Registration underway for Saudi Arabia’s flagship camel pageant
King Abdulaziz Camel Festival to kick off in December
Cairo: Two months before its scheduled opening, the King Abdulaziz Camel Festival, one of the world’s largest in the field, has started registration for entrants.
In a motivating gesture, the Saudi Camel Club, the organiser of the annual event, has promised cuts in registration fees for camel owners who apply early to document their animals. The fees will increase as the pageant, scheduled to start in December, comes nearer.
“Seize the chance and register in the competitions of the King Abdulaziz Camel Festival in its 8th edition and benefit from reduced fees,” the club said on the X platform.
The club has called for forwarding registration applications via its platform and paying related fees.
The documentation process is linked to a database recording the camel breeds and gives owners access to electronic documents on their animals.
Each owner, applying for registration, will get a card containing all respective data on their camels.
Camels are a popular animal closely linked to heritage in Saudi Arabia.
The animal has long been dubbed the “ship of the desert”, being the lifeline for desert dwellers.
In recent years, the camel business has remarkably grown in the kingdom.
There are around 1.8 million camels with a market value of over SR50 billion in Saudi Arabia, according to official figures.
Saudi Arabia annually hosts the King Abdulaziz Camel Festival held north of Riyadh. The pageant has become a major cultural, tourist, entertainment and economic event with its competitions and concomitant activities that attract fans from the region and around the world.
Around 1.8 million fans flocked to the event in its latest edition that ran for 45 days and concluded last January, according to officials.
In June, Saudi Arabia’s first provincial camel festival, staged in the northern city of Tabuk, wrapped up with sales surpassing SR29 million. That pageant marked the first in a series planned by the Saudi Camel Club to promote the Arabian camel heritage in different parts of the kingdom.