The Future Investment Initiative returns to Riyadh for its 10th edition on October 26-29, 2026, under the theme “The Power of Legacy.” It’s a milestone year for a conference that started in 2017 as a showcase for Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s plan to diversify Saudi Arabia’s economy away from oil — and one that’s spent the years since navigating both genuine global influence and real, unresolved controversy over who chooses to show up.
What’s Actually Happening at FII10
FII10 will run at the King Abdulaziz International Conference Center in Riyadh under the patronage of King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud. The program is organized around four stated pillars: capital that builds, technology that elevates, societies that thrive, and leadership that inspires — a framing that positions this year’s conference around long-term legacy rather than any single sector or announcement cycle. The Public Investment Fund, Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, is the event’s founding partner, with Saudi Aramco and ADES listed as vision partners alongside strategic partners including NEOM and Red Sea Global. FII has consistently drawn more than 6,000 attendees in recent editions, and this year’s gathering is expected to match or exceed that scale.
The Masayoshi Son Reference, and What It’s Actually Promoting
FII’s own promotional materials for this edition point back to remarks SoftBank Group Chairman and CEO Masayoshi Son made at a previous FII conference, on the mindset required to pursue ambitious ideas and keep moving without a guaranteed outcome. Son has a long, direct relationship with the FII stage specifically — he’s participated in FII’s “Titan of Industry” speaker series in recent editions, discussing SoftBank’s AI investment strategy and the scale of the bets he believes the company needs to make. The choice to lead FII10’s own promotion with a Son quote about ambition and risk is a deliberate one: Son is arguably the highest-profile embodiment of FII’s entire pitch — a single investor willing to commit tens of billions of dollars to unproven, high-conviction ideas, for better and for worse. His own record includes both the SoftBank Vision Fund’s early, extraordinary win on Alibaba and its well-documented, multi-billion-dollar loss on WeWork — a genuinely two-sided case study in exactly the risk-taking FII is asking its own attendees to admire.
What FII Actually Is
FII isn’t a Saudi government conference in the strict sense — it’s organized by the FII Institute, with Princess Dr. Maha bint Mishari bin Abdulaziz as CEO — but it’s inseparable from the Saudi state’s broader Vision 2030 economic diversification push, and it launched specifically to project Riyadh as a global business and investment hub beyond oil. The conference has been nicknamed “Davos in the Desert” by outside media, comparing it to the World Economic Forum’s Davos summit, though FII Institute leadership has publicly pushed back on that framing — “it’s not in the desert and it’s not Davos,” in the words of one former FII official — arguing instead that it’s simply an international conference that happens to be held in Saudi Arabia.
The Controversy the Event Has Never Fully Shed
FII’s history includes a genuine, well-documented low point that’s worth stating plainly rather than glossing over. Following the October 2018 killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, more than a dozen major companies and institutions — including Google, Uber, JPMorgan Chase, Credit Suisse, HSBC, CNN, The New York Times, and the Financial Times — withdrew from that year’s conference, and Masayoshi Son himself canceled his own scheduled appearance at the time. Human rights organizations, including Freedom Forward, DAWN, and the MENA Rights Group, have continued to raise concerns in subsequent years that Saudi Arabia uses the conference’s high-profile guest list to draw international attention away from its human rights record.
That criticism hasn’t stopped the conference’s growth. Attendance and corporate participation have climbed steadily in the years since 2018, and FII8 in 2024 and FII9 in 2025 both drew large, high-profile speaker rosters, Son included. That trajectory reflects a real, ongoing tension rather than a resolved question: FII has become a genuine hub where global capital, technology leaders, and heads of state choose to convene each year, while the human rights criticism first raised in 2018 has never fully gone away either. Both facts are true at the same time, and neither should be read as canceling out the other.
From “The New Compass” to “The Power of Legacy”
FII7, held October 24-26, 2023, ran under the theme “The New Compass” and drew more than 6,000 participants from over 90 countries, with organizers reporting roughly $17.9 billion in investment commitments announced across the event. FII10’s “The Power of Legacy” framing represents a deliberate shift in emphasis — from a single conference cycle’s investment announcements toward a longer-term narrative about the choices made today shaping outcomes across generations, fitting for a 10th-anniversary edition specifically positioned as a milestone rather than just another annual gathering.
Frequently Asked Questions
When and where is FII10?
October 26-29, 2026, at the King Abdulaziz International Conference Center in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
What is FII10’s theme?
“The Power of Legacy,” organized around four pillars: capital that builds, technology that elevates, societies that thrive, and leadership that inspires.
Who funds and organizes FII?
The FII Institute organizes the conference, with Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund as founding partner and Saudi Aramco and ADES as vision partners.
Why is FII controversial?
Following journalist Jamal Khashoggi’s 2018 killing, numerous major companies and media organizations withdrew from that year’s conference, and human rights groups have continued to argue the event helps Saudi Arabia’s government draw attention away from its human rights record. Corporate and high-profile attendance has nonetheless grown substantially in the years since.
Has Masayoshi Son attended FII before?
Yes — Son has appeared in FII’s “Titan of Industry” speaker series in recent editions, discussing SoftBank’s AI investment strategy, though he canceled his planned 2018 appearance following the Khashoggi killing.
The Bottom Line
FII10 arrives as a genuine milestone for a conference that’s grown from a 2017 economic-diversification showcase into one of the world’s largest annual gatherings of investors, heads of state, and technology leaders — while carrying real, still-live controversy from its 2018 low point rather than having fully moved past it. Both the scale of this year’s “Power of Legacy” program and the human rights criticism that first emerged eight years ago will likely define how FII10 gets covered — not as competing narratives that cancel each other out, but as two facts about the same event that are both still true.
