Saudi Arabia's Q1 market-opening package now sits beside a visible digital infrastructure build-out

The actual foreign-investor access expansion was the 5/6 January 2026 reform: CMA Board Resolution No. 1-2-2026 and CMA_N_3974 removed the QFI concept for the Main Market and opened direct investment to all foreign natural and legal persons from 1 February 2026.

The actual foreign-investor access expansion was the 5/6 January 2026 reform: CMA Board Resolution No. 1-2-2026 and CMA_N_3974 removed the QFI concept for the Main Market and opened direct investment to all foreign natural and legal persons from 1 February 2026.

The 26 March 2026 financing-fund package is a second move, not the first one: it turns financing investment funds from private-placement products into publicly offerable and listable instruments, widening the inventory now reachable through the new foreign-investor perimeter.

Tadawul Group's official materials support a stronger digital post-trade thesis across debt-market making, OTC settlement, clearing, collateral, omnibus access, and technology innovation, but the public evidence still stops short of a formally launched tokenized-securities platform, digital-custody regime, or DLT settlement rail. The SAMA layer remains separate: payment, e-money, and settlement-cash questions still sit inside SAMA's payments perimeter even if the asset leg sits inside CMA/Edaa/Muqassa infrastructure.

The binding access reform was January's removal of the QFI gate for direct investment by foreign natural and legal persons. March's financing-fund expansion and WAMID's tokenization and digital-custody agenda matter because they widen the product shelf and point toward future post-trade redesign, but they do not yet amount to a live Saudi DLT market.