Villa Hegra

Villa Hegra is a Saudi-French artist residency and cultural centre in the Al-Sukhayrat district of AlUla, in north-western Saudi Arabia. It grew out of an intergovernmental agreement the two countries signed in December 2021. A Royal Order made it a Saudi foundation in December 2024, and it opened in AlUla in October 2025. Its founding bodies are the Royal Commission for AlUla and the French Agency for AlUla Development.

The site joins two houses around a landscaped courtyard, about 2,300 square metres in all. One house is for residents, with seven living units, five studios and a workshop for young people. The other serves the town as a cultural centre, with an exhibition space, workshops, a performing arts studio and the first indoor cinema in AlUla. A new building by Anne Lacaton and Jean-Philippe Vassal is planned.

Residencies sit at the centre of the programme, in visual arts, design, film, fashion and performing arts, alongside exhibitions, screenings, performances and workshops. In November 2025 it showed Study of Hands by Auguste Rodin with the Rodin Museum. During the AlUla Arts Festival 2026, its exhibition Not Deserted: AlUla's Archives in Movement set early twentieth-century photographs by a French traveller beside a film by Saad Tahaitah. A design exhibition of work by its residents, among them Badr Ali and Théo Mercier, ran from 23 January to 14 February 2026. Since 2025 Villa Hegra has belonged to the ¡Viva Villa! network of residencies, with Villa Medici and Villa Kujoyama.