Ipsos released the seventh edition of its Most Influential Brands study for Saudi Arabia on 2 June 2026, ranking 120 national, regional and global brands on trustworthiness, engagement, leading edge, corporate citizenship, empathy and utility. Two rankings resulted: an overall top 10, and a local top 10.
Top 10 Most Influential Brands in Saudi Arabia, 2026:
- stc
- Apple
- YouTube
- Al Rajhi Bank
- ChatGPT
- Almarai
- TikTok
Top 10 Most Influential Local Brands in Saudi Arabia, 2026:
- stc
- Al Rajhi Bank
- Almarai
- Saudia Dairy
- Al Baik
- Panda
- Al Othaim
- Nahdi
- STC Bank
- Saudia Airlines
Seven of the ten brands in the overall ranking are global platforms with no Saudi ownership and no branch, store or factory network in the Kingdom. The three that aren't, stc, Al Rajhi Bank and Almarai, sit inside the infrastructure Saudi households run on: telecommunications and payments, Islamic banking, and food supply. That seven-three split is what the ranking shows.
The Seven With No Address in the Kingdom
WhatsApp tops the list, followed by Google, Apple, YouTube and, further down, Instagram and TikTok: the platforms Saudi consumers now run on by default. ChatGPT sits seventh, one place above Almarai. It launched in November 2022 and reached 100 million users within two months, so by this survey it is roughly three and a half years old, not the three sometimes assumed. What the ranking shows is narrower than a fast-adoption story: a product with no office, regulator relationship or retail presence in Saudi Arabia has overtaken a dairy company that has supplied Saudi households for nearly fifty years, on a measure that explicitly includes trustworthiness and corporate citizenship.
stc's Double Entry
stc is the only brand in both rankings to outrank global competitors on their own ground: second overall, ahead of Google and Apple, and first locally. Its banking arm, STC Bank, holds a separate ninth place locally, giving one corporate group two of the ten local positions. That overlap leaves a question the ranking doesn't answer: are consumers responding to stc and STC Bank as separate brands, or to a single group now spanning telecoms, payments and banking, once run by separate companies with separate trust relationships? If the latter, the influence measured here belongs to the group's position in the country's digital infrastructure, not either brand alone.
The Rest of the Local List
The remaining seven, Saudia Dairy, Al Baik, Panda, Al Othaim, Nahdi, STC Bank and Saudia Airlines, plus Al Rajhi Bank in second place, share a pattern: none are aspirational brands. A supermarket chain, a pharmacy chain, a fried-chicken brand, a second dairy company, a bank with the country's largest branch network and the national airline are things most people use routinely, often weekly. What separates this list from the overall top 10 isn't nationality. It's that every local entry sits on a physical network, a supermarket aisle, a pharmacy counter, a bank branch, an airport gate, encountered without choosing to. The global platforms above are encountered the same way, through a screen rather than a queue.
TikTok and the Limit of the Infrastructure Argument
TikTok's place at tenth complicates that pattern. It has no Saudi ownership, branch network or supply chain in the Kingdom, and its parent, ByteDance, faces ownership and data-sovereignty disputes elsewhere, yet none of that kept it out. If physical or institutional rootedness were the main driver, TikTok should rank below Almarai or Saudia Dairy. It doesn't. Its daily-use habit appears to outweigh ownership questions that are live elsewhere, sitting alongside three local brands whose presence could read as a local-roots premium. The ranking doesn't support one explanation, global utility beats local roots, or the reverse, and gives no signal which a board should bet on for a brand with neither.
stc places second overall, ahead of Google and Apple, and its banking arm STC Bank holds a separate spot at ninth on the local list.
Signal source: Ipsos, Most Influential Brands in Saudi Arabia – 2026, June 2, 2026.
Source: ipsos.com