Sotheby’s has announced it will hold its second auction in Saudi Arabia on January 31, 2026. The house hosted the kingdom’s first international auction in February, selling a mix of art, luxury goods, and sports memorabilia in the hyper-gentrified town of Diriyah, the original home of the Saudi royal family. It is located a stone’s throw from the capital, Riyadh. Next year’s sale—titled “Origins II”—will be in the same place and only feature art, though, as Sotheby’s tweaks its strategy to try and inject more nitro into the bidding.
Its first auction in Saudi Arabia, coined “Origins,” landed bang on mid-estimate, taking $17.3 million from 117 lots. However, 40 of those lots didn’t sell, including around half of the 28 jewelry lots and eight of the 17 bags. The overall sell-through rate was 65.8 percent. Sotheby’s is the first to admit its foray into the Middle East is a fact-finding mission, at least for now. “We are on terra nova,” Edward Gibbs, the house’s chairman of the Middle East and India, told me during lunch in Diriyah in February. Before the sale, Julian Dawes, Sotheby’s head of Impressionist and modern art in New York, said: “We’re testing the waters. This is a marathon. No matter the result, we’ll come back smarter.”
More recently, Sotheby’s head of contemporary art day sale, Ashkan Baghestani, told ARTnews that the first Saudi auction was “in many ways exploratory.”
“This is a new market for us, each auction will naturally evolve—shaped by diverse periods, genres, and sensibilities—as we continue to listen closely to our clients, both locally and across the region,” he said. “Building on the results achieved in February, this sale places a dedicated focus on fine art, reflecting the strong appetite we have seen among collectors.”
“Origins II” will feature more than 70 works by a mix of international artists, with an emphasis on Middle Eastern names. “The sale unites artworks and objects from across a broad spectrum of collecting categories, including ancient sculpture, 20th-century design and prints, Middle Eastern art, modern and contemporary works, Latin American art, and modern and contemporary South Asian art,” Sotheby’s said in a statement.
The headline lots by auction-tested, blue-chip artists include an untitled aluminium and paint sculpture from 2005 by Anish Kapoor with a high estimate of $800,000 and Andy Warhol’s Disquieting Muses (After de Chirico) (1982) silkscreen print, which has a high estimate of $1.2 million. Artists Mohammed Al Saleem (from Saudi Arabia), Mahmoud Sabri (Iraq), and Samia Halaby (Palestine) are also involved.
Middle Eastern artists sold well last time out on Diriyah’s plush Bujairi Terrace. For example, Halaby’s abstract painting almost doubled its high estimate of $200,000 and Abdulhalim Radwi’s striking untitled painting sailed past its estimate for $264,000.
“Returning to Saudi Arabia for our second auction in the kingdom is truly special, not least because it’s my home country. With memories of our first sale still fresh, we look forward to presenting an exceptional range of works to collectors and celebrating the Kingdom’s vibrant art scene on the ground,” Fahad Malloh, Sotheby’s director of business strategy, chief of staff to CEO, said in a statement.
Sotheby’s is on a mission to branch out into the Middle East; at the beginning of December it hosted Abu Dhabi Collector’s Week, a series of outdoor luxury sales in the UAE. The sales, which didn’t include any art, generated an impressive $133 million. The event was facilitated by Sotheby’s $1 billion deal with Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth fund, ADQ, which has given it a foothold in the region.
