{"id":129424,"date":"2025-01-06T18:04:35","date_gmt":"2025-01-06T23:04:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/?p=129424"},"modified":"2025-01-06T18:04:35","modified_gmt":"2025-01-06T23:04:35","slug":"wwe-announces-2026-royal-rumble-to-saudi-arabia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/2025\/01\/06\/wwe-announces-2026-royal-rumble-to-saudi-arabia\/","title":{"rendered":"WWE Royal Rumble Leaving North America in 2026 for First-Time Ever"},"content":{"rendered":"

The 2025 Royal Rumble<\/a> is just a few weeks away, but today, it is the upcoming 2026 edition making headlines as WWE announced plans to bring the Royal Rumble to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The event marks the first time in its nearly 40-year history that the rumble will be held outside of North America.<\/p>\n

WWE Bringing Royal Rumble to Saudi Arabia in 2026<\/h2>\n

WWE, in partnership with The General Entertainment Authority, announced the news\u00a0 of WWE bringing Royal Rumble to Saudi Arabia in a joint press release on Monday, January 6th. The release reads in part<\/a>:<\/p>\n

In a statement, HE Turki Alalshikh said, \u201cSaudi Arabia\u2019s hosting of the Royal Rumble for the first time outside North America reflects the General Entertainment Authority\u2019s ongoing commitment to bringing the world\u2019s largest and most important entertainment events to the Kingdom. Through this partnership with WWE, we aim to enhance the entertainment sector and deliver a transformative experience that attracts a wide audience.\u201d<\/p>\n

He added, \u201cWe are excited to see this historic event as part of Riyadh Season\u2019s activities and look forward to providing an exceptional experience for wrestling fans from around the world, whom we welcome to all events hosted in Saudi Arabia.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWWE is a global enterprise and it only made sense to expand our relationship with the Kingdom by bringing one of our biggest annual events to Riyadh in January of 2026,\u201d said Nick Khan, WWE President.<\/p>\n

The announcement of Royal Rumble being held in Riyadh in 2026 marks a continued expansion to the successful partnership between WWE and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia which has already seen record-breaking events including\u00a0Crown Jewel,\u00a0Elimination Chamber,\u00a0King & Queen of the Ring,\u00a0Night of Champions,\u00a0SmackDown\u00a0and\u00a0Monday Night RAW.<\/p>\n

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About Last Word on Pro Wrestling<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Featured Image, Credit: WWE<\/em><\/div>\n
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Stay tuned to the Last Word on Pro Wrestling for more on this and other stories from around the world of wrestling, as they develop. You can always count on LWOPW to be on top of the major news in the wrestling world, as well as to provide you with analysis, previews, videos, interviews, and editorials on the wrestling world.<\/div>\n
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You can check out WWE programming on Netflix (Raw), USA Network (SmackDown), CW (NXT), and Peacock (archives and premium live event streaming). You can follow WWE on social media and relive top moments on YouTube.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The 2025 Royal Rumble is just a few weeks away, but today, it is the upcoming 2026 edition making headlines as WWE announced plans to bring the Royal Rumble to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The event marks the first time in its nearly 40-year history that the rumble will be held outside of North America. WWE […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2418,"featured_media":129425,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2,12,2192,4,3,320],"tags":[9119,9121,397,9120,7214],"class_list":["post-129424","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-news","category-wrestling","category-wwe","category-wwe-universe","category-wwe-women","tag-2026-royal-rumble","tag-premium-live-events","tag-royal-rumble","tag-saudia-arabia","tag-wwe-royal-rumble"],"modified_by":"Marilee Gallagher, Manager","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129424","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2418"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=129424"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129424\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":129426,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129424\/revisions\/129426"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/129425"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=129424"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=129424"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=129424"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}