Saudi Arabia national football team: the full squad and key players, and why 25 of the 26 play at home

Georgios Donis named 26 players for the 2026 World Cup, and 25 of them earn their living inside Saudi Arabia. That is not a quirk of one squad list. It is the shape of Saudi football, and it has barely moved through three years in which the Saudi Pro League became the loudest buyer in the transfer market.

The squad below is the one Donis took to North America, with caps and goals correct to 26 June 2026 and clubs updated through the summer transfer window. Saudi Arabia are back in action on 23 September, when they host the Arabian Gulf Cup in Jeddah.

The full Saudi Arabia squad

Twenty-six players, 975 caps and 99 international goals between them. The average age is 28, the youngest is Musab Al-Juwayr at 23, and the oldest is reserve goalkeeper Ahmed Al-Kassar at 35.

No	Player	Position	Age	Caps	Goals	Club
21	Mohammed Al-Owais	Goalkeeper	34	68	0	Al-Hilal
1	Nawaf Al-Aqidi	Goalkeeper	26	24	0	Al-Nassr
22	Ahmed Al-Kassar	Goalkeeper	35	9	0	Al-Qadsiah
12	Saud Abdulhamid	Defender	26	58	1	Lens
5	Hassan Al-Tambakti	Defender	27	57	1	Al-Hilal
4	Abdulelah Al-Amri	Defender	29	47	2	Al-Nassr
13	Nawaf Boushal	Defender	26	29	0	Al-Nassr
3	Ali Lajami	Defender	30	27	1	Al-Hilal
2	Ali Majrashi	Defender	26	21	0	Al-Ahli
14	Hassan Kadesh	Defender	33	21	2	Al-Ittihad
24	Moteb Al-Harbi	Defender	26	16	0	Al-Hilal
26	Mohammed Abu Al-Shamat	Defender	23	11	0	Al-Qadsiah
25	Jehad Thakri	Defender	24	8	0	Al-Qadsiah
10	Salem Al-Dawsari	Midfielder	34	114	27	Al-Hilal
23	Mohamed Kanno	Midfielder	31	82	8	Al-Hilal
6	Nasser Al-Dawsari	Midfielder	27	50	1	Al-Hilal
15	Abdullah Al-Khaibari	Midfielder	29	45	0	Al-Nassr
7	Musab Al-Juwayr	Midfielder	23	40	6	Al-Qadsiah
8	Ayman Yahya	Midfielder	25	26	0	Al-Nassr
16	Ziyad Al-Johani	Midfielder	24	12	0	Al-Ahli
20	Sultan Mandash	Midfielder	31	8	2	Al-Hilal
18	Alaa Al-Hejji	Midfielder	30	5	0	Neom
9	Firas Al-Buraikan	Forward	26	75	16	Al-Ahli
11	Saleh Al-Shehri	Forward	32	59	19	Al-Ittihad
19	Abdullah Al-Hamdan	Forward	26	55	13	Al-Nassr
17	Khalid Al-Ghannam	Forward	25	8	0	Al-Ettifaq

Nine of the 26 have passed 50 caps and seven are still under 15, which is a sharper split than it first looks. There is a senior core that has been together since the 2022 World Cup, a tail of squad players with almost no international football, and very little in between.

Eight clubs, and 24 of them changed hands in the same week

The 26 come from eight clubs. Al-Hilal supply eight and Al-Nassr six, so more than half the squad works at two addresses in Riyadh. Add Al-Ittihad and Al-Ahli, both in Jeddah, and 19 of the 26 come from four clubs in two cities.

Club	Players	New owner, June 2023
Al-Hilal	8	Public Investment Fund
Al-Nassr	6	Public Investment Fund
Al-Qadsiah	4	Saudi Aramco
Al-Ahli	3	Public Investment Fund
Al-Ittihad	2	Public Investment Fund
Lens	1	Not applicable, French club
Neom	1	NEOM Company
Al-Ettifaq	1	Not in the 2023 programme

The interesting column is the third one. On 5 June 2023 Saudi Arabia launched its Sports Clubs Investment and Privatisation Project, and the Public Investment Fund took 75 per cent of Al-Hilal, Al-Nassr, Al-Ittihad and Al-Ahli. Four more clubs went to other state-linked backers the same day: Al-Qadsiah to Saudi Aramco, Al-Ula to the Royal Commission for AlUla, Al-Diriyah to the Diriyah Gate Development Authority, and the club now known as Neom to the NEOM Company.

Nineteen of Donis’s 26 play for one of the four PIF clubs. Add Al-Qadsiah’s four and Neom’s one and it reaches 24. Only two of the squad sit outside the 2023 programme: Khalid Al-Ghannam at Al-Ettifaq, and Saud Abdulhamid.

It is worth being careful about what that does and does not show. It does not mean the money produced these players, most of whom were internationals before 2023. What it does mean is that the national team draws almost entirely from a small set of clubs with the same kind of backing, which is a different proposition from a squad scattered across a dozen leagues.

Saud Abdulhamid, the one who left

Abdulhamid is the exception, and he is also the player at the highest level. Lens exercised their buy option on 4 June 2026 and signed him permanently until 2029, after a loan from Roma in which he became a regular for a side that finished second in Ligue 1 with 70 points, behind only Paris Saint-Germain. He is 26 and has 58 caps.

The comparison with Qatar sharpens it. Qatar were the only other side at this World Cup to draw 25 of their 26 from a single domestic league, and their one overseas player, left-back Homam Ahmed, was at Cultural Leonesa in Spain. Leonesa were relegated and now play in the third tier, and Ahmed moved on loan to Valladolid in the second on 20 August. Saudi Arabia’s overseas player is at a club that will be in the Champions League. One export is not a pipeline, but the quality of it is not nothing either.

Salem Al-Dawsari and the senior core

Al-Dawsari is the captain, the only centurion in the squad, and its leading scorer. His 27 goals put him eighth on Saudi Arabia’s all-time list, one behind Mohammad Al-Sahlawi and Khaled Al-Muwallid on 28 and a long way behind Majed Abdullah’s record 72. He is the only player in that top ten still playing. On 114 caps he is 11th all-time, four short of Mohammad Al-Shalhoub and the top ten.

Behind him the experience sits with a handful of names. Vice-captain Mohamed Kanno has 82 caps. Firas Al-Buraikan has 75 and 16 goals, Mohammed Al-Owais 68 in goal, Saleh Al-Shehri 59 with 19 goals, Abdulhamid 58 and Hassan Al-Tambakti 57. Al-Owais spent last season at Al-Ula and rejoined Al-Hilal this summer on a two-year deal, returning to the club he had left in 2025. He turns 35 on 10 October, four days after the Gulf Cup final.

Two names further down are worth watching. Al-Juwayr already has 40 caps and six goals at 23, which makes him the most established young player in the squad by a distance. Al-Ghannam has only eight caps, but he scored 13 goals and set up 10 more for Al-Ettifaq last season, and Al-Ittihad have been in talks to sign him.

What happened at the 2026 World Cup

Saudi Arabia went out in the group stage for the sixth time in seven appearances, and did it without losing to anyone except Spain, who went on to beat Argentina in the final.

Group H	P	W	D	L	GF	GA	Pts
Spain	3	2	1	0	5	0	7
Cape Verde	3	0	3	0	2	2	3
Uruguay	3	0	2	1	3	4	2
Saudi Arabia	3	0	2	1	1	5	2

They drew 1-1 with Uruguay in Miami Gardens on 15 June, Abdulelah Al-Amri scoring in the 41st minute and Maximiliano Araújo levelling on 80. They lost 4-0 to Spain in Atlanta on 21 June, with Lamine Yamal and a Mikel Oyarzabal double doing the damage inside 25 minutes before Al-Tambakti turned the fourth into his own net. Then they drew 0-0 with Cape Verde in Houston on 26 June.

Two things stand out. Saudi Arabia finished level on points with Uruguay and were separated only by goal difference, and the four conceded in Atlanta is the whole of that gap. And of the two goals their players put in a net across the three matches, one went in at the right end and one at the wrong one, both scored by a centre-back. The team scored once in three games.

Saudi Arabia’s World Cup record

This was their seventh finals, and an eighth is already secured, because they host the tournament in 2034 and qualify automatically.

Year	Result	Finish	P	W	D	L	GF	GA
1994	Round of 16	12th of 24	4	2	0	2	5	6
1998	Group stage	28th of 32	3	0	1	2	2	7
2002	Group stage	32nd of 32	3	0	0	3	0	12
2006	Group stage	28th of 32	3	0	1	2	2	7
2018	Group stage	26th of 32	3	1	0	2	2	7
2022	Group stage	25th of 32	3	1	0	2	3	5
2026	Group stage	38th of 48	3	0	2	1	1	5

Across 22 World Cup matches Saudi Arabia have won four, drawn four and lost 14, scoring 15 and conceding 49. The 1994 run in the United States is still the high point and nothing since has come close: on their debut they beat Belgium 1-0 in Washington through Saeed Al-Owairan’s 69-metre solo goal, reached the last 16 and lost 3-1 to Sweden.

The 2026 finish looks like their lowest yet by placement alone, since 48 teams competed against 2002’s 32. But 2002 remains the true low point: Saudi Arabia finished bottom of that entire tournament, shipping 12 goals in three games. A group-stage exit in a much bigger field is a lower ranking and a better campaign. The single goal is a different matter. It is genuinely their second-lowest return at any World Cup, beaten only by the nothing they managed in 2002, and 2026 is the only one of the seven in which they drew twice.

Next up: the Gulf Cup in Jeddah

The 27th Arabian Gulf Cup runs from 23 September to 6 October, hosted by Saudi Arabia in Jeddah, with matches at King Abdullah Sports City Stadium and Prince Abdullah Al Faisal Stadium. Eight teams take part: Bahrain, Iraq, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Yemen. The hosts are in Group A with Iraq, Oman and Kuwait, and Qatar are in the other group alongside Bahrain, the UAE and Yemen.

Donis was appointed on 24 April 2026, seven weeks before the World Cup started, and signed through to July 2027, which takes in the 2027 Asian Cup. The 56-year-old Greek had never managed a national side before, though he knows the country well: he was at Al-Khaleej when the job came up, and he won the King’s Cup with Al-Hilal. Jeddah is the first tournament he has had a proper run-up to, and it is a home one.

A fresh squad is due before it starts, and the names below the senior core may change. For a sense of how differently a squad list can look, South Korea took their 26 to the same World Cup from 14 national leagues and Japan from 10. Saudi Arabia used two.

Browse the rest of our national team squad guides