RO 495 million in one morning: the awards that opened Oman's 2026 real estate expo

At the opening of the 21st Oman Real Estate, Design and Construction Exhibition and Conference on 10 May 2026, the Ministry of Housing and Urban Planning announced agreements, awards and partnerships worth more than RO 495 million. The largest was the partnership with Saudi Arabia's Retal Urban Development Company to develop residential neighbourhoods 3, 15 and 17 of Sultan Haitham City, more than 640,000 square metres and over RO 320 million of investment.

Around it came the infrastructure packages that make those neighbourhoods buildable: Strabag Oman's package 12, worth more than RO 40 million, for external roads, bridges, underpasses and utility links to the Muscat Expressway; Al Tasnim Group's RO 6.8 million package 1A for site preparation and levelling; and a RO 3 million-plus landscaping package 9A. At Al Thuraya City a consultancy contract worth more than RO 3 million was signed to supervise developers' construction works, and the Artas Holding MOU for Al Khuwair Downtown was signed again on Omani soil.

Five Sorouh agreements added 2,167 housing units and more than RO 123 million of investment: 1,006 units in Al Amerat on 300,000 square metres for RO 62 million; 409 in Al Musannah for RO 24 million; 322 in Al Hamra for RO 16 million; 312 in Jaalan Bani Bu Hassan for RO 15 million; and 118 in Wadi Bani Khalid for RO 6 million. Six further integrated neighbourhood opportunities across North Batinah, Al Buraimi, Al Dakhiliyah and South Batinah, covering more than 1.4 million square metres, were opened to investors.

Three kinds of package are now recurring. Master developers take whole neighbourhoods and then sub-let design, cost, supervision and construction. Government infrastructure packages, roads, utilities and landscaping, go to graded contractors through the authority. And the ministry is buying independent supervision consultancies to hold developers to the standard.

That third one matters for consultants: the Al Thuraya supervision contract is a template the ministry can repeat at every future city. For developers it means the reviewer of your work is now a named firm with a contract to find problems.