In this guide
Two clubs, one capital, seventy years of grievanceThe head-to-head ledgerTrophy cabinets and the 2025 recountRonaldo, Inzaghi, Postecoglou: the 2026/27 cast2026/27 derby dates, kick-off times and venuesTwo stadiums and the King Fahd gapTickets: release windows, prices and who can buyVisiting from the UK: visa, dress and the alcohol questionWhere to watch if you are not in RiyadhFrequently Asked QuestionsThe Riyadh derby has been played 189 times in competitive football since 1964 and Al Hilal have won 74 of them, yet the 2026/27 edition arrives with the balance of power reversed. Al Nassr are Saudi champions for the first time since 2019, Al Hilal finished second despite going the whole 2025/26 league season unbeaten, and the two meet on 10 December 2026 at Al-Awwal Park before closing the season against each other on 29 May 2027 at Kingdom Arena.
Article Summary: The capital derby between Al Hilal and Al Nassr is Saudi Arabia's most demanded club fixture. Al Hilal lead the all-time record 74 wins to 60 with 55 draws, hold 21 league titles to Al Nassr's 11 under the federation's 2025 historical audit and have won five of the 11 derbies since Cristiano Ronaldo arrived. Two league meetings are scheduled in 2026/27 and both stadiums sit inside Riyadh.
- Al Nassr host Al Hilal on Thursday 10 December 2026 at 20:00 Riyadh time (17:00 UK) at Al-Awwal Park, Round 17 of the Saudi Pro League.
- Al Hilal host the return on Saturday 29 May 2027, the final matchday of the season, at Kingdom Arena, with the kick-off time still to be confirmed as of September 2026.
- Kingdom Arena holds 26,090 for league football and Al-Awwal Park 26,004, so derby inventory is a fraction of the 58,398 that King Fahd Stadium offered before it closed for rebuilding in December 2023.
- Cristiano Ronaldo has scored five derby goals for Al Nassr, including a brace in the 2023 Arab Club Champions Cup final, but Al Nassr have won only two of the 11 derbies played since his January 2023 debut.
Both clubs are Riyadh institutions with a Public Investment Fund era squad, a foreign coach with European silverware and a fanbase that treats a derby defeat as a season-defining event. The league meeting is the one fixture where Saudi Pro League tickets routinely reach the secondary market above face value, which is why UK and MENA fans planning a Riyadh weekend around it need the dates, venues and buying routes in one place.
Two clubs, one capital, seventy years of grievance
Al Nassr are the older club, founded on 24 October 1955 by the Al-Ja'ba brothers in the old centre of Riyadh. Al Hilal followed on 16 October 1957 as the Olympic Club, taking the name Al Hilal, the crescent, by decree of King Saud the following year. The first meeting was a friendly in 1958 which Al Nassr won 1-0 and the first competitive fixture came in the King's Cup in September 1964, a 1-1 draw, according to the match log maintained on the Wikipedia derby page.
Saudi and Gulf media call the fixture the Capital Derby or, less politely, the Derby of Fury. The cultural framing that circulates in Riyadh casts Al Hilal as the establishment club, the side of royal patronage and relentless trophy collection, and Al Nassr as the people's club that spent the 1980s and 1990s trading titles with them before a long drought. That is fan narrative rather than sociology, but it explains why the 2025/26 title mattered so much on the yellow side of the city. Al Nassr's 11th championship, their first since 2019, came at the expense of an Al Hilal team that lost none of its 34 league matches.
The head-to-head ledger
Al Hilal lead every meaningful version of the record. Across all competitive matches from 1964 to the 1-1 draw at Al-Awwal Park on 12 May 2026, the Wikipedia derby log gives 189 meetings: Al Hilal 74 wins, Al Nassr 60 wins and 55 draws. Restrict it to cup finals and the picture is level, with 16 finals between the pair split eight apiece after Al Hilal's 4-1 win in the 2024 Saudi Super Cup final in Abha.
| Record (competitive matches, as of September 2026) | Al Hilal | Al Nassr |
|---|---|---|
| Wins from 189 meetings (55 draws) | 74 | 60 |
| Cup final wins from 16 finals | 8 | 8 |
| Wins in the 11 derbies since January 2023 (four draws) | 5 | 2 |
| Largest derby win | 5-1, 4 May 2017 | 3-0, 2020 Super Cup final (January 2021) |
| Last five results | 1-4 (Aug 2024 Super Cup final, Al Hilal), 1-1 (Nov 2024), 1-3 (Apr 2025, Al Nassr), 3-1 (Jan 2026, Al Hilal), 1-1 (May 2026) | |
Two derbies define the Ronaldo era. In the 2024 King's Cup final in Jeddah, three red cards, a 1-1 draw after extra time and a 5-4 shoot-out won by Al Hilal left Ronaldo in tears on the pitch, as reported by CNN and beIN Sports. In January 2026 he opened the scoring at Kingdom Arena before Nawaf Al-Aqidi's dismissal and goals from Salem Al-Dawsari, Mohammed Kanno and Ruben Neves turned it into a 3-1 Al Hilal win, the league's own match report noting it was Simone Inzaghi's 11th straight league victory.
Trophy cabinets and the 2025 recount
Trophy counts are where most derby articles go wrong, because the Saudi Arabian Football Federation changed the numbers in September 2025. Its Saudi Football History Documentation project certified league titles played before the 1974 reorganisation, lifting Al Hilal from 19 championships to 21 and setting Al Nassr at 10, since raised to 11 by the 2025/26 title. The same audit gave Al Hilal nine King's Cups, now 10 after the 2-1 win over Al Kholood on 8 May 2026, and Al Nassr five, reports Arab News.
| Competition | Al Hilal | Al Nassr |
|---|---|---|
| Saudi league titles (federation audit, September 2025, plus 2025/26) | 21 | 11 |
| King's Cup | 10 | 5 |
| Crown Prince Cup | 13 | 3 |
| Saudi Super Cup | 5 | 2 |
| Asian Club Championship / AFC Champions League | 4 | 0 |
| Arab Club Champions Cup | 2 | 1 (2023, beating Al Hilal in the final) |
Al Hilal's four continental titles in 1991, 2000, 2019 and 2021 remain the record in the AFC Champions League Elite and its predecessor. Grand totals depend on who is counting. Wikipedia's honours list reaches 71 competitive trophies for Al Hilal against 30 for Al Nassr, while the club's own statement after the 2026 King's Cup final described it as the 91st trophy in its history, a figure that includes competitions the federation does not certify.
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Ronaldo, Inzaghi, Postecoglou: the 2026/27 cast
Al Nassr open 2026/27 under Ange Postecoglou, appointed on a two-year contract after Jorge Jesus left as champion, according to ESPN and the Saudi Pro League. Cristiano Ronaldo, contracted to June 2027 and 41 years old, remains captain and finished 2025/26 with 28 league goals, third in the scoring chart, before becoming Al Nassr's all-time leading league scorer in August 2026 with his 104th goal, per Olympics.com. Joao Felix, the league's player of the season, Sadio Mane, Kingsley Coman, Marcelo Brozovic, Inigo Martinez and Mohamed Simakan give Postecoglou a squad built to hold the title.
Al Hilal kept Simone Inzaghi after a season that delivered the King's Cup, an unbeaten league campaign and second place, the cruellest combination in Saudi football. Yassine Bounou, Ruben Neves, Sergej Milinkovic-Savic, Mohammed Kanno, Salem Al-Dawsari, Malcom, Theo Hernandez and Karim Benzema anchor the squad, and ESPN reported the arrival of Gabriel Martinelli from Arsenal ahead of the new season. The wider story of what Ronaldo's move did to Saudi football's audience is covered in our piece on Ronaldo's commercial effect on Saudi football.
2026/27 derby dates, kick-off times and venues
Two league derbies are scheduled and a third meeting is only possible in the King's Cup. Al Hilal are excluded from the December 2026 Saudi Super Cup after their withdrawal from the 2025 edition, which the federation punished with a ban and a SAR 500,000 fine, so the four-team Super Cup on 19 to 23 December features Al Nassr without their rivals. A King's Cup tie between the two depends on the draw.
| Fixture | Date and kick-off | Venue | Competition |
|---|---|---|---|
| Al Nassr v Al Hilal | Thursday 10 December 2026, 20:00 Riyadh (17:00 UK) | Al-Awwal Park, Riyadh | Saudi Pro League, Round 17 |
| Al Hilal v Al Nassr | Saturday 29 May 2027, kick-off to be confirmed | Kingdom Arena, Riyadh | Saudi Pro League, Round 34 (final matchday) |
The December fixture is the last big league date before the winter break from 24 December to 7 February, when Saudi Arabia hosts the 2027 AFC Asian Cup. Kick-off times are set by the league and can move for broadcast, so treat the 20:00 slot as the working assumption rather than a promise. December evenings in Riyadh are mild, typically 12 to 18°C, which is one reason the winter derby draws more visiting fans than the late-May return.
Two stadiums and the King Fahd gap
Neither derby in 2026/27 is at King Fahd Stadium. The 58,398-seat ground that staged most derbies for three decades closed on 1 December 2023 for a rebuild to around 70,200 seats ahead of the 2027 Asian Cup and the 2034 World Cup, with its last derby a 3-0 Al Hilal win that same week. Al Nassr now play at Al-Awwal Park on the King Saud University campus, capacity 26,004, and their five biggest home crowds of 2025/26 all hit 26,003, including the May derby. Al Hilal play at Kingdom Arena in Boulevard City, listed at 26,090 by the Saudi Pro League.
- Al-Awwal Park: Riyadh Metro Red Line to King Saud University station, then a 20 to 25 minute walk across campus, or Uber and Careem to the drop-off zones. Opened in 2015 and slated for expansion to around 46,000 seats for 2034.
- Kingdom Arena: roughly 10 km north of the city centre in Boulevard City with no metro station at the gate, so ride-hailing or self-drive with parking that fills two hours before kick-off, unless the club announces match-day shuttles. Gates open about two hours before the start.
- Both venues run family sections, mixed seating and separate single-male sections. Women have attended Saudi league matches since January 2018.
Tickets: release windows, prices and who can buy
Primary sale runs through webook, the Saudi ticketing platform used by the league, which opens most fixtures 10 to 21 days before kick-off with the derby released to members first and then to general sale. Foreign buyers register with a passport number rather than a Saudi Nafath login and international Visa and Mastercard payments work, though some UK issuers block Saudi merchants until you call them. Derby general sale can clear within hours, which is why the resale market carries a premium.
| Seating zone | Indicative range (SAR) | GBP at SAR 5.08 = £1, 10 September 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| General admission behind the goals | SAR 50 to 100 | £10 to £20 |
| Category 3 upper sideline | SAR 230 to 500 | £45 to £98 |
| Category 2 lower sideline corners | SAR 500 to 1,000 | £98 to £197 |
| Category 1 lower sideline central | SAR 1,000 to 2,000 | £197 to £394 |
| VIP and hospitality | SAR 2,000 to 4,500 | £394 to £886 |
The ranges are indicative for 2025/26 pricing at Kingdom Arena and Al-Awwal Park across primary sale and resale, and the derby sits at the top of every band. Every ticket is a live QR code inside the app of the platform you bought from, and gate staff match the name on the ticket to a passport or Saudi ID, so screenshots and printouts are refused. Buying through 1BoxOffice follows the same digital path with the 150% money-back guarantee attached, and the webook registration process is covered step by step in our guide to buying Al Hilal tickets from abroad.
Step1
Find the fixture
Open the Al Nassr or Al Hilal club page and select the derby date you want.
Step2
Create an account or log in
Set up a free account via 1BoxOffice register using the name on the passport you will travel with.
Step3
Select your seats
Choose the category and block, checking whether the listing is in a family or single-male section.
Step4
Review the order
Confirm the date, venue and delivery method before paying, since the venue follows the home side.
Step5
Complete payment
Pay in GBP, SAR or another supported currency, covered by the 150% money-back guarantee.
Step6
Track your order
Use track order to follow delivery of your mobile ticket before you fly.
Visiting from the UK: visa, dress and the alcohol question
British passport holders apply for the Saudi tourist eVisa online, a one-year multiple-entry visa allowing stays of up to 90 days that explicitly covers attendance at sporting events. The Visit Saudi portal listed the total fee at SAR 535, about £105 at the September 2026 rate, with approval usually inside 72 hours. Apply before booking non-refundable flights.
- Alcohol is banned nationwide, in hotels and inside both stadiums, and the Saudi government reaffirmed the ban in 2025. Concessions sell coffee, soft drinks and food.
- Dress modestly: covered shoulders and knees for everyone, no abaya requirement for visiting women. Club shirts are fine and expected.
- Prayer times pause some services for 20 to 30 minutes. Build them into your travel plan for the two hours before kick-off.
- Carry the passport you registered with. Every gate in Riyadh checks the ticket name against photo ID.
- Riyadh's weekend is Friday and Saturday, so a Thursday night derby gives you a full weekend in the city afterwards.
Where to watch if you are not in Riyadh
DAZN holds the UK streaming rights for the Saudi Pro League through 2026/27, according to SportsPro, which makes the December derby a 17:00 GMT kick-off for British viewers. In the United States the league airs on Fox Sports and in the Middle East on the Thmanyah service and MBC's Shahid. Free English-language highlights appear on DAZN's global hub within hours of the final whistle.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. Which club has more supporters, Al Hilal or Al Nassr?
-
Al Hilal have the larger domestic following, with an academic study cited by The National putting them at 60% of Saudi supporters against 12.6% for Al Nassr before Ronaldo, while Al Nassr's global social media following grew from 5.2 million to 57.5 million by March 2025 according to Football Benchmark.
2. Has the derby ever been played outside Riyadh?
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Yes, three recent finals left the capital: the 2023 Arab Club Champions Cup final in Taif, the 2024 King's Cup final in Jeddah and the 2024 Saudi Super Cup final in Abha.
3. Who is the all-time top scorer in Al Hilal against Al Nassr matches?
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Majed Abdullah, the Al Nassr striker of the 1980s and 1990s, scored 21 derby goals, more than any other player in the fixture's history.
4. Can Al Hilal and Al Nassr meet in the 2026 Saudi Super Cup?
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No, the federation excluded Al Hilal from the December 2026 Super Cup, so Al Nassr face Al Ahli, Al Qadsiah and Al Kholood without their city rivals.
5. What is the derby called in Arabic?
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Saudi media use ديربي الرياض (derbi al-Riyadh) or ديربي العاصمة, the Capital Derby, and the Derby of Fury nickname appears in Gulf English-language coverage.
1BoxOffice has listed Saudi Pro League fixtures since the Ronaldo era began and every derby order carries the 150% money-back guarantee, so a fan flying in from Manchester or Manama knows the seat will be there when the gates open.
Sources: Saudi Pro League, Al Hilal SFC, Al Nassr FC, Saudi Arabian Football Federation, Arab News, Saudi Gazette, The National, ESPN, CNN, beIN Sports, Olympics.com, Sofascore, SportsPro, Visit Saudi, Wikipedia.
