Arbitration in Saudi Arabia: Unpacking the SCCA’s Landmark Country Report

On 1 July 2026, the Saudi Center for Commercial Arbitration ("SCCA") published a landmark report on how Saudi courts approach arbitration. The Report highlights that over many years, fewer than 10% of challenges to awards have been successful. Such challenges are often based on familiar due process grounds. Clients often ask about public policy and Sharia based challenges, and the Report confirms these rarely succeed (less than 3% of applications). The Report also explains some of the modernisation steps contained in the Draft Saudi Arbitration Law, which will do more to bring the statutory basis for arbitration into line with international expectations.

Overview

The SCCA’s report is entitled Arbitration in Saudi Arabia: Case Law and Legislative Analysis in Light of the UNCITRAL Model Law and Saudi Arbitration Framework (the "Report"). It offers the most detailed empirical account to date of how Saudi courts approach arbitration, and provides an in-depth analysis of the Draft Saudi Arbitration Law (the "Draft Law"). First published in September 2025, the Draft law departs from the current arbitration law with a view to aligning arbitration in Saudi Arabia with international best practice. The Report represents an important contribution to the scrutiny and continued refinement of the Draft Law, which has not yet entered into force. For more information about the Draft law, please see our previous blog post on the topic here: Saudi Arabia publishes draft of new arbitration law for public consultation.

The Report's overall message is a positive one: Saudi Arabia's arbitration framework is broadly aligned with international norms and is continuing to develop in that direction. Part I analyses 967 Court of Appeal decisions issued between January 2023 and June 2025, consistently indicating an arbitration-friendly judiciary with an overwhelming majority of annulment applications being rejected. Part II provides a thorough textual comparison of the current Saudi Arbitration Law (Royal Decree No. M/34 of 2012, the "Arbitration Law") and the Draft Law against the UNCITRAL Model Law on International Commercial Arbitration (the "Model Law"), identifying where the Draft Law would narrow remaining gaps with international standards. Taken together, the Report presents Saudi Arabia as a jurisdiction where the direction of judicial and legislative travel is firmly pro-arbitration.

Annulment and enforcement statistics

Of the 967 decisions analysed, 194 involved applications to annul arbitral awards. The Report indicates that 174 of those applications were rejected — a rate of 89.7%. Only 12 resulted in full annulment (6.2%) and 8 in partial annulment (4.1%). When viewed cumulatively alongside four prior SCCA studies covering 2017 to 2023, the dataset exceeds 3,300 decisions, of which 565 involved annulment applications withacumulative rejection rate of 91.7%. Notably, annulment on Sharia or public policy grounds was limited to just 13 cases across this expanded dataset, representing only 2.3% of all annulment applications. Importantly, the data suggests that successful annulment applications generally arose from familiar procedural and jurisdictional issues, rather than substantive review of awards. The categories most frequently associated with successful challenges included defects in tribunal constitution, inadequate service or notification, decisions beyond the tribunal's mandate, time-limit issues, and narrow public policy or Sharia-related concerns.

The Report also highlights judicial restraint at the enforcement stage. Pursuant to Article 55(2)(b) of the Arbitration Law, courts may verify that an award does not violate Sharia or public policy, but per the Report that power is exercised sparingly: in one 2025 Jeddah case, the court granted enforcement of the majority of an award but declined to enforce a delay penalty on the basis that it constituted riba (interest).

Key Takeaways from the Reported Case Law

The Report covers an extensive range of judgments concerning a wide range of issues. The following consistent and noteworthy principles emerge:

• Competence-competence and separability: The Report confirms that Saudi courts apply these foundational principles consistently with international practice, affirming the tribunal's primary authority to rule on its own jurisdiction and upholding the separability of the arbitration clause from the underlying contract.
• Arbitrability: The general rule is that disputes are arbitrable, subject to limited exceptions where the legislator expressly assigns jurisdiction to a specific authority (e.g. tax disputes, personal status matters, and matters not capable of settlement). Practitioners should exercise care when drafting arbitration clauses in contracts that may touch on those areas.
• Electronic notifications: Saudi courts have affirmed the validity of notifications made through text messages, similar applications, or email designated by the parties. Where delivery is established, the burden shifts to the recipient to prove non-receipt. Parties should ensure that contracts expressly identify appropriate details for service in order to avoid any notification being missed.
• Waiver: Where a party proceeds with arbitration despite being aware of a procedural violation and fails to object within the applicable time limit, subsequent annulment applications based on that violation will be rejected.
• Tribunal constitution and procedural fairness: Courts generally respect party-agreed appointment mechanisms but will intervene where the composition of a tribunal is altered without a party's knowledge or where the agreed mechanism results in procedural imbalance or compromises the tribunal's independence.
• Scope of judicial review: Courts apply a limited standard of review, not extending to the merits of the dispute or re-evaluation of evidence, except where one of the exclusive grounds for annulment under Article 50 of the Arbitration Law is established. Those grounds largely correspond to Article 34 of the Model Law and Article V of the New York Convention and are treated as exhaustive.
• Practical annulment risks remain procedural: Although annulment remains uncommon, the Report highlights the continuing importance of getting the fundamentals right. Defective service, improper tribunal appointment procedures, decisions touching matters outside the scope of the arbitration agreement, and non-arbitrable matters continue to present the most significant sources of challenge risk.

The Draft Arbitration Law: What the Report Says

The Report provides a detailed textual comparison of the Draft Law against both the current Arbitration Law and the Model Law. The Draft Law would continue the modernisation of Saudi Arabia's arbitral framework by simplifying procedural requirements, supporting digital and institutional arbitration, and narrowing a number of the remaining differences between the Saudi regime and the Model Law. Key proposed changes include:

• Arbitrator qualifications and immunity: The Draft Law removes the requirement that a sole or presiding arbitrator hold a university degree in Sharia or law, replacing it with a general requirement of legal capacity. It also introduces express arbitrator immunity, except in cases of fraud or gross professional misconduct.
• Digital procedure: The Draft Law expressly permits electronic service of documents (including by email and mobile phone), remote hearings, and electronic signing of awards, which would be deemed rendered at the seat even if physically signed outside the Kingdom.
• Interim measures and emergency arbitration: The Draft Law introduces a more comprehensive interim measures framework, including a 15-day timeline for courts to enforce tribunal orders. It also formally recognises emergency arbitrators, enabling urgent interim relief before the substantive tribunal is constituted — a mechanism absent from the current Arbitration Law.
• Multi-party proceedings: The Draft Law provides for joinder, intervention, and the consolidation of related arbitrations, subject to specified conditions.
• Annulment and enforcement: The Draft Law allows a court hearing an annulment application to stay proceedings for up to 60 days to permit the tribunal to cure defects relating to the form of an award. This reflects a broader legislative tendency to preserve awards wherever possible rather than immediately setting them aside for remediable procedural defects.
• Award timelines: The Draft Law would remove the current default 12‑month period for issuing a final award. This would reduce the risk of procedural challenges arising in longer and more complex arbitrations, particularly large infrastructure and construction disputes.

Practical Takeaways

The Report reinforces the importance of focusing on procedural discipline when conducting Saudi-seated arbitrations. While the risk of substantive judicial interference appears low, parties should continue to ensure that:

• notification provisions are carefully drafted and rigorously followed;
• tribunal appointment procedures comply strictly with the parties' agreement;
• claims and relief sought remain within the scope of the arbitration agreement;
• any applicable procedural deadlines are monitored closely; and
• proposed remedies do not engage obvious public policy or Sharia concerns, particularly in relation to interest.

The case law suggests that these issues remain significantly more important than concerns regarding judicial reconsideration of the tribunal's factual or legal conclusions.

Conclusion

The Report is the most comprehensive account of Saudi Arabia's arbitration landscape to date. The statistics confirm that Saudi courts are applying the Arbitration Law consistently with international norms, with a clear disposition towards upholding awards. For parties that have historically approached Saudi-seated arbitration with caution because of concerns regarding Sharia or public policy review, the finding that such grounds account for only 2.3% of annulment applications is likely to be one of the Report's most significant data points. The Report's broader findings indicate that Saudi courts generally confine themselves to the limited supervisory role contemplated by modern arbitration legislation and do not treat annulment proceedings as an opportunity to revisit the merits of an award.

The Draft Law, if enacted, would represent a meaningful further step, addressing areas in which the current framework lags behind international practice on digital procedure, emergency arbitration, multi-party proceedings, and arbitrator qualifications.

The authors thank Xani Lawrence for his assistance in preparing this post.