Rooted in Hegra, Saudi Arabia's first UNESCO World Heritage Site, and aligned with the designation of 2025 as the Year of Handicraft, this initiative underscores AlUla's commitment to nurturing a dynamic design ecosystem that connects local craftsmanship with global innovation.

AlUla Designathon focuses on cultivating Saudi talent by offering designers an opportunity to engage with AlUla's creative landscape.

Running parallel to the Design Award's international focus, the AlUla Designathon is dedicated to emerging Saudi designers. Participants will embark on a three-day creative journey in AlUla, immersed in its breathtaking landscapes, ancient heritage, and vibrant artistic energy. Surrounded by sandstone cliffs and desert oases, participants will draw inspiration from AlUla's beauty, history, and craftsmanship, and, guided by the same theme - The Ingenuity of the Human Hand"—they will push the boundaries of contemporary design.

The participant journey blends inspiration, exploration, and making:

•  Day 1: Inspiration & Direction - Site visits to heritage and craft hubs, rapid ideation sprints, and mentor-led discussions.
•  Day 2: Production Sprint - Intensive workshops where participants translate ideas into tangible prototypes, supported by hands-on guidance.
•  Day 3: Finalization & Showcase - Mentorship sessions, prototype refinement, and private presentations to peers, mentors, and RCU.

Led by international curators, the program combines field visits, workshops, and mentorship with hands-on prototype development across fashion, graphic, and product design.

Participation Benefits:

 Development and prototyping of the designs of the 10 shortlisted designers within the two categories

 Travel and invitation to the Award Ceremony in AlUla for the finalists  Extensive press exposure through global media campaigns

 Integration into AlUla's growing design ecosystem

Eligibility & Application:

 Open worldwide to individual professional designers or design teams/firms  Categories: Fashion Design and Product Design

 Entries must be original works, not previously commercialized, with clear attention to sustainability and feasibility

 Designed according to the theme

Call for Entries: Now through November 3, 2025

The Jury will select one winner per category. The two winners will each receive a prize of

€6,800* (SAR 30,000) as a creative fee for their project. Upon receipt of this prize, ownership and exclusive rights to the winning design will be transferred to the Royal Commission for AlUla (RCU), granting it all rights to commercialize, reproduce, or adapt the design in any form or medium, worldwide and for an unlimited period.

*Amount expressed according to the exchange rate in effect at the time of conversion

Finalists Announced: December 2025

Exhibition, Winners Announcement and Retail Store opening: January 23, 2026 More info on: https://alula-design.com/

Designathon : https://www.alula-design.com/designathon

ENDS

About Design AlUla

Design runs through AlUla's DNA. Material innovation at all scales, from city planning and construction to product and graphic design, is inspired by the unique natural, cultural, and historical textures of the place. At the intersection of past and future, the ambition to reimagine the region from a quiet oasis town with an ancient backdrop into a leading global cultural and heritage visitor destination and cutting-edge contemporary creative incubator – offers stimulating design challenges. AlUla offers an opportunity for designers, architects, and planners to draw on their own perceptions and interpretations.

With materials and histories in a moment of flux, designers in residency form new relations, new resonances – nurturing heritage and embracing innovative thinking, integrating vernacular aesthetics while inventing possible futures. AlUla is a place for designers and design enthusiasts to learn, dream, investigate, collaborate, experiment, make, and share. Design offers a meaningful way to engage with local traditions, practices, and everyday life, generating new objects and forms that are both rooted in place and open to the world.

About Arts AlUla

Arts AlUla, established within The Royal Commission for AlUla (RCU), is committed to the next chapters of a millennia-long artistic legacy – celebrating cultural inheritance. AlUla has long been a consistent and ever-evolving hub of cultural transfer. It has been a place of passage, a crossroads for trade, and home to successive civilisations who carved, sculpted, and inscribed their lives into the landscape. The work of Arts AlUla seeks to preserve this legacy: fuse the old with the new, the local with the international, keeping the arts central to the spirit of AlUla as a place of extraordinary natural and human heritage.

Arts AlUla will bring to fruition a series of new initiatives, projects, and exhibitions. The curated artworks will reflect RCU's vision for the continued development of AlUla's contemporary art scenes: positioning the arts as a key contributor to AlUla's character, the quality of life for its local community, and the region's economic future. Arts AlUla focuses on transferring the talents of the Saudi nation and the local AlUla community into meaningful long-standing social and economic opportunities. This is a key part of the Journey Through Time masterplan bringing together the 15 different landmark destinations for culture, heritage, and creativity across AlUla.

About AlUla Design Award

The AlUla Design Award enters its fourth edition with an open call to professional designers across the fields of fashion and product design. The 2026 edition invites submissions exploring the theme “The ingenuity of the human hand”, drawing inspiration from traditional crafts and techniques, whether through direct application or conceptual reinterpretation.

Designers are encouraged to propose retail-oriented objects that reflect a strong connection to materiality, heritage, and innovation.

More information: alula-design.com
More information: experiencealula.com
More information: https://www.livingmuseum.com/en/
Instagram: @artsalula

Pictures credits

• All the pictures with “Residency” in their name, must have “Lorenzo Arrigoni” in their credits
• The picture “Tatiana Chausovsky” must have “Tatiana Chausovsky” in its credits
• The picture “Altin Studio” must have “Altin Studio” in its credits
• The picture “Studio Thus” must have “Studio Thus” in its credits