Future Of Saudi Arabia's Ski Resort Development Unclear

The status of a planned year-round outdoor ski area in Saudi Arabia is currently uncertain, and not just because of the current war in the region.

We have reported on the Arab kingdom’s plans to develop the ski resort, called Trojena, extensively since it was first announced in March, 2022.

Trojena is (or possibly was) being built in a mountainous, high-altitude part of Saudi Arabia known as Tabuk, as part of the still more ambitious NEOM mega-city project. Although the area, which climbs up to about 2,600m, rarely gets natural snowfall, it does get down to around freezing at times in winter and Trojena’s planners appeared to envisage a combination of conventional and ‘all-weather’ snowmaking with a dry ski slope surface beneath in order to make the skiing feasible and open year-round. The typically dry conditions with low humidity were thought to be positive factor for snowmaking.

A ski area with 36 kilometres (22 miles) of slopes and a 2.8-kilometre (1.7 mile) long man-made freshwater lake was envisaged, with ski runs snaking down a vast steel structure housing hotels and other resort infrastructure. The project was immediately awarded host status for a revived 2029 Asian Winter Games before construction had begun.  That’s now been switched to Almaty in Kazakhstan.

Initially regular social media updates on Trojena, which showed massive infrastructure construction and successful snowmaking pilots, appear to have ground to a halt last autumn. That’s  reported to coincide with a reported update on the financing of the project indicating higher than planned construction costs looked set to make it less financially viable in terms of return on investment, according to a Wall Street Journal report at the time.

More recently, and since the start of the US and Israel’s attacks on Iran and Iran’s retaliatory decision to attack its neighbours, two major contracts for the project have been cancelled, according to a further Wall Street Journal report. Malaysia's Eversendai Corporation announced that its steel fabrication and construction contract with Trojena had been terminated, as has Trojena’s contract with Italian infrastructure giant WeBuild to construct a multi-billion-dollar dam and freshwater lake.

As of late March 2026, work at Trojena is reportedly 30% complete, but the termination of contracts suggests either a pause, halt or scaling back on the project. But that's not yet clear - so far there have not been any  public statements clarifying the project's status.