Middle East Gaming Statistics 2026: MENA Market Size, Players, Spending & How Gamers Pay (Data Report)

The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) is one of the fastest-growing gaming regions on earth — young, mobile-first, highly connected, and increasingly the centre of global esports thanks to record-breaking events in Riyadh. As a digital gift card store headquartered in Dubai, Virtwave sits right in the middle of this market, and we are asked the same questions constantly: how big is gaming in the Gulf, how much do players spend, and how do people pay for games in a region where a large share of consumers are unbanked? This report pulls together the most reliable recent figures on MENA gaming for 2026 and pairs them with what they mean for digital payments and gift cards. Every figure is attributed, and the full source list is at the bottom so you can verify and cite it.

Key takeaways at a glance

• The wider MENA games market reached roughly $7.1 billion in 2025, growing about 7.5% year on year — outpacing the global average, according to Newzoo.
• The MENA-3 markets (Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Egypt) generated about $2.0 billion in games revenue in 2024 and are forecast at roughly $2.2 billion for 2025, per Niko Partners — with Saudi Arabia alone accounting for roughly 59% of that spend.
• The UAE has one of the highest gaming spends per player in the world — an estimated ARPU of about $84.6, ahead of Saudi Arabia ($54.89) and far ahead of Egypt ($3.39).
• Women now make up over 37% of gamers in MENA-3, a major shift in a region that historically skewed more than 80% male.
• Around two-thirds of the MENA population is unbanked or underbanked, which is why prepaid cards, carrier billing and gift cards — not credit cards — dominate how the region pays for games.

How big is the MENA games market in 2026?

There is no single agreed figure for “the Middle East games market” because every research house draws the map differently. Newzoo, which tracks the wider MENA region, put it at around $7.1 billion for 2025 and called it one of the fastest-growing markets globally. Niko Partners focuses on consumer spend in the three leading markets — Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Egypt — and lands closer to $2 billion. Others measure only the Gulf, or include all of Africa. The table below shows several of the most-cited 2024–2026 estimates side by side rather than forcing them into one number.

Saudi Arabia, the UAE & Egypt: the MENA-3 split

Within the region, three markets do most of the heavy lifting. Niko Partners’ MENA-3 framework tracks Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Egypt together because they represent the bulk of formal games spending. Saudi Arabia is the giant by total spend, the UAE is the highest-value market per player, and Egypt is the largest by raw player count but the lowest by spend per head — a classic high-volume, low-ARPU mobile market.

How many gamers are in the Middle East?

The player base is large and getting larger. Newzoo counts roughly 595 million players across the wider Middle East & Africa (MEA) bloc — about 16% of the global gaming population, making it the second-largest region behind Asia-Pacific. Narrowing to the three core markets, Niko Partners counted about 72 million gamers in MENA-3 at the end of 2024 and projects that will climb to roughly 84.3 million by 2029. The region’s median age is young and smartphone penetration is high, which is why growth here outpaces mature Western markets.

Who plays: the rise of female gamers

One of the most striking shifts in the region is who is playing. MENA gaming was long assumed to be overwhelmingly male — historically more than 80% — but that picture has changed fast. Niko Partners now puts women at over 37% of gamers in MENA-3, and forecasts that women will make up more than 40% of players across the combined Asia & MENA region in the coming years. Engagement is high across the board: gamers in the region play an average of about 10.8 hours a week, and sports simulators are the single most popular genre.

Esports & the Saudi investment story

No account of MENA gaming is complete without Saudi Arabia’s state-backed push into the industry. Through the Public Investment Fund (PIF) and its gaming arm, Savvy Games Group, the kingdom announced a strategy to invest roughly $38 billion in gaming as part of Vision 2030, aiming to make Saudi Arabia a global games hub. The clearest public expression of that ambition is the Esports World Cup in Riyadh: its 2025 edition ran with a record prize pool of more than $70 million across dozens of tournaments — the largest in esports history.

How MENA gamers actually pay

Here is the part most global gaming reports miss. In many MENA markets, the credit card is not the default — by various industry estimates around two-thirds of the population is unbanked or underbanked, and cash-on-delivery remains common even as governments push cashless targets. That reality shapes how people buy games and top up wallets: prepaid cards, mobile carrier billing and digital gift cards do the work credit cards do elsewhere. This is exactly why gift cards are not a niche in the region — they are core payment infrastructure for gaming.

What this means for gift cards

Put the pieces together and the picture is clear: a fast-growing, young, mobile-first player base; high spend per head in the Gulf; and a payment landscape where prepaid value beats plastic. That is a near-perfect environment for digital gift cards. They let players in Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt and beyond top up the platforms they already use without a credit card, in their own currency, delivered to an inbox in seconds.

Methodology & sources

This report is a meta-analysis: we compile published figures from specialist games-research firms, market-research houses and industry payment analyses, and we flag where estimates differ rather than averaging them into a single number. “MENA-3” refers to Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Egypt as defined by Niko Partners. Where a figure is a forecast we label it “projected.” Revenue figures are consumer spend / market revenue as reported by each source; payment figures are directional industry estimates. All figures were current as of June 2026 and cross-checked against our own regional transaction patterns at Virtwave.

How to cite this report

Researchers, journalists and bloggers are welcome to reference the statistics in this report. If you use a figure, please credit Virtwave and link back to this page so your readers can trace the underlying sources. Here is a ready-made attribution line you can copy:

Source: Virtwave — “Middle East Gaming Statistics 2026” (https://virtwave.com/blog/middle-east-gaming-statistics-2026)

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