The number everyone quotes when discussing Saudi production is up to 60%. It is an attention-grabbing figure—and the wrong starting point for a commercial or branded film budget. Saudi Arabia’s national incentive is published for Feature Films, Feature Documentaries and Feature Animation Films. A commercial is none of those formats, and commercials, advertising and branded content are not listed as eligible.
Rates and eligibility verified against each authority’s own published terms on 25 August 2026. Gulf incentive programmes change frequently, so check before committing a budget.
What Saudi’s incentive actually covers
The Saudi Film Commission’s national programme offers up to 60% of production expenses for its listed feature formats. The wording matters. The programme is not described as a general screen-production rebate, and the headline rate is not an allowance that can be applied to any production filmed in the Kingdom.
The eligible formats are Feature Films, Feature Documentaries and Feature Animation Films. Commercials, advertising and branded content do not appear in that list. For the reader costing a campaign film, that is the first decision point: the most widely repeated Gulf incentive figure is not available simply because the work is being made for a brand.
Even an eligible feature project would need to meet conditions before the rate could become a useful budget assumption. The published minimum spend is SAR 750,000 for feature films, and SAR 187,000 for feature documentaries and feature animation. The project must also film for a minimum of 5 days with the main production unit.
Pre-approval is mandatory. The incentive agreement must be signed before filming starts. This is not an administrative detail to resolve after the shoot. If an incentive is part of the financial plan, eligibility and approval need to be established before production begins.
The scope of spend is limited as well. The national programme covers production and post-production only; pre-production is not covered. That distinction affects how a production budget is read. A headline percentage applied to the entire development and preparation process would overstate the potential value even for a format that qualifies.
There is also an important qualification around the rate itself. The published figure is up to 60%, following an increase from 40% announced at Cannes on 15 May 2026. The split between any base rate and uplift has not been published. It should therefore be treated as a maximum, not as an obtainable default, and certainly not as a guaranteed reduction in a commercial budget.
The Saudi regional question: Film AlUla
Film AlUla publishes a separate regional incentive of up to 40% on eligible local spend. Its page refers to film, TV series and non-scripted content, with incentives pre-assessed and tailored per production. It also describes an uplift of up to 50% when employing Saudi nationals in key production roles, plus an additional increase of up to 10% for crew training, marketing, cultural promotion and diversity.
That information does not solve the commercial question. Film AlUla’s published page does not explicitly address commercials or branded content, so we should not assume that a brand film qualifies. Nor should we combine its figures with the national up to 60% rate. Public terms do not resolve whether the AlUla incentive stacks with, substitutes for or has been superseded by the national programme.
For a campaign budget, the sensible conclusion is narrow: Saudi has published incentives, but the national headline does not cover the format under consideration, and the separate AlUla position on commercials remains unaddressed. That is a very different proposition from a confirmed commercial rebate.
Qatar is the programme built for this brief
Qatar’s Qatar Screen Production Incentive, or QSPI, is the Gulf programme whose published format list directly includes commercials. The launch release names feature films, television, commercials and post-production/VFX work, while the live application form includes Commercial as a selectable production type.
The headline is 40% base plus up to 10% uplift, to a maximum of up to 50%. The distinction between base and uplift should remain visible in the model. The maximum is not the starting assumption for every production, and the published terms do not turn it into an automatic entitlement.
QSPI was open as of 25 August 2026. Its application form was live, with no coming-soon or closed notice. That matters because an incentive that exists only in an announcement, an old article or a search result is not the same as one with an active route into the programme.
There is a further feature that is unusually relevant to Gulf production planning. Up to 25% of a project’s total qualifying expenditure may be incurred in a selected neighbouring Arab country and remain eligible. This is not a 25% rebate, and it does not mean that the whole production can be treated as Qatari spend. It means that part of the qualifying expenditure can take place across the border without automatically falling outside the incentive’s eligible-spend framework.
That provision can matter when a brief needs more than one location or when production requirements do not sit neatly inside one territory. It changes the question from where every shot must be made to how the qualifying expenditure and production plan are structured. The allowance still concerns total qualifying expenditure, so it should not be treated as permission to add any neighbouring-country cost after the fact.
QSPI is available only to Qatari entities, including special-purpose vehicles, licensed by Media City Qatar. For an international brand or agency, that entity requirement is part of the route to the incentive, not a footnote. The production structure needs to be understood before the budget is presented as incentive-backed.
For a commercial or branded film, Qatar therefore offers the clearest published fit in the region. Commercials are explicit. The application route is open. The base rate, uplift and cross-border provision are stated. Branded content still needs to be considered according to the programme’s production classification rather than assumed to qualify merely because it is commissioned by a brand.
Our BrandFilms team approaches that distinction as part of the brief: first establish what the work is, then test which production framework can support it.
Abu Dhabi: an established commercial option
Abu Dhabi offers another confirmed route for commercials. The Abu Dhabi Film Commission describes a rebate of 35% base, rising to a maximum of 50% through a points-based uplift. The published scale runs from 2.5% at 10–14 points to 15% at 85+ points.
TV commercials are named among the formats the rebate has supported since 2013. That makes Abu Dhabi materially different from Saudi’s national programme for this audience: commercials are within the formats the authority says the rebate has supported.
The authority does not state a separate commercials rate in the published release. The points-based structure is therefore the relevant framework, rather than a special commercial percentage that can be inserted into a brand film budget without further assessment. The programme’s maximum is up to 50%, not a promise that every commercial reaches it.
The distinction between Qatar and Abu Dhabi is not simply a contest between headline percentages. Qatar explicitly names commercials in its incentive materials and has an open application form as of the verification date. Abu Dhabi presents a longer-established commercial track with a points-based route from 35% towards a maximum of 50%. The appropriate choice depends on eligibility and production fit, not on which number looks largest in a search result.
Dubai has no rebate
Dubai operates a permit system and has no cash rebate. The claim that Dubai offers a 40% rebate is fabricated. No authority publishes such a rebate, and the supposed figure should not appear in a production budget.
That does not mean Dubai is not worth considering as a shooting location. A location can be right for a brief because of its visual requirements, access, production approach or wider creative fit. It simply means that the financial case cannot be built around a cash incentive that does not exist. Dubai offers logistics support rather than a rebate, so its value needs to be assessed on those terms.
This is also why source discipline matters. Search summaries can turn an unsupported claim into a precise-looking rate and effective date. Precision in a search result is not evidence of an authority-backed programme. For incentive planning, the issuing authority’s current terms must take precedence.
What this means for a brand film budget
A rebate is one input into a production decision. It is not the location strategy, the creative strategy or the budget itself. The first input is format. If the work is a commercial or branded film, Saudi’s national up to 60% headline should not be modelled as available. The budget must begin from the terms that actually speak to the work.
The next inputs are eligibility, application structure, qualifying expenditure and timing. Saudi requires pre-approval before filming for eligible formats, limits coverage to production and post-production, and requires a minimum of 5 days with the main production unit. Qatar requires a Qatari entity licensed by Media City Qatar and publishes a cross-border provision of up to 25% of total qualifying expenditure. Abu Dhabi publishes a points-based route from 35% towards a maximum of 50% and identifies TV commercials among supported formats. Dubai has no rebate to deduct.
Those are different mechanisms. Treating them as interchangeable creates a false comparison. So does applying the maximum rate before confirming the project’s classification or assuming that every cost in the production plan is qualifying expenditure.
The expensive mistake is not choosing the territory with the lowest headline rate. It is choosing a territory because of a rebate you cannot claim, then discovering that the creative, production and financial plan was built around an unavailable assumption. A smaller confirmed incentive can be more useful than a larger one attached to the wrong format.
That is the practical reading of the Gulf incentive landscape for commissioners and agency producers. Saudi’s figure is up to 60%, but it belongs to specified feature formats. Qatar is explicit about commercials and open as of the verification date. Abu Dhabi has supported TV commercials since 2013 through a points-based rebate. Dubai has no cash rebate. The distinctions should be visible before the first budget is circulated.
Planning a Gulf shoot with NaF+
Our wider video production service can help connect the incentive question to the production brief without treating the incentive as the brief. If you are comparing Gulf territories for a commercial or branded film, contact us before committing a budget built on a headline.