Diriyah Art Futures (DAF), the MENA region’s first New Media and Digital Arts hub, has announced an open call for the second edition of its pioneering Emerging New Media Artists programme – an ambitious, fully supported year-long initiative designed to empower the next generation of new media and digital artists. Based in the historic city of Diriyah, just outside Riyadh, the programme will welcome its second cohort in October 2025.

Developed in collaboration with France’s Le Fresnoy – Studio National des Arts Contemporains, the programme offers a rare convergence of theory, mentorship, technological immersion and production. Open to artists aged 35 and under with a graduate or postgraduate background in new media or digital art, the call is a beacon for emerging creatives across Saudi Arabia, the wider MENA region, and beyond.

As Saudi Arabia accelerates its investment in culture and innovation, Diriyah Art Futures stands as a cornerstone – preserving the past and prototyping the future. Set against a UNESCO World Heritage Site backdrop, the DAF campus is more than just a home for experimentation; it’s a space for collective reimagining, where art merges with science, and technological practices engage urgent questions around climate, identity, migration, and intelligence.

The inaugural cohort, launched in November 2024, featured twelve artists from eleven countries, all exploring the boundaries of immersive realities, machine learning, spatial sound and post-internet aesthetics. The year will culminate in a curated exhibition showcasing DAF’s vision, scale, and ambition – inviting a new wave of artists to step into the fold.

A curriculum that engages the moment

Structured across one academic year, the programme begins with three months of thematic and conceptual exploration shaped by international artists and theorists. Through lectures, screenings and seminars, participants engage in topics such as climate crisis, post-colonial critique, materiality and the body, artificial systems and intelligence, and regional modernities in contemporary art.

This initial phase is designed to expand how artists think about technology – moving beyond tools and aesthetics to consider new media’s capacity for reflection and reinvention.

From concept to creation

The next six months are hands-on. Artists will work under leading mentors’ guidance to develop projects supported by access to DAF’s state-of-the-art labs. Facilities include immersive reality studios, advanced audiovisual equipment, machine learning tools, spatial computing platforms, and more.

Artists can also work within dedicated thematic tracks such as Humans and Artificial Intelligence, Reality and Artificial Reality, and Sound, Cinema and Immersive Creation, each encouraging different forms of experimentation, collaboration, and critique.

Whether engaging in the politics of code, questioning synthetic environments, or composing new sonic architectures, each participant will be asked to consider what they create and how it intervenes in our shared digital futures.

The outcome: a public exhibition

At the programme’s close, artists will exhibit their works at Diriyah Art Futures in a curated showcase. This final exhibition will serve as a culmination and a public-facing invitation to engage with the new ideas, forms and technologies shaped by this rising generation of digital artists.

Who should apply?

Applications are open to artists aged 35 or younger with experience creating new media or digital art. Ideal candidates are recent graduates or postgraduates who demonstrate a strong conceptual practice and a willingness to engage in interdisciplinary thinking. The programme has a global outlook and welcomes international applications, with a strong emphasis on nurturing voices from Saudi Arabia and the wider MENA region.

The deadline for submissions and full application criteria are available online here.

A space for speculation, collaboration and invention

More than just a residency or training course, the Emerging New Media Artists Programme is a proposition for what art can be in a technologically saturated world. It champions the idea that creativity – when paired with critical inquiry and cutting-edge tools – can offer new aesthetics and new ways of seeing, sensing and shaping the future.

For those ready to move beyond traditional forms and explore the poetic and philosophical potential of emergent creative mediums, Diriyah Art Futures offers the stage, the tools, and the vision.

daf.moc.gov.sa