Walk into a contemporary café in Riyadh and you may find a V60 on the menu alongside Saudi coffee served from a dallah. They involve different brewing methods, flavours and expectations, but increasingly belong to the same coffee landscape.

That makes Saudi coffee vs specialty coffee more interesting than a simple contest between tradition and modernity. Saudi coffee culture has centuries of history behind it, complete with regional preparation methods, serving etiquette and a locally cultivated coffee tradition in the Kingdom’s southwest. At the same time, specialty coffee in Saudi Arabia is becoming part of a broader push to develop the local coffee sector, from farmer support and quality assessment to specialty products made with Saudi-grown Arabica.

The question, then, isn't which one will win. Saudi Arabia has enough coffee history to accommodate both.

If you are wondering what is traditional Saudi coffee, start by forgetting the idea that there is one definitive recipe.

Coffee beans and cardamom are the two ingredients most commonly associated with traditional Saudi coffee, but preparation differs across the Kingdom. The degree of roasting changes, as do additional ingredients such as saffron, cloves, ginger, cinnamon and fennel. Saudi sources document distinct recipes across central, northern, southern, eastern and western regions.

Those differences are part of the point. Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Culture describes Saudi coffee as a tradition whose preparation and presentation vary from one region to another.

So Saudi coffee is better understood as a cultural practice than a rigid beverage specification. Roast, colour and flavour may vary, while the rituals surrounding preparation and serving provide a common thread.

The history of Saudi coffee is difficult to separate from the history of hospitality in the Kingdom.

Coffee is one of the central elements of the country’s culture and folk heritage, associated with hospitality, poetry and social traditions. That importance was highlighted nationally in 2022, when the Kingdom designated the year as the Year of Saudi Coffee.

There is also a remarkable agricultural history behind the cup.

In southwestern Saudi Arabia, Khawlani tribes have cultivated coffee beans for more than 300 years, passing their knowledge and techniques between generations. In 2022, the knowledge and practices related to cultivating Khawlani coffee beans were inscribed on UNESCO’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.

The process includes raising seedlings in shaded conditions, transferring them to agricultural terraces, hand-harvesting the fruit and drying it before the beans are extracted. UNESCO also notes that serving guests coffee harvested from one’s own farm is considered a sign of honour and respect.

That gives the cultural significance of Saudi coffee a connection to both hospitality and the land where coffee is grown.

Ask how Saudi coffee is made and geography quickly enters the conversation.

According to Saudi documentation based on Ministry of Culture material, central Saudi preparations traditionally tend towards a golden roast, with cloves and saffron sometimes added. In northern Saudi Arabia, the roast becomes darker and preparations can rely on the core ingredients without additional flavourings. Southern recipes traditionally use a lighter roast and can contain a broader combination of spices, including ginger, cinnamon, fennel, cloves and saffron.

Western and eastern preparations have their own variations too. Saffron appears in the documented eastern recipe, while mastic is associated with the western version.

These are regional traditions rather than rules that every household must follow. Family recipes and individual preferences inevitably add another layer of variation.

That is why reducing traditional Saudi coffee to “light coffee with cardamom” misses much of what makes it interesting. Its preparation can communicate geography as clearly as flavour.

What happens after brewing matters just as much.

Coffee traditions in Saudi Arabia include established conventions around pouring and serving. Traditionally, the dallah is held in the left hand and the finjal offered with the right, with the oldest or most honoured guest served first. A guest can shake the cup to indicate that they have finished; otherwise, the host may continue pouring.

The small serving size makes sense within that ritual. Coffee can be offered repeatedly rather than arriving as one large drink.

This is an important distinction when comparing Saudi coffee vs specialty coffee. Saudi coffee has a social language around the cup that goes beyond extraction or flavour where the drink helps structure hospitality itself.

Put a dallah beside a V60 and it is tempting to treat them as two competing interpretations of coffee, but they are better understood through different frameworks.

The Specialty Coffee Association currently defines specialty coffee as coffee, or a coffee experience, recognised for distinctive attributes that give it significant additional value in the marketplace. Those attributes can include flavour, aroma and mouthfeel, as well as information such as origin, producer, growing practices and processing methods.

That definition is broader than the old shorthand of treating specialty coffee simply as beans that pass a particular numerical score.

Traditional Saudi coffee, meanwhile, derives much of its meaning from preparation, regional variation and social ritual.

This is how Saudi coffee is different from specialty coffee at the most fundamental level: “Saudi coffee” describes a particular cultural tradition of preparing and serving coffee, while “specialty” describes coffee or coffee experiences valued for distinctive attributes.

They are therefore not mutually exclusive categories, and that is where things become particularly interesting.

Saudi Arabia is investing in developing its domestic coffee sector, particularly in the southwest.

The Public Investment Fund-owned Saudi Coffee Company works across cultivation, processing, farmer development and the wider coffee value chain. In April 2026, it took over the Saudi Coffee Development Center in Al-Dayr, Jazan, as part of efforts to increase production capacity, support farmers and develop the sector’s infrastructure.

Crucially for the specialty coffee in Saudi Arabia conversation, the company explicitly describes its ambition to help turn the southern region into a global hub for specialty coffee.

That gives us something more substantial than simply pointing to busy cafés and declaring that specialty coffee is growing. Specialty coffee is becoming part of how Saudi Arabia is developing and positioning its own coffee production.

So why specialty coffee is growing in Saudi Arabia has an interesting answer: part of the story is happening before the coffee reaches the café.

Public and private investment is going into cultivation, processing, farmer support, infrastructure and quality. The Saudi Coffee Company’s stated strategy covers the value chain from production to marketing, with an explicit focus on developing the Kingdom’s coffee industry and increasing the commercial potential of Saudi-grown beans.

This creates an obvious meeting point with the traditional coffee world.

Specialty coffee places value on attributes such as origin, growing practices and processing. Saudi Arabia already has an agricultural coffee tradition in which place, inherited knowledge and cultivation methods matter.

The specialty framework can therefore give Saudi-grown beans another way to be understood and valued without replacing their traditional use.

The role of specialty coffee shops in Saudi Arabia is different.

A contemporary café allows coffee to become an object of individual choice: customers can select an origin, brewing method or flavour profile and spend more time thinking about the bean itself.

That introduces another vocabulary to the existing coffee culture Saudi Arabia has developed over generations.

But café culture isn't inherently more sophisticated than traditional coffee hospitality. A carefully prepared pour-over and a finjal offered to a guest demonstrate different kinds of knowledge.

One foreground characteristics of the coffee and its preparation. The other carries generations of social convention.

Saudi Arabia doesn't need to import a coffee identity along with contemporary café culture. It already has one.

The Kingdom has actually strengthened the public identity of its traditional coffee during the same period in which its broader coffee sector has developed.

In 2022, the Ministry of Culture and Ministry of Commerce collaborated on adopting the name “Saudi coffee” instead of “Arabic coffee” in restaurants and cafés across the Kingdom. The initiative formed part of the Year of Saudi Coffee and aimed to highlight Saudi identity and the diversity of coffee preparation across the country’s regions.

The same year, UNESCO inscribed the knowledge and practices associated with cultivating Khawlani coffee beans on its Representative List.

More recently, investment has moved towards production capacity, farmer support, infrastructure and specialty coffee.

Taken together, these developments make the future of coffee culture in Saudi Arabia more interesting than a simple shift from old to new.

Heritage is being documented at the same time as the industry expands.

There is a convincing case that it could.

The Specialty Coffee Association’s current framework recognises not only sensory characteristics but also informational attributes such as origin, producer, growing practices and processing.

Those concepts fit remarkably well with the story of Saudi-grown coffee.

Khawlani cultivation is tied to specific communities, agricultural terraces and knowledge transferred across generations. UNESCO notes that farmers exchange expertise and that the cultivation tradition contributes to social cohesion and a shared identity.

Specialty coffee therefore provides another language through which those beans can be valued.

Someone who becomes interested in origin through a pour-over may start asking where Saudi coffee is grown. A roaster looking for distinctive local coffee can direct attention towards Saudi producers. Greater attention to quality and provenance can potentially create additional value further along the supply chain.

None of that requires turning Saudi coffee into a V60.

The two worlds can meet at the bean.

The future of coffee culture in Saudi Arabia doesn't need to be decided by choosing one kind of coffee over another.

Saudi coffee culture already has something many younger coffee markets would struggle to manufacture: centuries of cultivation, regional variation, serving rituals and a deep connection between coffee and hospitality.

Specialty coffee brings a different way of assigning value. Origin, producer, processing and sensory attributes become more visible, while contemporary brewing methods give drinkers another way to experience the bean.

Saudi-grown coffee can connect those worlds particularly well. The same crop can carry agricultural heritage, support a traditional Saudi preparation and be evaluated for attributes valued within specialty coffee.

So perhaps Saudi coffee vs specialty coffee is the wrong contest.

A dallah doesn't have to compete with a V60. One can preserve a social ritual while the other explores what a particular bean can taste like.

For the coffee culture Saudi Arabia is developing now, coexistence may actually be the more interesting story.