How many grocery stores and supermarkets are in Saudi Arabia?
Groceries, tamweenat, supermarkets and cooperative stores.
72.8K
active registrations list grocery stores & supermarkets activities — 5% of classified registrations.
Ministry of Commerce data · Q3 2026 to 16 Sep
72,771 active commercial registrations in Saudi Arabia list grocery stores & supermarkets activities as of 16 September 2026 — 5% of all classified registrations, the 9th-largest of the 64 sectors we track.
13,499 were registered in 2025 and are still active — +1.4% on 2024, slower than the +15% across all sectors.
Riyadh (16,184), Jeddah (7,783), Makkah (5,444) lead. Relative to its size, Bisha is the most concentrated: grocery stores and supermarkets make up 1.8× the share they hold nationally.
25.6% of these registrations are companies rather than sole proprietorships, and the median company reports SAR 100,000 of paid-up capital.
- Active registrations
- 72,771
- 5% of classified CRs
- Registered in 2025
- 13,499
- +1.4% on 2024 · all sectors +15%
- Companies
- 25.6%
- 18,599 of 72,771
- Median company capital
- SAR 100k
- Paid-up, main registrations
Where grocery stores and supermarkets are registered
Column height: grocery stores and supermarkets by city · select a highlighted city for its page
Leading cities
Registrations, with concentration vs the national average
- Riyadh16,1840.7×
- Jeddah7,7831.0×
- Makkah5,4441.5×
- Madinah3,7821.4×
- Dammam2,8070.9×
- Taif1,9691.2×
- Buraydah1,5930.9×
- Khamis Mushait1,4931.2×
- Tabuk1,3431.1×
- Najran1,3030.7×
Concentration compares the sector's share of a city's registrations with its share nationally; 1.0× is average. Highlighted cities are above 1.15×.
Grocery stores & supermarkets: registrations by year of creation
Still-active registrations by the year they were created, 2015–2025. Older years read lower because cancelled registrations drop out.
Most common activities
Registrations listing each national activity code
- Convenience stores (baqala)38,035Activity code 471131
- Grocery stores (tamweenat)17,896Activity code 471132
- Food and consumer goods supermarkets14,489Activity code 471121
- Cooperative societies2,290Activity code 471110
- Convenience and grocery stores (baqala and tamweenat)36Activity code 471130
- Food supermarkets22Activity code 471120
- Other retail in non-specialized stores3Activity code 471190
Business structures
Legal form of registrations in the sector
- Sole proprietorship54,16874.4%
- LLC17,85224.5%
- JSC6160.8%
- General partnership610.1%
- SJSC400.1%
- Limited partnership30<0.1%
- GCC branch4<0.1%
Grocery stores & supermarkets by city
More in retail & trade
Common questions
How many grocery stores and supermarkets are there in Saudi Arabia?
72,771 active commercial registrations list grocery stores & supermarkets activities as of 16 September 2026, according to Ministry of Commerce data. A registration can list several activities, so it may also count in related sectors.
Which city has the most grocery stores and supermarkets?
Riyadh, with 16,184 — 22.2% of the national total. Jeddah follows with 7,783.
Is the number of grocery stores and supermarkets growing?
13,499 were registered in 2025 and are still active — +1.4% on 2024, slower than the +15% across all sectors.
Can a foreign investor set up in grocery stores & supermarkets in Saudi Arabia?
Most activities are open to 100% foreign ownership with a MISA investment licence, though some carry conditions such as minimum capital, a Saudi partner or sector-regulator approval. Alpha Consultancy confirms the conditions for your exact activity code before you apply.
Figures are Alpha Consultancy's analysis of the Ministry of Commerce's open datasets on the Saudi Open Data Platform (open.data.gov.sa): the register of active commercial registrations (CRs) as of 16 September 2026.
Active CRsinclude main and branch registrations, as in the Ministry's own totals. Registered in a period counts CRs created in that period that were still active on 16 September 2026; registrations since cancelled are not in the source file, so older periods read lower than the number originally issued.
Partial quarter. The Ministry's Q3 2026 file is labelled as the quarter end but only contains registrations created up to 16 September 2026, so every figure here is as of that date and the latest quarter in the charts (marked *) is incomplete.
Sector figures cover the 1,443,322 active registrations (74.7%) that appear in the Ministry of Commerce's activity association file, which lists activities for registrations created up to 31 December 2025. Registrations created after that date are not yet classified. A registration counts once in each sector it is active in, so sectors overlap.
No individual business is identified on these pages; only aggregate counts are published.
Starting a business in grocery stores & supermarkets?
We confirm the licence conditions for your exact activity code, then take you from MISA licence to commercial registration and municipal licence.