need to know
- Qatar’s streaming media market reached a value of $271.8 million in 2025 and is expected to increase to $550 million by 2034.
- Growth has been driven in part by Media City Qatar, the country’s leading media and innovation hub, designed to attract global media, digital content producers, and creative enterprises.
- Media City Qatar’s licensed-company ecosystem grew 450% between 2024 and 2026 to more than 550 companies.
- Its licensing deals and financial incentives have helped create 1,250 local jobs and more than 8,000 hours of content production.
A digital-native nation
The modern media company can be hard to pinpoint. Some still occupy the sprawling sound stages of yesteryear, but others live only in the phone in your hand. What has remained consistent, however, is the need for spaces where innovators and creators can take ideas from production to an audience at pace.
In Qatar, the case for creating the conditions in which that cycle can accelerate is particularly persuasive. Over 99.7% of the country’s population is online and, among 18-to-24-year-olds, almost half get their news from social media. The media and entertainment industries serving that audience are also expanding rapidly. Qatar’s artificial intelligence market is projected to grow by about 29% annually to reach $2.16 billion by 2031, while its wider media market is expected to expand by 10.21% between 2024 and 2029.
These numbers helped justify the creation of Media City Qatar. Launched in 2019, it was first established as a hub for media and entertainment digital startups. But now, it has elevated the traditional regulatory role to become a developer and investor too, supporting the next generation of media businesses to use Qatar as a base from which to reach audiences around the world.
A record-breaking media hub
What sets Media City Qatar apart is its rare three-part mandate as regulator, developer and investor. It has the power to combine licensing with financial incentives and business-development support, meaning that eligible emerging media and entertainment companies can retain 100% foreign ownership and benefit from a 0% corporate income tax environment, including a 20-year tax holiday.
Naturally, as production costs rise and competition for audiences intensifies internationally, the response from the entertainment world has been swift. The number of licensed companies under Media City Qatar grew 450% between 2024 and 2026 to over 550 businesses, with startups making up most of the network, at almost 60%. Today, Media City Qatar supports:
That expansion is already translating into original productions. At MIPCOM Cannes 2025, Media City Qatar announced its support for two Arabic-language drama series, When I Saw (لمّا شفت) and Behind the Scenes (كواليس), produced with its licensed company ImagiQ Productions. Filmed across Qatar and Lebanon, the productions bring together prominent regional talent including Dima Kandalaft, Mohamad Al Ahmad, and Aimée Sayah, and are scheduled for release later this year.
Media City Qatar has also helped build industries that barely existed in Qatar just a few years ago. COREGAME Studios joined in 2024 with plans to develop Beyond Solar, a science-fiction game rooted in Qatari culture. Media City Qatar helped COREGAME build a functioning studio, connecting the team with strategic partners and securing visibility at industry events. Beyond Solar has since been showcased at Geekdom, the Doha Film Institute, Mal Lawal Exhibition, and Freej Al Fan Festival, with founder Fadi Soufi crediting Media City Qatar in helping COREGAME go from 10% to 70% operational capacity in the space of just two months.
Media City Qatar followed that momentum with ‘Qatar SoundBeat’, its Qatar National Day 2025 activation and the successor to the Guinness World Record-setting ‘Qatar ArtBeat’ from the previous year. Unveiled at the FIFA Arab Cup Qatar 2025™ final, ‘Qatar SoundBeat’ reached nearly 90,000 spectators at Lusail Stadium and millions more watching across the region, marking a shared cultural moment on one of the Arab world’s biggest sporting stages. More than a celebration, it was an invitation to local and international creators and media talent to help shape the next generation of media and entertainment from Qatar.
A platform optimized for global reach
Qatar’s advantage is not only what can be created there, but who it can reach. From Doha, media companies sit at the gateway to an Arabic-speaking market spanning 22 countries and close to 500 million people. And they can do so from a country ranked the most peaceful in the Middle East and North Africa in the 2026 Global Peace Index.
This combination of accessibility and stability is already attracting businesses from well beyond the region. Media City Qatar now has more than 550 licensed companies but almost 70% come from outside the Middle East. Its international roster includes CNN, Dow Jones, Euronews, AP, AFP, iHeartMedia, and Amazon Advertising, which puts homegrown startups and creators at the heart of an increasingly global business network.
More than 8,000 hours of content were produced with Media City Qatar’s support over the past year, evidence that companies are already making things in Doha as well as simply establishing themselves there. The opportunity now is to build on that momentum, with even more media and entertainment businesses finding a home in Qatar, and even more of the ideas and stories created there finding audiences around the world.
Learn more about Media City Qatar here.
