Saudi Arabia to let women enter sports stadiums in 2018

Saudi Arabia’s King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud attends a football match in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia on 18 May 2017 [Bandar Algaloud / Saudi Kingdom Council/Anadolu Agency]

Saudi Arabia will for the first time allow women to attend sports events in three selected stadiums from early next year, the General Sports Authority said in a statement.

The stadiums in Jeddah, Dammam and Riyadh are being prepared to accommodate families in early 2018, said the statement carried by the state-run Saudi Press Agency late yesterday.

Last month Saudi Arabia announced that, from June, women would be allowed to drive, ending the world’s only ban on female driving.

Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman’s Vision 2030 reform programme aims to open up Saudi’s cloistered lifestyles and diversify the economy away from oil.

Read: Cars, apps and driving schools – Saudi women drivers targeted as new market

Unless otherwise stated in the article above, this work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. If the image(s) bear our credit, this license also applies to them. What does that mean? For other permissions, please contact us.