What time does the Saudi stock market open and close?

All Tadawul times are Riyadh time, UTC+3, with no daylight saving time, so the schedule never moves on a Saudi clock. The weekend is Friday and Saturday.

The open and close are not fixed to the second: the opening auction ends at a random moment within 30 seconds after 10:00 a.m., and the closing auction within 30 seconds after 3:10 p.m. Nomu, the parallel market, follows the same schedule. ETFs, sukuk and bonds share the auction and the 10:00 to 3:00 session but have no closing auction or trade-at-last. Derivatives trade from 9:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.

Elsewhere, 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. in Riyadh is 7:00 a.m. to noon UTC and 11:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. in the UAE. In London it is 8:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. until October 25, 2026, then 7:00 a.m. to noon. The full day in Riyadh time:

  • Trading days: Sunday to Thursday, except official holidays
  • Opening auction: 9:30 to 10:00 a.m.
  • Continuous trading: 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.
  • Closing auction: 3:00 to 3:10 p.m.
  • Trade-at-last: 3:10 to 3:20 p.m.
  • Negotiated deals only: 3:20 to 4:00 p.m.

What happens in the opening auction (9:30 to 10:00 a.m.)?

From 9:30 a.m. you can enter, amend and cancel orders, but nothing trades yet. The system keeps recalculating a theoretical opening price, the price at which the most shares would match, and most platforms display it. When the auction ends, every matched order executes at that single opening price. The earlier sessions on the exchange's schedule, such as buy-in auctions from 8:00 a.m., are not for ordinary orders.

A hypothetical example: a stock closed yesterday at SAR 40.00, and at 9:55 the indicative opening price is SAR 40.60. Place a limit buy at SAR 40.70 and, if the auction settles at 40.60, you buy at 40.60 like everyone else. Bid 40.50 and your order does not fill; it waits in the book when continuous trading starts. The indicative price can swing in the last minutes as orders arrive or get pulled, so treat it as a rough guide.

The first minutes after 10:00 are often the most active of the day, as the market absorbs overnight news. Waiting for the first 5- or 15-minute candle to close, and reading what it did (how to read candlesticks), costs little and keeps you from chasing the opening spike.

Turn your phone sideways to read the drawing. Tap to close.

A hand-drawn opening auction on the Saudi Exchange: a time bar from 9:30 to 10:00 a.m. where orders go in but nothing trades yet, a mark at 9:55, then continuous trading. Below, a price ladder in riyals with yesterday's close at 40.00 and the indicative opening price at 40.60 highlighted. A limit buy at 40.70 fills at the single opening price, 40.60, like everyone else's; a limit buy at 40.50 does not fill and waits in the order book when continuous trading starts. A note warns that the indicative price can still move in the last minutes.

Closing auction and trade-at-last (3:00 to 3:20 p.m.)

At 3:00 p.m. continuous trading stops and a 10-minute closing auction begins. Orders that did not fill during the day move into it, and you can still add, amend or cancel orders. The official closing price is set when the auction ends, at a random moment between 3:10:00 and 3:10:30. If nothing trades in the auction, the close is the last traded price.

So the official close can differ from the last price you saw at 2:59 p.m. Orders that want the official close, such as those from index-tracking funds, meet in this auction, and a sharp move in those ten minutes is not unusual.

From the end of the auction until 3:20 p.m., trade-at-last lets you buy or sell only at that closing price, with limit orders only. After 3:20 you can amend or cancel orders but not place new ones until the next trading day. The 3:20 to 4:00 p.m. window is for negotiated deals, large trades agreed outside the order book.

Saudi market hours in Ramadan, and holidays for 2026 and 2027

Ramadan has not changed the hours in recent years. On February 9, 2026, the Saudi Exchange announced that its Ramadan schedule would stay exactly the same, as it did for Ramadan 2025. It announces the Ramadan hours together with the Eid al-Fitr holiday a few weeks ahead, and Ramadan 1448 is expected in February 2027, so check its market news before then.

The market closes for Founding Day (February 22), National Day (September 23), Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha. The Eids follow the Hijri calendar, so they come about 11 days earlier each year, and each usually closes the market for four or five trading days. When Founding Day or National Day falls on the weekend, a nearby working day has closed instead: National Day 2023 was a Saturday, so the market closed on Sunday, September 24.

Every 2026 closure is now behind us. The full list, plus the 2027 dates on the exchange's calendar today (the 2027 Eid dates are provisional, based on the Umm al-Qura calendar):

  • Sunday, February 22, 2026: Founding Day
  • Eid al-Fitr 2026: last trading day Monday, March 16; closed March 17 to 23; trading resumed Tuesday, March 24
  • Eid al-Adha 2026: last trading day Thursday, May 21; closed May 24 to 28; trading resumed Sunday, May 31
  • Wednesday, September 23, 2026: National Day
  • Monday, February 22, 2027: Founding Day
  • Eid al-Fitr 2027 (provisional): last trading day Thursday, March 4; closed March 7 to 11; resumes Sunday, March 14
  • Eid al-Adha 2027 (provisional): last trading day Thursday, May 13; closed May 16 to 20; resumes Sunday, May 23
  • Thursday, September 23, 2027: National Day

Daily price limits: how far can a Saudi stock move in a day?

On the Main Market, a stock can rise or fall at most 10% from the previous day's close, rounded to its tick size. Say a stock closed at SAR 50.00: today it cannot trade above SAR 55.00 or below SAR 45.00. The same limits apply in the closing auction.

Limits cut both ways. When a stock hits the lower limit with a queue of sellers and no buyers, a sell order or stop-loss may not fill that day, so size each position for the worst day you can imagine.

Newly listed Main Market stocks get a ±30% daily limit for their first three trading days, with a ±10% static limit that triggers a brief volatility auction when reached. On Nomu, the ±30% daily limit and the ±10% static limit apply to every stock all the time, so a Nomu share can move much further in one session.

T+2 settlement: when does your money arrive?

Trades on the Saudi Exchange settle two trading days after the trade date (T+2) through the depository Edaa, a rule in place since April 2017. Day trading still works: you can sell shares you bought earlier the same day, and sale proceeds normally count toward your buying power right away. What waits for settlement is withdrawing the cash to your bank; check your broker's exact rules.

Only trading days count. Sell on a Thursday and the trade settles on Monday. Holidays stretch it: a sale on Monday, March 16, 2026, the last day before Eid al-Fitr, settled on Wednesday, March 25.

Settlement also decides dividends. Saudi companies usually define eligible shareholders as those owning the shares at the close of the eligibility day and registered with Edaa at the end of the second trading day after it. So buying on the eligibility day itself is enough, and buying the next day is not. Check each company's announcement.

How to trade the Saudi and US markets on the same day

The two sessions never overlap. Tadawul's continuous trading ends at 3:00 p.m. Riyadh time, and the US regular session opens at 4:30 p.m. Riyadh time until November 1, 2026, then at 5:30 p.m. until March 14, 2027. It closes at 11:00 p.m. in summer and midnight in winter. The US stock market hours guide has every detail.

The weeks only partly line up. Monday to Thursday, both markets trade. Sunday is Saudi only, and Friday is US only, so Sunday's Tadawul open is the first chance for Saudi stocks to react to Friday's US session and the weekend's news. Major US data such as CPI comes out at 8:30 a.m. New York time, 3:30 p.m. in Riyadh in summer and 4:30 p.m. in winter, after the Saudi close.

Trading both every day means more than 11 hours of open market, and tired decisions are rarely good ones. Many traders pick one market for active trading and only follow the other. Either way, trading is risky, so size every position to keep a bad trade small, as covered in day trading for beginners. A winter day on a Riyadh clock, from November 2, 2026:

  • 9:30 a.m.: Tadawul opening auction
  • 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.: Tadawul continuous trading
  • Noon: US pre-market opens on the main exchanges (11:00 a.m. in summer)
  • 3:00 to 3:20 p.m.: Tadawul closing auction and trade-at-last
  • 4:30 p.m.: major US economic data
  • 5:30 p.m. to midnight: US regular session

Turn your phone sideways to read the drawing. Tap to close.

A hand-drawn timeline of a winter day on a Riyadh clock from November 2, 2026: on the Tadawul row, the opening auction at 9:30 a.m., continuous trading from 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m., and the closing auction and trade-at-last from 3:00 to 3:20 p.m.; on the US row, the pre-market from noon, major US data at 4:30 p.m. and the regular session from 5:30 p.m. to midnight, with a 2.5-hour gap marked between 3:00 and 5:30 p.m. A note says every US time is one hour earlier in US summer time.

Does UpTickFlow work on Saudi stocks?

UpTickFlow is our own invite-only TradingView indicator, built for liquid US stocks, ETFs and index futures during the US regular session. It will load on a Tadawul chart, but its session filters (the wait after the open, the lunch-lull skip and the last 30 minutes) assume New York hours, so we do not offer it as a tool for Saudi stocks. On Tadawul, TradingView's free built-in VWAP and volume plus a clean read of the candles cover most needs. If you also trade the US session in the evening, see the pricing page.