Words by Allegra Salvadori | Images courtesy of Noor Riyadh 2025.
Riyadh has always been a city in motion, but this year’s edition of Noor Riyadh 2025 captures that momentum with rare clarity. Under the theme “In the Blink of an Eye,” the world’s largest festival of light and art returns to transform the Saudi capital into a luminous narrative — one that reveals the city’s past, accelerates through its present, and gestures toward its rapidly unfolding future.
For Nouf Almoneef, Director of Noor Riyadh, the theme is not abstract; it is personal, lived, and rooted in the rhythm of a place she calls home. “It’s an instant filled with excitement, pride, and belonging, where we recognize how far we’ve come and how quickly the future is arriving,” she reflects. Her words echo across a city where heritage districts stand in dialogue with Zaha Hadid’s sweeping metro stations, and where public space is increasingly reimagined through art, movement, and light.
This year’s edition stretches across Riyadh’s historic heart and its most futuristic arteries, using light not as decoration but as a connective language. Almoneef describes it as something that “reveals histories, creates new perspectives, and builds bridges between eras.” In the sandstone textures of Qasr Al Hokm and the curving metallic surfaces of KAFD’s newly activated metro station, light becomes both metaphor and material — a way of making architecture breathe, remember, and converse.
The festival’s significance extends beyond its visual impact: Noor Riyadh is a pillar of Riyadh Art, one of the Kingdom’s flagship Vision 2030 cultural initiatives. Its citywide installations, free public access, and emphasis on inclusivity reflect a larger national ambition to embed creativity into civic life. Director of Noor Riyadh Nouf Almoneef sees the festival as a catalyst for cultural identity, shaped not only by international names but by the emergence of a confident, technologically fluent Saudi creative generation. “Our apprenticeship program is especially meaningful — it builds local talent and ensures that young artists are part of the movement redefining Riyadh’s cultural identity,” she notes.
Innovation lies at the core of Noor Riyadh’s artistic language. Kinetic structures, data-driven projections, and immersive environments respond to movement, presence, and architecture. Almoneef speaks with admiration about the new wave of Saudi artists who are pushing the medium: Saad AlHowaade’s Memory Melting, built from upcycled materials, and Ziyad Al Roqi’s The Shadow Within, which uses architecture as a conceptual engine, exemplify the festival’s blend of experimentation and cultural grounding. Their work, she says, “inspires all of us.”
Despite being the world’s largest light art festival, Noor Riyadh’s identity is not defined by scale but by emotion, authenticity, and accessibility. Visitors encounter works that bridge Eastern and Western creative influences, installations shaped by calligraphy and cosmology, and spaces that invite contemplation within the intensity of urban life. As Almoneef notes, “The festival integrates sustainable technology, bridges influences, and remains completely free and accessible to all. Riyadh’s identity is embedded throughout the artworks.”
At its heart, Noor Riyadh is a negotiation between locality and globality — a dialogue that mirrors the city’s own trajectory. The curatorial team brings together voices from Tokyo, Beijing, and Riyadh, yet the festival’s energy remains unmistakably Saudi. “The balance feels natural because it reflects who Riyadh is today: locally rooted, globally connected,” Almoneef explains.
For Almoneef, leading Noor Riyadh has reshaped her own understanding of the city. She describes experiencing Riyadh “almost as an audience member — walking through gardens we all know, gathering under the stars, and now moving effortlessly through the city with the metro.” It is both a personal and collective journey, one anchored in pride, responsibility, and imagination. As she puts it simply: “Ultimately, we do all of this for Riyadh — a place I’m proud to call home.”
And in its fifth edition, Noor Riyadh offers its visitors not just spectacle but insight — a reminder of the delicate tension between movement and stillness, between the known and the possible. When asked what she hopes people carry with them after the festival, Almoneef responds with clarity: “A moment of stillness and knowledge — a reminder that without light we cannot see, and with it, even in the blink of an eye, entire worlds open.”
