A global cyber gathering returns to Riyadh
Black Hat Middle East and Africa will return to Riyadh from 2 to 4 December 2025. More than 45,000 cybersecurity professionals are expected, along with 300 speakers and over 500 exhibitors. The event takes place at the Riyadh Exhibition and Convention Center in Malham and continues to rank among the largest cybersecurity gatherings worldwide.
Saudi Arabia’s National Cybersecurity Authority and other government bodies frame the summit as a core platform for regional security, skills development and technology adoption. Their involvement has helped turn the event into a strategic anchor for the region’s broader cyber ecosystem.
A look at the technologies shaping the agenda
Black Hat MEA influences investment choices, regulatory thinking and workforce planning across the Middle East and Africa. The 2025 edition is expected to showcase advanced threat detection, AI in security operations, cloud and identity protection, OT and critical-infrastructure defence and new offensive-research findings.
Saudi Arabia’s role adds another layer. The country is positioning itself as a cybersecurity hub for the region. Demand for skilled talent continues to rise across energy, telecoms and public-sector infrastructure, and the summit acts as both a showcase and a recruitment engine.
Hands-on labs and the event’s Arsenal zone will feature live demonstrations of zero-day research, exploitation techniques, cloud-native attack chains and hardware hacking. These sessions often influence the defensive priorities enterprises set for the year ahead.
The people and companies who stand to gain
CISOs, cloud architects, SOC teams, red-team professionals and cyber-governance leaders form the core audience. Global vendors with a growing presence in the Middle East, including cloud providers, identity-management firms, endpoint-protection companies and OT-security specialists, use the summit as a key market touchpoint.
Startups and investors track the event closely because the region’s cybersecurity funding landscape has expanded faster than many global markets. Regulators and policy makers, especially in GCC states, also use the platform to align industry activity with national cybersecurity strategies.
What to watch for next
Organisers are expected to release the final agenda, training programmes and keynote list in the coming week. Major announcements from security vendors typically land during the event, often alongside policy updates and new public-private initiatives.
The 2025 edition will be watched for signals of how MEA enterprises are adopting AI-enabled defence, how vendors approach critical-infrastructure protection and how Saudi Arabia continues to build its regional cyber-innovation ecosystem.
