LIONS, the Informa-owned group behind Cannes Lions, has announced LIONS Riyadh, a regional festival to be delivered in Saudi Arabia by Tahaluf in partnership with the Ministry of Media. The announcement was made in Riyadh on 16 September at a press conference held at the close of Money20/20 Middle East, the fintech event Tahaluf brought to the Kingdom for the first time this year. The inaugural edition will run from 6 to 8 December 2027 at the King Abdullah Financial District. The three-day programme is designed to convene regional and global CMOs, creative leaders, agencies, brands and emerging talent across creative excellence, effectiveness, culture and the future of the creative industry, with the stated ambition of giving Middle Eastern talent, ideas and storytelling a platform to influence the global creative conversation.
The national framing
For Saudi Arabia, the festival is being positioned as creative-economy infrastructure rather than a marketing event. Minister of Media Salman bin Yousef Al-Dossary anchored the announcement in heritage before turning to industrial policy. “Creativity and storytelling have deep roots in Saudi Arabia and across Middle Eastern culture,” he said. “Today, a new generation is building on that heritage with the confidence, capability and ambition to define how the story evolves.” He described LIONS Riyadh as an opportunity to “celebrate what makes creativity from our region distinctive, strengthen its contribution to our economy and culture, and enable our creative voices to play an even greater role in the future,” and set out the transfer mechanism in unusually explicit terms: attracting global expertise and talent, transferring knowledge, developing national capabilities and creating new avenues for investment, partnerships and high-quality employment.
The stated goal is to localise the creative industries, accelerate the growth of local businesses and strengthen the sector’s contribution to economic diversification and globally competitive Saudi content, further cementing Riyadh’s position as a capital of creativity and a global destination where decisions are made and opportunities are created.
That language matters commercially. It places LIONS Riyadh alongside the Kingdom’s other media and content investments as a vehicle for building domestic capability, not simply importing an international brand for three days.
A platform, not another awards show
Paul Coxhill, chief operating officer of LIONS, flew in to make the announcement and was explicit that the Riyadh festival will not compete with existing regional awards. “LIONS Riyadh won’t have awards at its heart,” he said. “We’re not adding any new awards as a result of LIONS Riyadh. We already have a regional creative benchmark with Dubai Lynx.”
Instead, the festival is built around learning, intelligence and convening. “What we’re doing with LIONS Riyadh is really creating a moment where the industry comes together for a conversation, for content, for learning, for insights and intelligence,” Coxhill said, framing the proposition as creative marketing that delivers commercial results rather than creative work judged on its own terms. He added that the interchange between global and local is fundamental to the design, with the regional community learning from global practices while also educating the wider market about Saudi cultural context.
The platform is also intended to include a strategic alliance with Athar, the Saudi Festival of Creativity run by Motivate Media Group, which co-presents Dubai Lynx and jointly verifies its awards with Cannes Lions.
Seventy years of Cannes, now decentralised
The move has to be read against what LIONS has become. The festival began in 1954 as an advertising film competition modelled on the Cannes Film Festival. It now draws some 20,000 delegates to the Croisette each June and sits at the head of a group that includes WARC, the marketing intelligence and best practice platform, Effie, the global authority on marketing effectiveness, and Contagious, which tracks creative trends. Coxhill described LIONS as “backed by over 70 years of evidence, experience” and as the global platform for creative marketing effectiveness.
His rationale for regionalisation acknowledged the limits of a single annual gathering. “Not everyone can make it to Cannes, and more importantly, the challenges facing marketers in North America, Asia, and of course in the Middle East aren’t always the same as those being discussed on that global stage,” he said. What the group is building, he said, is a connected global platform of regional events in North America, APAC and MENA, providing year-round access to evidence, skills and networks.
The stated design principle is co-creation. “Crucially, those platforms will be built with local communities, not simply for them,” Coxhill said, adding that Cannes remains the centre of the ecosystem while its value is extended throughout the year.
Why Riyadh, why now
The decision is supported by specific performance data. Saudi Arabia won its first Grand Prix at Cannes in 2023 and joined the awarding juries for the first time that same year. In 2024, Cannes Lions recorded its highest-ever MENA representation on its juries, and in 2025 the region posted a 45 per cent year-on-year increase in Lions wins. Coxhill also cited Saudia’s two Lions last year as evidence of authentically Saudi work reaching a global stage.
The Tahaluf case
For Tahaluf, LIONS Riyadh extends a portfolio that already includes LEAP, DeepFest, Cityscape Global, Black Hat MEA, Kingdom of Gaming, Global Health Exhibition, CPHI Middle East and Money20/20 Middle East. Chief executive Mike Champion, who co-founded the joint venture in 2022, argued that proven delivery was the deciding factor for LIONS.
“In Saudi Arabia, as in any market, it’s not easy to do world-class events, but in Saudi particularly, it requires a lot of different ingredients compared with other markets,” Champion said, citing protocol, venue scale and operational complexity. “What we’re bringing is a sense of confidence.”
Asked about its economic contribution, Champion estimated the impact of Tahaluf’s portfolio between 2023 and 2025 at $17.6 billion, describing the figure as a conservative estimate and comparing Tahaluf’s impact favourably with that of the Qatar World Cup and Paris Olympics. His broader point was reputational. “It’s a sense of acceptance that this kingdom now is a global centre for major events,” he said.
Faisal Al-Khamisi, Co-Chairman of the Tahaluf board and Chairman of SAFCSP, placed the launch in a longer sequence running from Formula 1 and the 2034 FIFA World Cup through Riyadh Season, MDLBEAST, Expo 2030, LEAP and FII. The LIONS decision, he said, “reflects both the growing international significance of Saudi Arabia and the extraordinary creative potential of the wider Arab world.”
