%, and What It Excludes

No ministry publishes a Saudi mall occupancy rate. Three Tadawul-listed owners publish one in their own filings, and all three carried a print at 30 June 2026. The largest reported like-for-like occupancy of 91.2%, its weakest reading since September 2023 (Cenomi Centers, H1-2026). On 31 December 2025, the most recent date its appendix reconciles with its own rows, that company printed 94.2% for the like-for-like basket and 89.5% for everything it operates, on malls running from 42.4% to 99.4% (FY-2025 deck, p.31). Both sit in the same table on page 31, three rows apart. Almost everyone quotes the first.

Key figures at a glance

Who publishes a Saudi mall occupancy rate

Three listed owners, 29 assets between them: 20 malls in nine cities from one operator, seven retail assets from a second, two malls in a retail REIT, all of it inside Tadawul filings. Alandalus Property (Tadawul 4320) reported Alandalus Mall Jeddah 99.5%, Hayat Mall Riyadh 100%, The Village Mall Jeddah 86% and Dareen Mall Dammam 94% at 30 June 2026 (Alandalus). Alinma Retail REIT reported Dawadmi 84% and Hafr Al Batin 57% on the same date, the second after what its 2025 annual report calls the exit of key tenants (Alinma). Hayat Mall covers 226,108 sqm of building against 89,700 sqm of gross leasable area. A press line about a 226,000 sqm mall is describing a building, not a rent roll.

The private half discloses nothing: Al Othaim Investment, Kinan and Hamat Holding run malls in the same cities and publish no occupancy, and Hamat operates two of those four Alandalus malls. Al Ahli REIT Fund 1, which holds Alandalus Mall, refused our requests with an HTTP 403, and a blocked host is not an absent disclosure. This is the largest published record we could open, not the only one, and it leans to listed stock, the fullest end of the Saudi retail market.

The 4.7 points between two numbers in one deck

The 94.2% at 31 December 2025 is like-for-like, a fixed basket excluding assets being opened, sold or handed back. The 89.5% on that same date is everything the company operates. Its appendix prints the three rows together: like-for-like 1,103,861 sqm at 94.2%, consolidated 1,166,653 sqm at 90.7%, total 1,294,413 sqm at 89.5%. The like-for-like row is the one that travels, and the one to distrust.

Omran computation on the published cells. Weight the nineteen malls in that like-for-like table by the floorspace printed beside them and the basket comes out at 91.3%, not 94.2%. The printed 1,103,861 sqm is the exact sum of the Category A, B and C rows including the Mall of Dhahran extension, 62,443 sqm at 42.4%; the printed 94.2% reproduces only when that asset is excluded (94.20% without it, 91.27% with it). The two rows underneath reconcile including it, at 90.69% and 89.53%. Numerator and denominator come from different baskets. Derived from the FY-2025 appendix, p.31.

Model rent off that headline and you apply 94.2% to 1.10 million sqm, 62,000 sqm of which was 57.6% empty on the same page. A later whole-portfolio figure exists at 31 March 2026 and also prints 89.5%, but its components give 90.7%, and 89.5% is exactly the previous quarter's number (Q1-2026, p.30). December 2025 is the freshest whole-portfolio print that reconciles, not the freshest that exists.

Mall of Dhahran, the asset that basket leaves out, printed 98.4% in December 2024 (FY-2024 deck, p.37), then 65.0%, 48.7% and 42.4% through 2025, and left the table by March 2026. February 2025's handback of Phase 1 removed floorspace; the fall belongs to Phase 2 running down before its own head lease ended on 6 April 2026. Twelve of the malls in that table stood on land the company does not own at the prospectus date of October 2025, so read occupancy beside the lease column (prospectus, Table 3.9).

Seven years of prints that do not make one series

The record opens at 93.4% across 19 malls for the year ended 31 March 2019 and 93.1% the year after (FY2020 release), then 92.9% (FY2021) and 94.1% (FY2022). Two breaks stop those joining what follows. The year end moved in December 2022, leaving a nine-month stub at 94.2% (short-year results). And the 2025 sukuk prospectus restates that back-series at 92.1% (31 March 2021) and 92.4% (31 March 2022) where the releases of the day printed 92.9% and 94.1% (prospectus, CMA). Its December period-ends match the decks to the decimal; the March ones are 0.8 and 1.7 points off. Anyone writing that Saudi mall occupancy peaked at 94.1% in FY2022 is quoting a document the issuer has since revised.

Unspliced, the quarterly line reads 92.3% in March 2023, 90.3% in September 2023 as the low, 94.4% at December 2024, 94.2% at December 2025, then 92.4% and 91.2%. The June 2026 softness is narrow: Category A held 94.9% that day (Q2-26 release).

What the lease tables show and the occupancy line does not

Occupancy is a stock at a date; the tables under it are flow. At 31 December 2024, 391,507 sqm of occupied space, worth 31.5% of rental revenues, fell due within twelve months, and that schedule is re-cut quarterly rather than running off: the 2026 bucket held 36.7% of rental revenue at December 2025, 41.6% at March 2026, then 31.0% at June 2026. Renewal counts do not splice either. The 751 renewals over 150,000 sqm on the Q1-2025 leasing slide (Q1-2025 deck) come back as 539 in the Q1-2026 comparative, footnoted "on LfL basis" (Q1-2026 deck).

Anchors above 2,000 sqm held 37.5% of classified occupied space at SAR 648 per sqm a year at 31 December 2024, against SAR 2,957 for line stores under 500 sqm (prospectus, Table 3.8). Fill 1,000 sqm with an anchor or with line stores and you report identical occupancy while collecting 4.6 times different rent.

Omran computation on the prospectus tables. FY2024 net rental revenue divided by each mall's occupied floorspace runs from SAR 3,727 per occupied sqm at Mecca Mall to SAR 798 at Jubail Mall across the twenty malls held all year; Sahara Plaza, sold that February, prints SAR 316 on a part-year. Rank those malls by occupancy, then by revenue density, and the two orders do not match. Nakheel Plaza Qassim was 99.0% occupied and earned SAR 1,081; Aziz Mall was 91.4% occupied and earned SAR 1,539, 42% more per occupied sqm on 7.6 fewer points of occupancy. Derived from the sukuk base prospectus.

Rent went the other way. Weighted average rental revenue reached SAR 2,114 per sqm in the twelve months to December 2025, up 6.0%, in a year when like-for-like occupancy fell in three quarters out of four (FY-2025 deck). Footfall will not rescue the reading either. U Walk Jeddah drew 11.9 million visits in 2024 at 68.8% occupancy, more than any asset in that portfolio and more than Nakheel Mall Riyadh's 11.0 million at 96.7%, while Mall of Arabia's footfall halved from 10.2 million to 5.9 million with occupancy barely moving. The absorption curve joining visits to leasing is nowhere public.

One rule now cuts across the rotation itself. Since 25 September 2025 a Riyadh landlord may not raise a commercial lease's rental value for five years, nor refuse a tenant's renewal except for non-payment or a certified structural defect (REGA). Several of the malls above stand inside those boundaries, and the strategy every release since 2023 describes is tenant rotation.

The floorspace nobody has a denominator for

No Saudi authority publishes a national mall occupancy rate, national mall floorspace or a count of shopping centres, and the only market share in circulation is attributed by the issuer itself to an unnamed third-party study. So no national share appears here, only a coverage floor with its numerator named.

Omran estimate: the occupancy of the Saudi mall floorspace that publishes an occupancy. Weighting each disclosed asset by its own published area gives 91.6% across 24 malls totalling 1,559,796 sqm, from the 20-asset table at 31 March 2026 and the four Alandalus malls at 30 June 2026; three strip centres take it to 91.7% on 1,577,530 sqm. That implies roughly 130,000 sqm of empty mall floorspace in the sample, about one Salaam Mall Jeddah (129,578 sqm). Two cautions: the bases differ, one owner footnoting occupancy on store area only and the other stating none, and this is a floor on published stock, never a share of a total nobody publishes. Derived from the Q1-2026 appendix and the Alandalus Q2 2026 deck.

The forward number misleads harder. Guidance on that same occupancy slide puts GLA at 1.57 million sqm by December 2026, up from 1.25 million at June 2026, as Westfield Jeddah (104,000 sqm, operational 30 July 2026) and Westfield Riyadh (220,000 sqm, targeted Q4 2026) arrive, with occupancy guided at 94.0% (H1-2026, slide 13; Q2-2026 release).

Omran arithmetic on that guidance. For a 1.57 million sqm portfolio to print 94.0%, with the existing 1.25 million sqm back at its December 2025 peak of 94.2%, the roughly 320,000 sqm arriving has to open about 93% occupied. Its own record is an average first-year occupancy of 70% to 75% for every mall opened since 2017, and it defines Westfield Jeddah's 96% pre-leasing as heads of terms, letters of intent and executed contracts, tenants still fitting out. So 94.0% describes a like-for-like basket sitting on a GLA bar that is not, and occupancy across everything operated falls in 2026 even if every existing mall improves. Derived from slide 13 of the H1-2026 presentation and the Q2-2026 release.

Two holes remain for anyone underwriting this. Nobody publishes tenant sales or occupancy cost ratios, which leaves card spend as the nearest demand series: apparel took SAR 1.265 billion of the SAR 14.17 billion through Saudi terminals in the week to 22 August 2026, with the food and beverage category beside it and no mall-specific line (SAMA). Nobody publishes vacancy duration either, the number separating a portfolio that rotates tenants from one losing them. Ask for the underlying mall table, per asset and per date, with the basket and the basis on every cell.

FAQ

What is the occupancy rate of Saudi malls? There is no national figure. The largest listed owner reported 91.2% like-for-like at 30 June 2026 and 94.2% at 31 December 2025, with everything it operates at 89.5% on that December date. A second listed landlord reported 95% across its three super-regional malls at 30 June 2026, and a retail REIT 84% and 57% at its two remaining malls on that date.

Why do two occupancy numbers appear in the same presentation? Because one is like-for-like and one is not. That basket excludes assets being opened, sold or handed back, which at 31 December 2025 meant excluding a mall at 42.4% on an expiring head lease. The gap was 4.7 percentage points, against 3.8 a year earlier.

Is mall occupancy measured the same way by every Saudi owner? No. Cenomi Centers footnotes occupancy on store area only, excluding kiosks and warehouses, and its prospectus labels one identical set of per-mall values both "as at 31 December 2024" and "average for the year ended 31 December 2024". Alandalus gives one percentage per asset with no basis note, and its Q2 2026 deck prints Dareen Mall at 94% on the asset page and 92% in the summary row above it.

Do new Saudi malls open full? No, and the owner publishes the number: an average first-year occupancy of 70% to 75% for every mall opened since 2017. U Walk Jeddah soft-opened at roughly 30% in December 2023 and reached 70.6% of GLA by end-2025, or 80.5% on the presentation's store-area basis.

Sources

• Cenomi Centers, H1-2026 earnings presentation (91.2% at 30 Jun 2026, quarterly series, GLA guidance, expiry profile): link
• Cenomi Centers, Q2-2026 press release, 5 Aug 2026 (Category A 94.9%, Westfield status and pre-leasing definition): link
• Cenomi Centers, FY-2025 earnings presentation (31 Dec 2025 appendix, per-mall table, SAR 2,114 per sqm): link
• Cenomi Centers, Q1-2026 earnings presentation (31 Mar 2026 appendix, restated renewal count, Dhahran removal): link
• Cenomi Centers, 9M-2025 earnings presentation (30 Sep 2025 appendix, Mall of Dhahran at 48.7%): link
• Cenomi Centers, Q1-2025 earnings presentation (31 Mar 2025 appendix, Mall of Dhahran at 65.0%, 751 renewals over 150,000 sqm): link
• Cenomi Centers, FY-2024 earnings presentation (31 Dec 2024 appendix, Mall of Dhahran 132,237 sqm at 98.4%, U Walk Jeddah 68.8%): link
• Cenomi Centers, Annual Report 2025 (20 assets in nine cities, U Walk Jeddah at 70.6% of GLA): link
• Arabian Centres Company, sukuk base prospectus, Oct 2025, CMA-hosted (restated back-series, per-mall occupancy, footfall and net rental revenue, lease expiry, store bands, head-lease dates, first-year occupancy): link
• Arabian Centres, results for the year ended 31 March 2020 (FY2019 93.4%, FY2020 93.1%): link
• Arabian Centres, results for the year ended 31 March 2021 (FY2021 92.9%): link
• Arabian Centres, results for the year ended 31 March 2022 (FY2022 94.1%): link
• Cenomi Centers, results for the nine months ended 31 December 2022 (year-end change, 94.2%): link
• Alandalus Property, Q2 2026 investor presentation (per-asset occupancy at 30 Jun 2026, GLA against built area, segment rows): link
• Alinma Retail REIT, Annual Report 2025 (Dawadmi 84%, Hafr Al Batin 57%, contracts not on Ejar): link
• Alinma Retail REIT, Q2 2026 quarterly statement (asset list and occupancy at 30 Jun 2026): link
• REGA, Riyadh rent provisions effective 25 September 2025 (five-year freeze, automatic renewal, renewal refusal): link
• SAMA, Weekly Points of Sale Transactions report, week to 22 August 2026 (SAR 14.17bn total, apparel SAR 1.265bn): link