It is clear after a vote on Tuesday, in which Saudi Arabia won by a clear majority to host the 2030 World Expo ahead of competing bids from Italy (Rome) and South Korea (Busan).
The exhibition runs between October 2030 and March 2031 and is under the theme “A time of change: Together for a forward-looking tomorrow”, according to the Saudi bid. The place for it will be the Saudi capital Riyadh.
Critical of the country’s view of humanity
A number of human rights groups are critical of Saudi Arabia being allowed to organize the exhibition because of how the country handles human rights.
They claim that behind Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman’s alleged reform work to modernize the country hides a reality where capital punishment and executions are commonplace and where freedom of expression is severely restricted.
In his closing remarks, however, Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan pledged an “unwavering commitment to work with all nations to deliver an Expo built by the world for the world.”
The Eiffel Tower, one of the exhibition’s most famous works
The world exhibition is arranged every five years and the host country is voted for by the Paris-based exhibition agency BIE, in which 182 countries are represented. Next, the event will be held in Osaka in Japan in 2025.
The first exhibition was held in London in 1851 and since then the countries have gone to great lengths to outdo each other with mainly technical innovations and architecture, sometimes works of art. Among other things, the Eiffel Tower was built before the World Exhibition in Paris in 1889 and Pablo Picasso’s famous painting “Guernica” was allowed to represent Spain in Paris in 1937.