One Of Our Goals Is Ensuring The Next Generations Have Opportunities We Didn’t’: Q’s With Mazen Khamis, MDLBEAST

MDLBEAST has been leading the live entertainment surge in Saudi Arabia. Its flagship event, Soundstorm Festival in Riyadh, has established itself as the Middle East’s biggest contemporary music festival is seven short years, attracting some 500,000 visitors across three days, Dec. 11-13, 2025.

MDLBEAST also operates the 12,000-cap Onyx Arena in Jedda, which celebrated a very successful first year in operation, according to Mazen Khamis, Executive Director of Marketing, commercial, and products at MDLBEAST, who also talked about MDLBEAST’s ongoing expansion, its other events, including 1001 and Balad Beast, as well as the company’s initiatives to foster homegrown talent on and off stage.

Pollstar: How was Soundstorm 2025? Any new additions or major changes you’ve introduced to the festival, the site, or the production this year?
Mazen Khamis: 2025 is a very exciting year for us at Soundstorm because we’ve completely redesigned the festival grounds. We introduced 14 stages, which is 6 more than the 8 stages we had in previous years. At the center this year was Downtown, a dynamic playground for all things food and fashion. From here, visitors were be able to go to our four districts; North, East, South, and West, with each district distinguished by its unique style and beats.

How many tickets did you sell for the 2025 edition? And how big is the demand for VIP/premium offers in Saudi?
In the past year’s we’ve had about 450,000 visitors over the weekend at Soundstorm and this year we welcomed around 500,000 visitors. Every year we of course hope to surpass the previous edition. We’ve seen a high demand for VIB/premium in the past years, which is why this year we introduced a more refined and immersive premium experience. VIB offered elevated access, private group spaces, and new viewing options.

How’s business been at Onyx Arena? Are you happy with its first year-and-a-half in operation?
We’ve had an amazing summer season at Onyx! We managed to bring so many regional and international artists to Jeddah like Bayou, The Black Eyed Peas, Central Cee, Metro Boomin, and many more. It was an ambitious project for us to pull off so many shows in a row in what is essentially a stadium scale production, and we couldn’t be happier with the feedback and turnout we received from both the audience and the artists that performed. We also won Best Event Venue at this year’s Saudi Event Awards for Onyx Arena which is a great recognition of the work we’ve all been putting into this.

How’s the Generation Beasts internship program developing?
It’s been great to see students immerse themselves in MDLBEAST and in our various projects. One of our main goals in developing our industry is ensuring the next generations have the opportunities we didn’t have growing up, and education plays a key role in this. Showing them all the possibilities, they have to work in the music and entertainment industry and familiarizing them is a great opportunity for us to make sure we build a sustainable future for our industry.

What is MDLBEAST’s vision for the wider Saudi region outside of Riyadh? Are you planning on expanding your scope at all? Which areas, territories do you have in mind?
We already are! Our flagship events currently take place in Riyadh which are Soundstorm and XP Music Futures, we also have our flagship in Jeddah with Balad Beast, We have also done events in AlUla which are always amazing in such a beautiful setting, so we are not only focusing on Riyadh, we definitely have the whole country in mind for the next stages of our development. We also have venues in Riyadh like Beast House. This is something we’d like to expand to other cities in the Kingdom.

How did the premiere edition of 1001 go? What makes this event special, and will it return?
1001 is unlike any other festival. The name of the festival speaks for itself, and that’s something we really reflected in the production and stage design, which visitors absolutely loved. We already have many new ideas we can’t wait to unveil for the next edition.

Anything you’d like to add?
At MDLBEAST, we’re especially excited about the pipeline of homegrown, fully transportable IPs that we’ve been developing concepts that don’t just live in Saudi Arabia, but are designed to travel and scale globally. Starting in 2026, you’ll start seeing a new wave of immersive cultural, music, and live-experience brands launching from Riyadh and other cities across the Kingdom, each built with the creative depth, production quality, and cultural authenticity that define MDLBEAST.

These new IPs reflect our long-term vision: to export Saudi creativity to the world, to champion regional talent on global stages, and to reimagine what live entertainment can look like when storytelling, technology, and culture come together at scale. We’re building experiences that are born here but belong everywhere.

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