In the old town of AlUla there is a sundial. Residents used it to mark the start of the agricultural season and the arrival of Al-Marba’aniyah, the coldest stretch of the year — the point at which planting begins. It is called a tantora, and the largest festival in Saudi Arabia’s cultural calendar is named after it.
That is not decorative naming. Winter at Tantora runs in exactly the weeks the sundial marks, because those are the weeks AlUla is habitable in the middle of the day and the weeks the oasis has always come alive. The festival did not choose a slot in the market. It inherited one.
Source: Experience AlUla
The dates
17 December 2026 to 9 January 2027, as published by Experience AlUla — twenty-four nights spanning both the Christmas week and the new year, which is deliberate and which is also why the good rooms go first.
The Royal Commission for AlUla revived a public Tantora Ceremony at the sundial itself in December 2025, staged on the day the old calendar marks. If you can time your arrival to it, do; it is the one moment in the program where the festival explains itself.
Source: Experience AlUla
The venues, and what each is for
Maraya carries the headline concerts. It is the mirror-clad hall in the Ashar Valley, and it holds the Guinness record for the largest mirrored building in the world — 9,740 square metres of mirrored surface. Seeing a performance in it is the single strongest argument for coming in this window rather than any other.
Shorfat Tantora, in the AlJadidah district beside the Old Town, runs rooftop and balcony performances — smaller, closer, and the better room if you dislike arenas.
AlManshiyah Plaza hosts the AlManshiyah Carnival: games, family programming, weekend crowds. It is the least interesting part of the festival and the most useful if you are traveling with children.
AlUla Old Town runs Old Town Nights at the fort and the Old Town Culinary Voyage. Dinner inside a twelfth-century mudbrick settlement is a better evening than dinner in a hotel, and it is the one booking people forget to make.
Who has played it
The first edition, from December 2018, opened with Andrea Bocelli, Yanni and the violinist Renaud Capuçon — a statement about ambition rather than about taste. The program has since moved decisively towards Arab headline acts. The 2025-26 edition ran Wael Kfoury at Maraya on 19 December, Ahlam on 26 December, Assala Nasri and Adam on New Year’s Eve, and Elissa closing at Maraya on 9 January.
That shift is the more interesting story. A festival that opened by importing European names now sells out on regional ones, which is a different and healthier proposition than the one it started with.
Where it sits in the year
Winter at Tantora is one of five festivals in the AlUla Moments calendar, and the flagship. AZIMUTH runs in September, the Wellness Festival in late October, Ancient Kingdoms from late November into December, and the Arts and Skies festivals from January into February. Tantora sits in the middle and takes the two weeks everyone wants.
If your dates are flexible and your priority is the landscape rather than the program, the shoulders on either side are quieter and materially easier to book. If your priority is the program, this is the fortnight.
Source: Experience AlUla
Where you stay during it
Eight hotels are open in AlUla, and they behave very differently in this fortnight. Dar Tantora, the thirty candlelit mudbrick houses inside the Old Town, is the only one within walking distance of the Shorfat Tantora performances and the Old Town program — which in a festival built around the old town is not a small advantage.
The Ashar Valley properties — Banyan Tree and Our Habitas — put you fifteen minutes from Maraya and in the landscape rather than the settlement. The Chedi Hegra puts you inside the World Heritage site, and furthest from the festival, which is the right trade if the archaeology is the trip and the concerts are the bonus.
All of them sell out for the New Year week. All of them have availability in the third week of December, which is the same festival with fewer people in it.
Booking, in the correct order
Fix the performance first. AlUla has eight hotels and roughly a dozen flights a week, and the constrained resource is neither of those — it is a seat at Maraya on the night you want. Ticketing is announced through Experience AlUla ahead of each edition; there is no standing price list, and the release is worth watching for rather than assuming.
Then the flight. AlUla’s airport runs on frequencies rather than daily services — a handful a week from Riyadh and Jeddah, and a small number of international connections — so the aircraft, not the hotel, sets the shape of the trip.
Then the room, which is the only element with genuine slack. Booking in the usual order produces a trip where you are in AlUla during Tantora and at none of it.
Read also: AlUla: the guide.
Getting there
AlUla has its own airport, ULH, three hours by road from Medina and three from Tabuk. Saudia and flynas fly it domestically from Riyadh, Jeddah and Dammam; flydubai and Qatar Airways connect it internationally from Dubai and Doha. Everything runs on weekly frequencies rather than daily services.
In festival season,n that schedule is the binding constraint on the whole trip, and the fix when the dates do not agree is the drive from Medina — three hours through the Hejaz, and not a punishment.
What it costs you to come in this window
Everything is fuller, and everything is dearer, and the compensation is that the sites stay open late and the valley has something happening in it most evenings. Out of season you get the same landscape and an empty program, which for some travelers is the better trade and should be said plainly.
The test is simple. If you would go to AlUla for the rocks alone, go in November or February and enjoy the quiet. If you want the place at full volume, this is the fortnight, and you should be booking it now rather than in October.
Read also: AlUla has a season, and it is only four months long
One more thing
The sundial still works. It is not a monument to a way of keeping time; it is an object that told a town when to plant, in a valley that has been continuously inhabited for thousands of years, and it is standing in the Old Town where it always was.
A festival named after it, running in the weeks it marks, is a considerably more honest piece of cultural programming than most of what the Gulf produces. It is also a very good three nights.
Featured Image Source: Experience AlUla
