The historic Taif camel racing track is set to host the 4,000th race in the history of the Crown Prince Camel Festival on Friday morning, a milestone that coincides with the Arabian rounds introduced in the eighth edition of the Crown Prince Camel Festival 2026, which runs until September 13 with prize money exceeding SAR 50 million.
The festival enters Friday's programme with 3,996 races completed across its seven previous editions and the opening days of the current one, meaning the fourth heat of the morning's Arabian rounds will carry the 4,000th-race designation, according to the Saudi Camel Federation, chaired by Prince Fahd bin Jalawi bin Abdulaziz bin Musaid. The Arabian rounds were created as part of development plans aimed at widening foreign participation and nurturing the human heritage of the sport at both regional and international levels.
By the close of the current edition, the festival is expected to have staged 4,050 races since its launch in 2018. The breakdown reflects a steady expansion: 787 races in the first edition, 439 in the second, 531 in the third, 591 in the fourth, 590 in the fifth, 610 in the sixth, 254 in the seventh, and 248 approved for the eighth.
The new record extends a series of international distinctions for the festival, which entered the Guinness World Records as the largest camel racing festival in the world by number of participating camels for two consecutive years in 2018 and 2019. It returned to the record book in 2024 after registering 21,637 camels in a single edition, pushing the total number of camels that have taken part throughout its history past 100,000, arriving from four continents. The festival also holds a Guinness record from 2019 for building the world's largest illuminated camel sculpture, fitted with 51,200 light sources.