Meeting the industry at LEAP 2026 in Riyadh

afina is heading to LEAP 2026, held from 31 August to 3 September at the Riyadh Exhibition and Convention Centre in Malham. Our CPO Stepan Semenchuk will be there across all four days.

About the event

LEAP was founded in 2022 by Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, the Saudi Federation for Cybersecurity, Programming and Drones. This year marks its fifth edition.

The scale has grown with every year – new 2026 programme brings together more than 1,800 global tech brands, 600 startups and 1,000 speakers, with attendance above 200,000, alongside 1,900 investors. DeepFest runs in parallel as the AI programme, powered by the Saudi Authority for Data and Artificial Intelligence.

Why we go

Most of what we do happens over email threads, shared documents and calls across several time zones. That’s why conferences are where those threads turn into conversations that move faster than they would in a month of correspondence.

The Gulf and all MENA region matter to us for straightforward reasons. Networks here are dense, build-out is ahead of many markets, and the questions operators ask tend to be more concrete than elsewhere. Riyadh in particular has become a place where regional decisions get made rather than discussed, and LEAP 2025 announced $14.9 billion in new AI investments on its opening day alone, which gives some sense of the weight these four days carry.

We also go to listen. Some of the most useful input we have had on the platform came from operators telling us, in person, what they thought was wrong with our assumptions.

Come find us

Stepan is at RECC Malham for the full four days and happy to talk about data monetization, the state of the Saudi and wider Gulf market, or whatever you are working on right now. Operators, data providers, advertisers and anyone curious about the category are equally welcome.

To arrange a time, message Stepan on LinkedIn or write to [email protected].

See you in Riyadh.