LEAP 2026: IT Minister To Hold Key Meetings In Saudi Arabia

Riyadh is hosting one of the world’s largest technology gatherings this week, and a Pakistani delegation is among those using the event to hold a series of meetings on digital cooperation. LEAP 2026 runs from August 31 to September 3 in Malham, Riyadh, marking the summit’s fifth edition since it first launched in 2022. It’s shaping up to be the biggest yet.

What LEAP 2026 Actually Is

Organizers expect more than 250,000 attendees over the four days, alongside over 1,800 technology companies, 600 startups and more than 1,900 international investors. The event is jointly organized by Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, the Saudi Federation for Cybersecurity, Programming and Drones, and Tahaluf, an Informa company.

Attendance has climbed steadily since LEAP’s first edition drew just over 100,000 visitors in 2022. By 2025, that figure had grown to over 201,000, with more than 1,900 investors representing a combined $22 trillion in assets under management attending that edition alone. This year’s numbers suggest the event has kept growing rather than plateauing.

LEAP has also started expanding beyond Riyadh. The summit held its first event outside Saudi Arabia in Hong Kong this July, drawing over 25,000 attendees, 450 exhibitors and 600 investors, part of a broader push to position LEAP as a global brand rather than a single annual gathering.

The event’s scale reflects Saudi Arabia’s broader strategy of positioning itself as a technology hub for the region, marketed increasingly as a shift from being a technology importer to becoming an exporter, with the kingdom investing heavily in infrastructure and events designed to draw global tech companies and capital into the country.

Why This Event Draws Global Attention

What distinguishes LEAP from many regional tech conferences is the concentration of investors it attracts alongside the exhibitors. A gathering of nearly 2,000 investors in one place, several of them managing trillions of dollars in assets, creates a rare density of dealmaking opportunity that smaller or more narrowly focused conferences don’t replicate.

That combination of hundreds of startups pitching alongside major established tech firms, with investors present in large numbers, is what makes participation valuable for delegations beyond Saudi Arabia itself. Countries and companies attend not just to showcase their own technology sector but to be in the room where investment decisions get discussed.

Pakistan’s Delegation And What They’re Doing There

Federal Minister for Information Technology and Telecommunication Shaza Fatima Khawaja is leading Pakistan’s presence at the summit. She’ll attend the opening ceremony and deliver a keynote address, putting Pakistan’s IT ministry directly on the summit’s program rather than as a passive attendee.

Beyond the keynote, the minister’s schedule includes a meeting focused on the Pakistan Compute Consortium, though details on the meeting’s participants and expected outcomes haven’t been made public yet. She’s also scheduled to visit the Pakistani pavilion set up at the event, along with the pavilion belonging to Saudi Arabia’s own Ministry of Communications and Information Technology.

A separate bilateral meeting has been arranged with the Governor of the Saudi Digital Government Authority. Saudi Arabia has made substantial progress digitizing government services in recent years, and that track record has made its digital government authority a reference point other countries look to when building their own e-governance systems. The minister is also expected to hold additional meetings with other key figures during the trip, though those haven’t been detailed publicly either.

What Actually Matters Once The Summit Ends

Attending LEAP and delivering a keynote gets Pakistan’s IT ministry visibility at an event with real investor density behind it. Whether that visibility converts into anything concrete depends on what comes out of the meetings scheduled around the edges of the main program, specifically the Pakistan Compute Consortium discussion and the sit-down with the Saudi Digital Government Authority.

Those two meetings are the parts of this trip worth tracking once the summit wraps up. A keynote address and a pavilion tour are visible but largely symbolic; a compute infrastructure agreement or a digital governance cooperation framework would be the kind of outcome that actually changes something for Pakistan’s tech sector. For now, the delegation’s presence at LEAP is confirmed. What it produces beyond that remains to be seen.