Saudi Arabia's first K-Pop Festival

Saranghae KSA

Brand, IP, launch and event

Saranghae means "I love you" in Korean. We made history saying it. Saudi Arabia's first K-Pop festival. The first K-Pop girl group to ever perform in the country. The world's largest pillarless indoor venue. 11,000 fans. Three days. We built the IP, the brand, and the entire festival from scratch… and then we filled it.

A large concert stage with bright red, orange, and purple lighting, featuring a group of performers dancing and singing. A big screen images three performers on the left and a close-up of one performer on the right, with an audience watching and recording with their phones.

Client
SELA (Saudi Government)

Market
Saudi Arabia

Scope
IP creation, festival brand, concept, event production, programming, artist management, content, social, omnichannel comms

People excited and cheering at a concert or event, holding phones and making excited gestures.
Six performers on stage dancing in front of a large digital screen with a circular bright light and blue abstract patterns.
Large indoor concert arena filled with a crowd of people watching a stage performance with bright blue lights and a giant screen displaying the performers.
Large stage at a K-pop festival with performers and a massive audience, bright colorful signage in the background, and large screens showing performers.
Collage of colorful digital posters promoting a K-pop festival, featuring text, animated characters, hands making finger hearts, and a person dancing.
Colorful illuminated posters promoting a K-pop festival, featuring phrases and graphics, with silhouettes of two people in front of the display.
Multiple scenes from a K-pop festival show various performers on stage, fans in the audience making heart gestures, people taking photos, and colorful stage decorations with bright lights and signs in multiple languages.

Create Saudi Arabia's first ever K-Pop festival as part of Jeddah Seasons. Build the IP from scratch: name, brand, concept, experience… and execute end to end. Make it feel like Korea landed in Jeddah without pretending Jeddah wasn't exactly where it was.

BRIEF

Start with the name. Saranghae (I love you in Korean) said everything. Familiar to every K-Pop fan in the room, emotionally loaded, and entirely owned by us as IP. The festival brand was built around the collision of Korean pop culture and Saudi youth energy. The Jeddah Superdome gave us the scale. We filled it with K-pop installations, authentic Korean food, cultural programming from the Korean Consulate, and a lineup that Saudi fans had been waiting years to see in person. EPEX and Ateez opened night one, greeting the audience in both Arabic and Korean. The bands met fans, answered questions, explored Jeddah between shows. It wasn't a concert tour stop. It was a cultural exchange.

INSIGHTS & APPROACH

11,000 attendees across three days. Saudi Arabia's first K-Pop festival. Strong coverage by media in both Saudi Arabia, South Korea and beyond. A 16-year-old fan described it as "a dream I have been waiting to live in real life." That's the only metric that matters.

EXECUTION & IMPACT

How we brought K-Pop to Saudi’s beat.