The News
The Joy Awards returned to Riyadh for the sixth time on Saturday night, a star-heavy evening that has become one of the kingdom’s biggest annual entertainment rituals. It is, unmistakably, Saudi entertainment chief Turki Alsheikh’s baby, if his endless posting on Instagram is any indication. In Saudi living rooms it plays out like a holiday, with watch parties, group chats, running commentary from aunties (and social media), and the inevitable question from grandma: what is Lebanese singer Nancy Ajram wearing?
On this year’s lavender carpet, Katy Perry wore a dress by Saudi designer Waad Aloqaili before opening the show with a musical tableau. The night kept moving between worlds: a joint performance brought together Saudi singer Ayed Yousef and Robbie Williams, while the guest list featured actors from around the world, including Oscar Isaac, Lee Byung-hun, and Shah Rukh Khan. Stranger Things star Millie Bobby Brown was named Personality of the Year, following Matthew McConaughey last year.
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Manal’s view
The Joy Awards is easy to read as spectacle, but it’s also a marker of how quickly the kingdom has built an entertainment sector. A decade ago, cinemas were banned; now the country runs a year-round calendar of concerts, film festivals, and sporting events. The Joy Awards sit at the center of that.
Saudi’s entertainment market is projected to be worth $4.6 billion by 2030. The Red Sea Film Fund has backed more than 200 releases since it was set up in 2019, including this year’s historical drama Palestine 36. Fashion has moved in parallel: Riyadh Fashion Week has become an annual fixture, and Saudi designers are increasingly showing abroad, with Saudi brand KML set to present at Paris Ready-to-Wear Fashion Week this month.
There’s a tendency, mostly in Western press, to frame all of this as image management by the Saudi government. But the more basic story is demand. Saudis want big nights on the calendar. They want something shared to talk about the next morning, whether that’s a fireworks finale, a surprise duet, or a debate about the aesthetics of lavender carpets. And if social media engagement is a metric, the Joy Awards have succeeded in doing just that.
Know More
The Joy Awards 2026 was organized by the General Entertainment Authority in partnership with MBC and was broadcast on MBC channels and Shahid. BeIN Media Group chairman — and president of French football club Paris Saint-Germain — Nasser Al-Khelaifi received the Entertainment Makers Diamond Award, an honor that would have been unthinkable a few years ago when Saudi Arabian-linked companies pirated the Qatari network, broadcasting as BeoutQ.
Room for Disagreement
Not everyone sees Saudi’s investment in entertainment as benign. Human Rights Watch says the government’s spending is aimed to deflect from its human rights record. Still, the group notes that Saudi citizens and residents should be able to enjoy high-quality entertainment, arguing the issue is not the events themselves but the absence of basic rights like free expression and peaceful assembly.
Notable
- Arts and entertainment commercial registrations in the kingdom rose 20% in 2024, as a young population turns entertainment into an everyday spend, Arab News reported.
- Saudi Arabia’s cinema market has grown into the region’s largest since reopening in 2018, with revenue projected to hit $1 billion a year by 2030, according to AGBI.