Qiddiya Investment Company has tendered construction of the back-of-house infrastructure for the world’s first Dragon Ball theme park, with bids due on September 13, MEED reported.
The scope is the tell. Plant rooms, facilities management buildings, workshops, storage warehouses, central kitchens, a monorail depot, a fire station, parking and utilities are the works that precede the rides, not the ones that finish a park. Qiddiya has still announced no opening date, and operators pricing Saudi product should treat this as a late-decade attraction rather than a near-term one.
The park will cover more than 500,000 square metres across seven themed zones, with more than 30 rides and experiences. Five signature attractions will sit around a 70-metre Shenron, the dragon central to the series, which will house a large rollercoaster. Themed hotels are included in the development.
Qiddiya licensed the franchise from Toei Animation under an agreement signed in 2024. Orlando-based Falcon’s Creative Group was appointed masterplan designer the same year. Site grading and enabling works were completed last year.
The wider development is now partly operational. Six Flags Qiddiya City opened at the end of December 2025 with 28 rides across six themed lands, including Falcon’s Flight, and was the first Six Flags park designed and built outside North America. Aquarabia followed in March, with 22 rides across eight zones on a 250,000 square metre site. Six Flags Entertainment operates both.
Qiddiya City covers 360 square kilometres south west of Riyadh. Projections put visitor numbers at up to 17mn a year and employment at around 325,000 once the full development is operating.
The remaining pipeline includes a Formula One circuit targeting a 2027 debut, Prince Mohammed bin Salman Stadium for the 2034 World Cup, a horse racing venue awarded at $1.1bn, an e-games arena, a performing arts centre, Speed Park and the National Tennis Centre.
Qiddiya is a Public Investment Fund giga-project and a component of Vision 2030’s push to diversify the economy through tourism, sport and entertainment. Around two thirds of Saudi nationals are under 35.
Why it matters for the trade
Do not put this in a brochure yet. Tendering plant rooms and a monorail depot in mid-2026 means back-of-house construction has not started. Parks of this scale typically run three to four years from that point to opening, and no date has been announced. The 2034 World Cup is the obvious anchor for the wider site. Anyone selling Dragon Ball before 2029 is selling a rendering.
What you can sell now is Qiddiya itself. Six Flags has been trading since December and Aquarabia since March. That is two functioning gate attractions within a 45-minute drive of Riyadh, which is enough to build a two-night family add-on to a Riyadh stay or a stopover. The Dragon Ball park is an addition to a working cluster rather than a promise, and that is a materially better pitch.
The source markets are the genuinely interesting part. Dragon Ball’s deepest fanbases sit in Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, France, Spain, Italy and Southeast Asia, none of which are traditional Gulf inbound feeders. Serving them means new distribution partners, new lift and probably charter capacity from Latin America and southern Europe. Riyadh Air’s Madrid and Malaga routes look rather more strategic in that light. Operators with Latin American or Iberian outbound books should be opening conversations with Saudi Tourism now, not in 2029.
Anime tourism is a proven segment but an awkward transplant. Studio Ghibli Park, Super Nintendo World and the Naruto park in Awaji all work partly because visitors are already going to Japan. Saudi Arabia has to manufacture the reason to travel, and a single IP park will not do it alone. It works as part of a Qiddiya cluster proposition and poorly as a standalone draw.
Hotel supply is the constraint to watch. Themed hotels are in the Dragon Ball scope, but Riyadh’s rooms base will carry the load in the interim. Track it before committing series allocation.