NEOM, the futuristic megaproject being developed by Saudi Arabia in the country’s northwest, has terminated Webuild’s contract for the Connector High-Speed Line, a high-speed rail line that was to link OXAGON to the linear city THE LINE. The decision comes at a time when international media are reporting that Saudi Arabia is postponing and scaling back some of NEOM’s most spectacular components, including the linear city THE LINE.

According to new reports, Saudi Arabia has decided to postpone any major additional work on THE LINE until at least after 2030. Meanwhile, NEOM appears to be evolving from a desert utopia into an industrial, energy and digital platform.

A decade ago, the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia Mohammed bin Salman – or MBS as he is widely known – decreed a revisioning of his country that leapt from the realm of science fiction. It was called Vision 2030. Extraordinary monolithic structures were to help bring forth new technological marvels not just for the Kingdom but for the world.

DataVolt committed $5 billion to NEOM's OXAGON in February 2025, when the Strait of Hormuz was carrying ninety-five tanker transits a day and a Red Sea industrial port looked like the least necessary thing Saudi Arabia could build. Twelve months later, Hormuz carries approximately 3.6 per cent of its pre-war commercial traffic, NEOM has cancelled more than $8.45 billion in contracts elsewhere, and OXAGON - the unglamorous, logistics-first zone that never featured in the drone footage - is the only part of the megaproject whose commercial thesis the war has strengthened rather than destroyed.

In 2025, Saudi Arabia welcomed 122 to 123 million domestic and international tourists, generating SAR 300 billion (approximately 81 billion U.S. dollars) in tourism spending — a number that decisively eclipsed the original 2030 targets set when Vision 2030 was first announced. The Red Sea destination alone welcomed more than 50,000 visitors and recorded 533 million dollars in residential sales.

Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 initiative is channelling over $900 billion through the Public Investment Fund into real estate and infrastructure projects, marking one of the largest state-backed property development programmes globally.

NEOM advances contracts to excavate 2 tunnels of 28 kilometers each in the futuristic Saudi megacity THE LINE of $500 billion The Saudi project NEOM advanced in May 2026 contracts for excavation by drill & blast method of 2 tunnels approximately 28 kilometers each, dedicated to high-speed rail and freight services, as announced by Limak.

Saudi Arabia is driving travel and tourism growth across the Middle East, according to the World Travel and Tourism Council's (WTTC) 2025 economic impact report.

A March 25, 2026, update from the contractor on the TROJENA site says the project owner, NEOM, has ended the deal to build three dams and a linked structure called “The Bow.” The notice took effect March 29, with the work described as about 30 percent complete. The contractor said the remaining backlog was about €2.8 billion, or roughly $3.2 billion, and that termination and shutdown costs will be reimbursed under the contract. The contract was announced in January 2024 as a roughly $4.7 billion effort to create a freshwater lake about 1.7 miles long in the mountains of TROJENA.