Arbitration in Saudi Arabia: What the SCCA’s 2026 Country Report Reveals to Practitioners

In addition to the comparative analysis, the Report analyses 967 arbitration-related judgments issued by Saudi courts of appeal between January 2023 and June 2025 and sourced from the Saudi Ministry of Justice.

Given that it is impossible in a short article to do justice to the full range of issues addressed in the 245-page Report, this article highlights a number of the Report’s key findings that are likely to be of greatest interest to practitioners considering Saudi Arabia as an arbitration seat or an enforcement jurisdiction.

Saudi Arbitration Judgments
In each of the 967 judgments analyzed in the Report, the applicable law of the underlying arbitration was the Arbitration Law, and the seat of the arbitration was Saudi Arabia.

The Report paid particular attention to applications to annul awards, and found that:

• Out of the 967 decisions analyzed, one in five (194 decisions) were applications to annul an arbitral award.
• Of those, 174 applications were rejected, representing an 89.7% rejection rate. This is broadly in line with an earlier study undertaken by the SCCA of arbitration-related decisions issued by the Saudi courts between 2017 and 2022, in which over 92% of applications to annul awards (120 out of 131) were rejected. This puts Saudi Arabia well in line with other arbitration-friendly jurisdictions.
• Rejections were based either on procedural grounds (primarily the failure of the applicant to comply with statutory time limits) or on the merits where none of the limited grounds for annulment specified in Article 50 of the Arbitration Law were satisfied. Those grounds are:

-  No valid arbitration agreement—where there is no arbitration agreement, or where the agreement is void, voidable or has expired.

-  Lack of capacity—where a party lacked legal capacity when the arbitration agreement was concluded, applying the law governing that party’s capacity.

-  Inability to present a defense—where a party was unable to present its defense because it was not properly notified of the appointment of an arbitrator or the arbitration proceedings, or for another reason beyond its control.

-  Failure to apply the agreed substantive rules—where the award excludes the application of any rules which the parties agreed to apply to the subject matter of the dispute.

-  Improper tribunal composition or appointment—where the tribunal was constituted, or the arbitrators appointed, in breach of the Arbitration Law or the parties’ agreement.

-  Excess of jurisdiction—where the award decides matters falling outside the arbitration agreement. If the offending parts can be separated, only those parts are annulled.

-  Material procedural or award defects—where the tribunal failed to comply with mandatory requirements for the award in a way that affected its substance, or where the award was based on void arbitration proceedings that affect it.

-  Non-arbitrability, Sharia and public policy—where the competent court finds, of its own initiative, that the dispute was not capable of arbitration, or that the award violates Sharia and public order in Saudi Arabia.

• Saudi courts of appeal ruled to annul awards in whole or in part in only 20 cases, or 10.3% of annulment applications.
• Of these 20 cases, 12 resulted in full annulment and eight in partial annulment.
• Only one case involved partial annulment on the basis of a violation of Sharia law. The court in that case also relied on public policy and excess of jurisdiction. In that case, decided in Riyadh in October 2024, the parties had agreed to terminate the arbitration before any decision on the merits, yet the tribunal had nevertheless determined its own fees and costs. The court held that, absent party agreement, fees were a matter for the competent court under Article 24 of the Arbitration Law, and that the tribunal had therefore exceeded its jurisdiction under Article 50(1)(f) of the Arbitration Law. The court also held that the paragraphs of the award addressing the tribunal’s fees violated Sharia and public policy and annulled those paragraphs while confirming the remainder of the award.
• The Saudi courts consistently affirmed that the grounds for annulment are exhaustive and that annulment proceedings are not an appeal on the merits.

When the Report is read alongside four prior studies undertaken by the SCCA in 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2025, across the more than 3,300 judgments analyzed dating between 2017 and 2025:

• 518 of the 565 annulment applications were rejected, representing a 91.7% rejection rate.
• Full annulment was granted in 31 of the 47 successful annulment applications.
• Partial annulment was granted in 16 cases.
• Annulments based on Sharia or public policy were limited to 13 cases.

These figures will be of particular interest to counterparties considering whether to agree to Saudi Arabia as a seat. The data suggest that a party obtaining an award in Saudi Arabia has a high statistical likelihood of that award surviving challenge, provided that the arbitration has complied with the mandatory requirements of Saudi arbitration law, including proper notice, valid tribunal composition, arbitrability and public policy.

Merits Review
Another concern of foreign counterparties is that the Saudi courts might be prepared to revisit the merits of a case which has been ruled on by a tribunal.

The cases analyzed in the Report show that the Saudi courts now consistently decline to use annulment proceedings as a vehicle for re-examining the merits of a dispute and confirm that the role of the courts is limited to considering the existence or otherwise of one or more of the above-listed statutory grounds for annulment.

That is a significant finding. It means that alleged errors of law, alleged erroneous factual findings or evidential assessments will not, without more, justify annulment. Article 50 of the Arbitration Law should not be seen as a mechanism by which a losing party can seek a second determination of the dispute. The Saudi courts have further reinforced this position by holding that objections not raised during the arbitral proceedings may be deemed waived, and that an annulment application is not an appropriate vehicle for re-arguing issues that were, or could have been, ventilated before the tribunal.

The Draft Law
The Draft Law, if enacted substantially in its current form, will replace the Arbitration Law and introduce a number of significant changes which will bring it even closer into alignment with the UNCITRAL Model Law.

Particularly notable are the following provisions of the Draft Law:

• The definition of “Arbitral Tribunal” in Article 1 now expressly encompasses emergency arbitrators appointed under the arbitration rules agreed by the parties, and the definition of “Award” is broadened to include interim and partial awards, while excluding procedural case management decisions.
• Law governing the arbitration agreement—Article 11 of the Draft Law provides that the law governing the arbitration agreement is that expressly agreed by the parties or, in the absence of agreement, by the law of the seat. This is a departure from Article 38 of the Arbitration Law, which provides that, in the absence of agreement, the tribunal “shall apply the substantive rules of the law it deems most connected to the subject matter of the dispute.” Article 11(2) further clarifies that the substantive rules of the applicable law shall apply to the arbitration agreement, without recourse to conflict of laws rules, unless the parties agree otherwise.
• Conditions of arbitrator appointment—whilst Article 14 of the Arbitration Law requires that an arbitrator (or the chairman of a three-person tribunal) “[b]e a holder of at least a university degree in Sharia or law,” Article 20 of the Draft Law removes this requirement and in doing so moves closer to Article 11 of the Model Law. If this provision remains unchanged when the Draft Law is enacted, this will enable parties to appoint tribunals from any legal background and from non-legal backgrounds, for example engineers, quantity surveyors or other technical specialists in appropriate construction or infrastructure disputes.
• Arbitrator liability—Article 27 of the Draft Law expressly codifies arbitrator immunity. If enacted, arbitrator liability to the parties will be limited to cases involving fraud or gross professional misconduct, reflecting an express statutory immunity that is absent from the current Arbitration Law.
• Competence-competence—Article 28 of the Draft Law moves Saudi law closer in alignment to Article 16 of the Model Law and allows tribunals seated in Saudi Arabia to rule on their own jurisdiction, including objections relating to the existence, validity or scope of the arbitration agreement.
• Interim and provisional measures—Articles 29 to 31 of the Draft Law establish a detailed framework for interim and provisional measures to preserve the status quo, prevent harm to the arbitral process, safeguard assets subject to enforcement or preserve essential evidence. Article 31 provides that a party may apply to the competent court for enforcement of tribunal-ordered interim measures, and the court must rule on the application within 15 days.
• Government bodies—Article 10 of the Arbitration Law prohibits Saudi government bodies from entering into arbitration agreements unless they have received approval from the Saudi Prime Minister or this is permitted by a special provision of law. The Draft Law is silent on this point, which may reflect the fact that the Saudi Government Tenders and Procurement Law now permits arbitration involving public entities, albeit subject to approval by the Saudi Minister of Finance.
• Electronic communications and notices—Articles 8 and 13 modernize the rules governing notices and arbitration agreements by expressly recognizing electronic communications, including email and mobile communications, and by confirming that arbitration agreements may be concluded through electronic exchanges. These provisions bring the Draft Law into closer alignment with modern international arbitration practice

The Report does not suggest that Saudi Arabia is indistinguishable from longer-established arbitration centers such as London, Paris, Singapore, Dubai or Hong Kong. What the Report shows, however, is that Saudi courts are applying Saudi arbitration law in a restrained and broadly predictable manner. The case law speaks for itself: annulment applications are overwhelmingly rejected, public policy and Sharia challenges rarely succeed and the courts have shown little appetite to reopen the merits. This, together with the reforms contemplated by the Draft Law, further strengthens the case for Saudi Arabia as a credible arbitral seat, particularly for disputes with a Saudi, GCC or wider MENA nexus.

For practitioners, the takeaway is practical: Saudi-seated arbitration should no longer be assessed by reference to historical perception or anecdote, but against data and case law and a legal framework that is increasingly aligned with international best practice while preserving the principles of Sharia and Saudi public policy. Riyadh is emerging as a fast-growing, modern arbitration hub offering greater certainty, predictability and confidence to international users.