Sharaan: AlUla's mountain-carved resort was promised for 2023 and still isn't open

In 2019 the Royal Commission for AlUla announced Sharaan, a resort by Pritzker-winning architect Jean Nouvel to be carved directly into the sandstone of a nature reserve near Hegra, Saudi Arabia's first UNESCO World Heritage Site. In October 2020 RCU was still unveiling concept designs; coverage described an exclusive 40-key resort 'scheduled for completion in 2023', and CNN reported it would be open to visitors by that year.

2023 arrived without a builder. Only on June 7, 2023 did RCU sign Bouygues Construction, in a venture with Saudi Arabia's Almabani, to manage construction, with WSP advising and Jasara running programme management. The re-scoped project would hold 38 suites plus an International Summit Centre in the adjacent mountain: 53 hospitality keys in total, excavated out of a 500-million-year-old mountain.

Then the project went quiet: the June 2023 groundbreaking remains Sharaan's most recent public milestone. As of September 2026, no opening date has been announced and the carved resort has not welcomed guests.

Six years from announcement to a signed contractor; the 2023 opening came and went, and no opening date has been announced since the June 2023 groundbreaking.

The resort was announced as an art piece — hotels carved into live rock — before anyone had priced or engineered the excavation, so the 2023 date was aspiration rather than plan.

AlUla's masterplan launched many projects at once; signature icons attract the announcements while the unglamorous work of contracting and scheduling lags behind.

For a state tourism body, dates serve the narrative — but a missed signature-project date is publicly visible forever, and the follow-up silence makes it worse.

Announcing a masterpiece before it is engineered turns an architecture story into a credibility story. In giga-project programmes, the builder's signature — not the render — is the real start date.

Sharaan's last significant update is the June 2023 groundbreaking release. As of September 2026 the resort has no announced opening date; the summit centre, glass lift and 53 keys remain unbuilt as far as any public record shows. RCU's communications have moved on to other AlUla openings and events, and the project meant to prove AlUla a 'destination built by artists' has instead become a test of whether giga-project dates mean anything.