The final boat in a four-vessel order for Saudi Arabian urban developer NEOM has now been delivered by Spanish shipbuilder Moggaro Aluminium Yachts, bringing the project to completion. According to Moggaro, the latest handover took place after a period of uncertainty caused by ongoing geopolitical tensions in the region. In a social media update, the company said the vessel had safely reached its destination and was prepared to enter service.

Work on THE LINE in Saudi Arabia has been put on pause until at least 2030, per reporting in Semafor. Construction will also temporarily stop on TROJENA, a mountain resort city. NEOM, the company chaired by Saudi Arabia Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman backing the construction project, will shift its efforts to OXAGON, a port city south of THE LINE on the Red Sea, according to sources close to the plan.  The pivot is a directive of the new NEOM CEO Aiman al-Mudaifer. Reports indicated that physical infrastructure that’s been already laid could be repurposed for data center usage.

NEOM, the futuristic megaproject being developed by Saudi Arabia in the country’s northwest, has terminated Webuild’s contract for the Connector High-Speed Line, a high-speed rail line that was to link OXAGON to the linear city THE LINE. The decision comes at a time when international media are reporting that Saudi Arabia is postponing and scaling back some of NEOM’s most spectacular components, including the linear city THE LINE.

According to new reports, Saudi Arabia has decided to postpone any major additional work on THE LINE until at least after 2030. Meanwhile, NEOM appears to be evolving from a desert utopia into an industrial, energy and digital platform.

A decade ago, the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia Mohammed bin Salman – or MBS as he is widely known – decreed a revisioning of his country that leapt from the realm of science fiction. It was called Vision 2030. Extraordinary monolithic structures were to help bring forth new technological marvels not just for the Kingdom but for the world.

DataVolt committed $5 billion to NEOM's OXAGON in February 2025, when the Strait of Hormuz was carrying ninety-five tanker transits a day and a Red Sea industrial port looked like the least necessary thing Saudi Arabia could build. Twelve months later, Hormuz carries approximately 3.6 per cent of its pre-war commercial traffic, NEOM has cancelled more than $8.45 billion in contracts elsewhere, and OXAGON - the unglamorous, logistics-first zone that never featured in the drone footage - is the only part of the megaproject whose commercial thesis the war has strengthened rather than destroyed.

In 2025, Saudi Arabia welcomed 122 to 123 million domestic and international tourists, generating SAR 300 billion (approximately 81 billion U.S. dollars) in tourism spending — a number that decisively eclipsed the original 2030 targets set when Vision 2030 was first announced. The Red Sea destination alone welcomed more than 50,000 visitors and recorded 533 million dollars in residential sales.

Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 initiative is channelling over $900 billion through the Public Investment Fund into real estate and infrastructure projects, marking one of the largest state-backed property development programmes globally.

NEOM advances contracts to excavate 2 tunnels of 28 kilometers each in the futuristic Saudi megacity THE LINE of $500 billion The Saudi project NEOM advanced in May 2026 contracts for excavation by drill & blast method of 2 tunnels approximately 28 kilometers each, dedicated to high-speed rail and freight services, as announced by Limak.

Saudi Arabia is driving travel and tourism growth across the Middle East, according to the World Travel and Tourism Council's (WTTC) 2025 economic impact report.