Saudi Arabia postpones its 'Davos in the Desert' investor conference to 2027 after Houthi attacks

Saudi Arabia has postponed the Future Investment Initiative, the Riyadh investor conference known as "Davos in the Desert," to 2027, a week before it was due to open, after weeks of Houthi missile and drone attacks that included a deadly strike on the capital's main airport.

A week before opening day

The FII Institute announced the decision on Monday, Oct. 19. Its 10th annual conference, scheduled for Oct. 26 to 29 at the King Abdulaziz International Conference Center in Riyadh, "will now take place in 2027," the institute's chief executive, Princess Maha bint Mishari Al Saud, said in a statement. New dates will be announced "very soon," she said, and all current registrations and partnerships remain valid.

The statement gave one reason: the institute wants its anniversary edition to deliver "the full scale, extraordinary quality, and unforgettable impact" its community expects. It did not mention security. News reports on the decision tied it to an escalating Houthi campaign against the kingdom.

The attacks behind the timing

Yemen's Iran-aligned Houthis have hit military, energy and civilian sites across Saudi Arabia in recent weeks, including Aramco's headquarters and Riyadh's King Khalid International Airport. An attack on the airport on Oct. 10 killed at least 12 people and injured more than 300, CNBC reported. AFP put that strike's death toll at 13 and called it the deadliest attack on the kingdom in more than a decade.

The strikes have not stopped. On Monday, the Houthis claimed new attacks on the Riyadh airport, on Abha airport in the southwest, on Aramco facilities in the Red Sea port of Yanbu and on the Shaybah oilfield, according to CNBC.

Workarounds that did not hold

Organizers had tried to keep the event on the calendar. Earlier in October, diplomatic sources said the kingdom planned to go ahead with both in-person and virtual attendance, plus alternative air and land routes into the capital, AFP reported. Some participants and speakers had planned to fly to Bahrain and then drive five hours to Riyadh, CNBC was told.

Executives remained wary. Big banks and private-equity firms had privately raised safety concerns with Yasir Al-Rumayyan, governor of the Public Investment Fund, Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund, Semafor reported, according to Reuters. "Companies won't put their employees in harm's way for the sake of an investment conference," a consultant who advises Saudi firms told AFP.

Why the conference matters to Riyadh

The Public Investment Fund launched the conference in 2017. Nicknamed "Davos in the Desert" after the World Economic Forum's annual meeting in Switzerland, it became a main stage for Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's Vision 2030 program to reduce the economy's reliance on oil and attract foreign capital. The crown prince unveiled the NEOM megaproject at the first edition.

This year's speaker list included some of Wall Street's best-known chief executives: JPMorgan Chase's Jamie Dimon, BlackRock's Larry Fink, Goldman Sachs' David Solomon, Blackstone's Stephen Schwarzman and Citigroup's Jane Fraser. Pushing the event into next year means the kingdom goes without its flagship annual pitch to those investors in 2026, while it still needs outside money to build tourism, sports and technology industries.

FII is not the only casualty. Intersec Saudi Arabia, an event that organizer Messe Frankfurt Saudi Arabia had scheduled for Nov. 16 to 18, has been moved to October 2027, and the Saudi Retail Forum, set for Nov. 19, has been pushed to March 2027, The National reported. Messe Frankfurt said its decision "follows close monitoring of recent developments in Saudi Arabia." Earlier this year, the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran forced conferences in the United Arab Emirates and Qatar to be canceled, postponed or reworked, Reuters reported.