Saudi Arabia

The Red Sea coast around Jeddah is warm year-round but humid (around 57% in summer); its diving runs all year, with water dropping only to about 22°C in February. Ramadan reshapes the day wherever you are — street cafés shut through the fasting hours and public eating in daylight is prohibited, though hotels keep discreet daytime dining and evenings come alive. It shifts about eleven days earlier each year; in 2027 it falls roughly 8 February to 8 March.

• you want to sightsee the interior (Riyadh, AlUla)SkipMay–SeptemberGoNovember–March — the summer hits 42–43°C
• you’re travelling in summer anywaySkipmelting in the desert citiesGothe Asir highlands (Abha, ~2,270 m, stays mild)
• you’re booking the Haramain trainSkipa Makkah legGothe Jeddah–Madinah stretch — Makkah is closed to non-Muslims

The tourist eVisa — or visa on arrival, same eligibility list — is valid a full year with multiple entries, up to 90 days per stay, and the mandatory medical insurance folded into the fee. Around 66 nationalities qualify (all EU/Schengen, the UK, US, Canada, Australia, Japan, Korea, China), and anyone holding a valid Schengen, UK or US visa is eligible regardless of passport — it’s still worth a last check on visa.visitsaudi.com before you book.

The trap is the pilgrimage layer. The tourist visa lets you perform Umrah and travel to any city, but Makkah is closed to non-Muslims entirely, and Hajj needs a separate Nusuk permit. The city of Madinah is open to non-Muslims, but its Prophet’s Mosque and sacred precinct are not — you can walk around it, not enter. If a trip touches the pilgrimage cities, the rules differ from the ordinary tourist track — see transport for how that even shapes the train.

One new bureaucratic catch: from 1 November 2025, travellers carrying common controlled prescription medicines — Adderall, Xanax, Tramadol and similar — need advance electronic clearance from the SFDA’s Controlled Drug System. It’s simple but easily overlooked, and the meds can be confiscated (or worse) without it, so sort it before you fly.

The honest picture as of late 2026: following US–Iran hostilities that began in February 2026 and a missile strike on Riyadh’s King Khalid International Airport on 10 October 2026, both main advisories were raised. The US rates Saudi Arabia Level 3 “Reconsider Travel” (escalated 12 October 2026), with Level 4 “Do Not Travel” within about 85 km of the Yemen border. The UK FCDO now advises against all-but-essential travel to the whole country (updated 21 October 2026), and against all travel within 10 km of the Yemen border, citing a heightened threat of missiles and drones against airports, ports and energy infrastructure.

What that means in practice: the strike hit the capital’s airport, not a remote frontier, so the risk is national rather than confined to the south — though the Yemen border region is a firm no-go. Everyday crime remains very low and the cities are functioning, but you should treat this as a conflict-affected destination: check both advisories immediately before travel (they have moved repeatedly through 2026), confirm your travel insurance isn’t voided by an all-but-essential-travel warning, allow for airspace and flight disruption, and avoid photographing airports, ports, military or energy sites. This is a materially different calculation from the relaxed trip Saudi offered in 2024–25.

Because the advisories have escalated step by step through 2026, the levels quoted here can change again quickly in either direction — a ceasefire could ease them, a further strike could tighten them. Do not rely on this page (or any guide) as the live source: the US State Department and UK FCDO pages are the authorities, and both are the first thing to read in the week before you travel.

What’s relaxed surprises people most: foreign women need no abaya or headscarf since 2019 (modest, loose clothing covering shoulders to below the knee is the rule for both sexes, stricter only at religious sites), unmarried couples have been able to share a hotel room since 2019, and women can book and travel alone. Prayer-time closures are no longer legally enforced, so malls and hotels stay open, though smaller shops and family restaurants still pause 20–30 minutes at each of the five daily prayers.

What isn’t relaxed: the alcohol ban is total (see the FAQ), same-sex relationships are illegal, extramarital sex remains an offence, and public displays of affection are prohibited for everyone. Photographing government, military or diplomatic buildings is arrestable — and, given the 2026 security situation, especially unwise around airports and infrastructure — and you should never photograph people, women and children especially, without consent.

The Haramain high-speed railway is the single genuinely fast surface link — 300 km/h from Jeddah up to Madinah via the airport and KAEC. But the catch is structural: the line’s southern terminus is Makkah, which non-Muslims cannot enter, so a non-Muslim tourist rides the Jeddah–airport–Madinah stretch and must not book a Makkah leg. For everything else, domestic flights do the work — the Riyadh–Jeddah corridor is one of the busiest in the region, now flown by Saudia, flynas, flyadeal and the new Riyadh Air.

Within cities, a car is close to mandatory outside Riyadh (whose 6-line driverless Metro fully opened in January 2025). Women driving is fully legal and normal since the 2018 ban lift, and applies to tourists; Uber and Careem are everywhere; and fuel is among the cheapest anywhere — a subsidised ~$0.58–0.62 a litre, capped monthly — which softens the long distances the country forces on you.

AlUla and Hegra (see the figure) are the reason many come, and the clearest example of Saudi’s tour-gated access — you book the official day tour, you don’t wander in. Near Riyadh, Diriyah — the mud-brick UNESCO birthplace of the Saudi state — offers free daytime access with a SAR 50 evening ticket redeemable against the Bujairi Terrace restaurants (arrangements shift, so check on arrival), and the Edge of the World escarpment ~90 km west needs a genuine 4×4 for the final unpaved stretch, so most people take a guided trip.

The cities carry the rest: Riyadh (the Kingdom Centre sky bridge, the National Museum, Masmak Fortress, and the winter Riyadh Season) and Jeddah, whose coral-stone Al-Balad old town is UNESCO-listed and whose corniche is the Red Sea gateway. Out on that coast, Vision 2030’s Red Sea luxury resorts have now opened — Six Senses Southern Dunes, the St Regis and the Ritz-Carlton Reserve Nujuma among them — a genuinely new, high-end beach option.

Saudi runs roughly 20–30% below the UAE on hotels, dining and transport at comparable quality, and being dry removes an entire budget line — no bar tab, which in Dubai or Doha alone can add $50 a day. But it is mid-to-high-end, not a backpacker destination: hostels are rare outside Riyadh and Jeddah, so most travellers default to hotels, and the fly-and-drive geography adds domestic flights to the bill. The headline dishes are generous and cheap — kabsa (spiced rice and meat, the national dish), mandi, mutabbaq — with dates and cardamom gahwa coffee the hospitality ritual everywhere.

VAT is 15%, and the tourist VAT refund (launched April 2025) covers physical goods only — not hotels, dining, car hire or fuel — so for a normal sightseeing trip it barely applies. Budget instead for the things that genuinely add up here: domestic flights between the far-apart hubs, mid-range-and-up hotels, and guided access to the tour-gated sights.

The frustrations are real: the country is vast and the marquee sights are far apart, so a Riyadh–AlUla–Jeddah loop is a fly-plus-drive project, not a road trip. Public transport barely exists between cities, prayer-time pauses still interrupt the day, and outside the big hubs the tourist infrastructure is thin — booking sites revert to Arabic, and English drops off. The best sights being pre-booked-tour-only compounds it: you cannot improvise your way through Hegra. And in 2026, the regional security situation (see the safety section) adds a layer of real uncertainty that simply wasn’t there a year or two ago.

What surprises people: set the 2026 advisories aside and the two things travellers most dread tend to flip positive. Alcohol-free evenings — corniche walks, café and mocktail lounges — are widely reported as pleasant rather than a deprivation, and solo female travel comes back easier than expected: no guardian, no headscarf, women-only metro sections, and very low everyday crime. The country is genuinely welcoming to the curious; it’s the geopolitics, not the hospitality, that’s the question mark now.