Mindsets, a leading investment and advisory firm, today announced that its client, the city of Hail, has secured 33rd place among 148 cities worldwide in the IMD Smart City Index 2026. The milestone marks Hail’s first-ever entry into one of the world’s most authoritative urban development benchmarks and positions the city alongside established global capitals as a model for citizen-centered smart city development.
Working as a strategic advisor to the Municipality of Hail, Mindsets developed an integrated smart city framework aligned with the evaluation dimensions of the IMD Smart City Index: health and safety, mobility, activities, opportunities, and governance. The framework unified the city’s diverse modernization initiatives within a single strategic architecture, enabling clearer prioritization, stronger institutional coordination, and performance measurement tied directly to citizens’ lived experience.
The achievement is particularly notable given Hail’s profile. A mid-sized city of approximately 500,000 residents in northern Saudi Arabia, Hail is historically celebrated as the cradle of Arab generosity and home to the UNESCO World Heritage Rock Art site spanning nearly 10,000 years. Its emergence among the world’s top-ranked smart cities demonstrates that innovation-led urban transformation is not exclusive to mega-cities—a narrative with powerful implications for sustainable development across the GCC and emerging markets.
Under the Mindsets framework, Hail’s transformation has consistently placed residents at its center. The city has advanced digital municipal services, strengthened healthcare and public safety systems, expanded economic opportunity, and invested in environmental sustainability. The strategic architecture translates these efforts into an interconnected operating model with defined performance indicators, ensuring that progress is visible, accountable, and aligned with international evaluation standards.
The ranking reinforces Saudi Arabia’s accelerating presence on the global smart city stage and aligns directly with the objectives of Saudi Vision 2030, particularly the Quality of Life Program’s mandate to develop livable, vibrant cities across every region of the Kingdom.
“Hail’s achievement represents precisely the kind of impact we set out to enable—a city where strategic clarity meets disciplined execution, and where every initiative is measured against the standard that matters most: whether residents’ lives are genuinely improving. Ranking 33rd globally is not merely a number; it is proof that mid-sized cities with the right vision and the right framework can compete on the world stage. The credit belongs to the Municipality’s leadership and the people of Hail.”
— Dr. Rayan Khraibani, CEO, Mindsets
Hail now joins Riyadh, Makkah, Jeddah, Madinah, Al-Khobar, and AlUla among Saudi cities featured in the IMD Smart City Index, underscoring the Kingdom’s deepening footprint on the global smart city landscape. Mindsets continues to expand its urban transformation advisory practice across the GCC, bringing the same integrated methodology to cities seeking measurable, citizen-centered outcomes on the international stage.
