
Back
Tech 5 min readMarch 25, 2026
NEOM Innovation Summit: five ideas that stuck with us
F
Faisal Al-Otaibi
The Journal
From cognitive cities to regenerative tourism, the summit delivered more substance than spectacle.
Held between the dunes and the Red Sea, the inaugural NEOM Innovation Summit struck a rare balance between ambition and operational detail. Speakers ranged from urban planners rethinking density to founders shipping sustainable desalination at scale. The closing keynote on regenerative tourism — the idea that visitors should leave a destination measurably better than they found it — may be the most quotable idea to come out of the Kingdom this year.


