Riyadh Metro Ordered 94 More Trains. The Extra Capacity Does Not Arrive Until 2028

Riyadh Metro is getting significantly larger without laying another 60 percent of railway.

The Royal Commission for Riyadh City has signed contracts to purchase 94 additional trains, taking the planned fleet from 183 to 277.

The Commission says the new rolling stock will increase the network's overall passenger capacity by 60 percent.

But that extra capacity is not available to passengers yet.

The first new trains are not due until 2028

RCRC says deliveries will begin in batches from 2028.

Each batch will then go through testing and operational trials before entering passenger service progressively.

That creates a useful distinction between a procurement decision and an operating capacity increase.

The contracts are signed today. The passenger benefit arrives later.

The Red Line gets the largest capacity increase

The additional fleet will not be distributed evenly across the network.

RCRC says Red Line capacity will increase by 142 percent, while Yellow Line capacity will rise by 116 percent and Blue Line capacity by 60 percent.

Orange Line capacity is expected to increase by 27 percent and Purple Line capacity by 16 percent.

The allocation is being tied to existing ridership and expected future demand.

Some of the daily capacity changes are substantial

RCRC says Blue Line daily capacity is expected to rise from approximately 340,000 passengers to 533,000.

Red Line capacity is expected to increase from 154,000 to 370,000 passengers per day.

Yellow Line capacity is expected to rise from 133,000 to more than 288,000.

Those numbers describe what the network will be able to carry after the additional trains enter service, not current daily ridership.

The metro has already passed 300 million passenger journeys

The expansion is being ordered against an operating network with established demand.

RCRC says Riyadh Metro has carried more than 300 million passengers since operations began.

Average passenger numbers between January and September 2026 were approximately 25 percent higher than during the same period in 2025.

RCRC's wider public-transport figures show more than 470 million combined Metro and Bus passenger journeys through the third quarter of 2026.

The existing railway was designed to absorb more trains

RCRC says the network was designed from the beginning to support fleet expansion as demand increases.

That matters because additional capacity does not require rebuilding the entire system.

More trains can increase frequency and passenger throughput using infrastructure that already exists, subject to operating and signalling limits.

Siemens and Alstom will build the new fleet

The contracts have a combined value of approximately SAR5.5 billion.

Siemens and Alstom will provide the new trains, onboard systems, equipment and associated services.

The procurement also comes as Riyadh prepares for Expo 2030 and the 2034 FIFA World Cup while residential, commercial and entertainment development continues across the capital.

This expansion is different from the Red Line extension

Riyadh is also extending the Red Line from King Saud University toward Diriyah with five additional stations.

That is a separate infrastructure project.

The 94-train procurement expands rolling-stock capacity across the existing network, while the Red Line extension physically expands where part of the network reaches.

Both increase capacity, but they do so in different ways.

What Arabian Current is watching

Watch manufacturing progress, first deliveries in 2028, testing timelines, actual frequency increases and whether passenger growth continues at its current pace.

The strongest state change will come when the new trains stop being a procurement figure and begin increasing the number of passengers the system can move each day.