Saudi Arabia’s ambitious Vision 2030 plan is facing a major slowdown. The kingdom has quietly paused several of its megaprojects after realizing that the money – and oil prices – just aren’t keeping up with the hype. Once pitched as a $2 trillion transformation to shift the economy away from oil and toward tourism, tech, and entertainment, Vision 2030 is now being “recalibrated,” as one official politely put it.
At the center of this course correction is The Line, the futuristic city that was meant to redefine urban living. Originally designed to stretch for 110 miles across the desert, 1,600 feet high, and house nine million residents, it has now been scaled down to just a few miles and will host around 300,000 people. The city was supposed to have no cars, no streets, and zero carbon emissions – a self-contained paradise powered entirely by renewable energy. What’s left looks more like an experimental pilot than a full-scale city of the future.
Officials say the problem boils down to oil. Vision 2030 was built on the assumption that oil would stay at or above $100 per barrel, but prices have hovered around $60 since 2022. With over half the kingdom’s economy still dependent on oil revenues, the government has been forced to rethink its spending. “Saudi Arabia is a very wealthy country, but there is a limit on how much it can spend relative to GDP,” said Jerry Inzerillo, an adviser to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Another official put it less diplomatically: “We spent too much. We rushed at 100 miles per hour. We are now running deficits.”
Trojena, a mountain resort, (pictured) was meant to host the 2029 Asian Winter Games, using man-made snow from water collected from a man-made lake
The result is a wave of delays and cutbacks. Trojena, a planned mountain resort that was supposed to host the 2029 Asian Winter Games, will likely miss its deadline and open several years late. The New Murabba project in Riyadh, once touted as the world’s largest downtown district, has been pushed back to 2040 or beyond. Other projects, like the $1 billion Sindalah Island resort in the Red Sea, have reportedly been canceled altogether after complaints of “wasteful spending” and “design flaws.”
Not everything is being shelved, though. Construction tied to the 2034 World Cup and Expo 2030 will still move forward, since those events have hard deadlines and global visibility. Meanwhile, the country’s Public Investment Fund continues to splash out abroad, recently buying gaming giant Electronic Arts for $55 billion and funding a massive AI firm in the desert.
For now, Saudi Arabia’s futuristic dreams are still alive – just smaller, slower, and a little less shiny than before.