[VIDEO] WSJ Investigates Why Saudi Arabia’s Trojena Ski Dream Collapsed

For years, Saudi Arabia’s planned Trojena ski resort occupied a strange place in the ski world. It was simultaneously one of the most ambitious ski projects ever conceived and one of the most improbable: a resort being carved into the mountains of an arid country where natural snow is so scarce that researchers from Copernicus estimate the area receives snow cover for less than two days per year on average. The same researchers concluded that at most 60 days of skiing would be possible at Trojena and even less with increasing temperatures prevalent across the globe. But it wasn’t the lack of snow that broke the proverbial camel’s back — it was finance.

A new investigation from The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) suggests that Trojena was not simply an improbable dream. It became part of a much larger problem inside Saudi Arabia’s enormous NEOM megaproject, where escalating costs, unrealistic projections and an unwillingness to confront failure helped turn one of the world’s most ambitious development schemes into what WSJ describes as a project that has effectively collapsed.

The story is laid out in the WSJ video “Why the World’s Largest Megaproject Collapsed,” produced by reporter Eliot Brown. The video draws on internal documents, satellite imagery and interviews with people involved with NEOM.

NEOM was announced in 2017 as the centerpiece of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s Vision 2030 program, which aims to diversify the Saudi economy beyond oil. It was initially presented as a roughly $500 billion futuristic development covering more than 26,000 square kilometers in northwestern Saudi Arabia. But NEOM was not a single city or construction project. It was an umbrella development containing several extraordinary projects, including The Line, the proposed linear city of mirror-clad skyscrapers; Oxagon, a futuristic industrial and maritime development; Sindalah, a luxury island destination; and Trojena, the mountain tourism and ski destination.

The ideas associated with NEOM became increasingly fantastical. Earlier plans reportedly included flying taxis, robot servants, a giant artificial moon and a Jurassic Park-style attraction featuring robotic dinosaurs. Those concepts helped make NEOM one of the most recognizable megaprojects on Earth; but also increasingly difficult to separate from science fiction.

Trojena was the ski-world component of that vision. The plan called for roughly 30 kilometers (19 miles) of ski terrain, an artificial lake and a futuristic mountain village, with skiing expected to take place from December through March. The vision sold by Saudi Arabia was so compelling that the Olympic Council of Asia awarded Trojena the 2029 Asian Winter Games. Emboldened by the recognition, construction of Trojena began in 2023.

Many questioned the feasibility of the project, but also the necessity of stamping a resort out of the dry Arabian ground when other options were readily available in Asia. Trojena sits in the Sarawat Mountains in Tabuk Province, at elevations reaching roughly 2,600 meters (8,500 feet). Temperatures can fall below freezing during winter, but precipitation is rare. It was an extraordinary – if not preposterous — proposition: build a ski resort in a place where nature provides almost none of the snow required to operate one.

• Related: A Closer Look at the Controversial Decision to Host the 2029 Asian Winter Games in Saudi Arabia

Despite the doubts, environmental concerns, and reservations by critics, construction went ahead. SnowBrains reported in 2023 that more than 1.6 million cubic meters of material had already been excavated for the planned lake, with almost a million cubic meters of rock excavated and used in the lakebed. The lake was supposed to be the centerpiece, projected to measure  2.8-kilometer (1.7-mile) and be filled with desalinated water, which would be pumped into the mountains and used, among other things, as a source for snowmaking in winter. Snowmaking and ski testing had also taken place at the site.

• Related: A Look at the Progress at Saudi Arabia’s Ski Resort Trojena — Part of NEOM

The project relentlessly moved ahead and became even more ambitious as construction progressed. Enormous amounts of concrete were poured, tunnels were excavated, and steel structures began rising from the mountains. Trojena started signing on hotels, including Saudi Arabia’s first W hotel and a luxury Chedi hotel operated by GHM, which also operates a Chedi property in Andermatt, Switzerland. Just a year ago, it genuinely looked like Trojena was actually becoming reality, irrespective of the immense financial and environmental cost. SnowBrains documented construction progress over the last three years, showing the beginnings of the futuristic ski village and extensive excavation. By 2025, a major tunnel had been completed and construction companies were describing the project as moving toward the 2029 Asian Winter Games, which Saudi Arabia had been awarded.

But while construction progressed, the economics of the megaproject were becoming increasingly difficult to ignore. The Wall Street Journal reports that people inside the project warned that the costs would be “astronomical.” Building a ski resort from scratch in a dry desert started taking its toll. Roads had to be constructed, rocks detonated, water systems installed, and masses of concrete poured and steel frameworks erected. The environmental cost raised question marks for many, but what ultimately ended the project was the financial cost.

Construction activity stopped in March this year, when The Wall Street Journal reported that Saudi Arabia had canceled two large construction contracts worth billions of dollars at Trojena. For many workers, the cancellation came as a shock. For WSJ journalist Eliot Brown, it was no surprise. He describes the internal culture surrounding NEOM—including Trojena — as a “dance of mutual delusion.”

Eliot Brown’s phrase for NEOM’s internal culture was rooted in Mohammed bin Salman’s own position in the whole project. He wasn’t simply the visionary watching from a distance as others executed his plans. He was — and is — the crown prince and de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, the chairman of the Public Investment Fund that finances NEOM, and the ultimate political authority the project answers to: developer, financier and head of state, all at once. That combination made honesty not just expensive, it made it impossible. Telling the most powerful man in Saudi Arabia that his signature project was financially or technically unrealistic wasn’t simply an awkward conversation to have. According to WSJ‘s reporting, some people involved with NEOM felt that speaking up honestly could amount to professional suicide.

So the incentives ran the other way: keep the project moving, keep the projections optimistic, and hope the gap between ambition and reality could somehow be closed later, by someone else, at some other time. Bin Salman wanted the project to be profitable, so costs were underestimated and revenues overestimated. Ultimately, the house of cards collapsed as costs kept spiraling out of control. The Journal reports it reviewed a draft board presentation estimating that the capital required to complete NEOM’s full vision could eventually reach $8.8 trillion — roughly 18 times the original $500 billion figure, and around 25 times Saudi Arabia’s entire annual budget. A Saudi spokesperson disputed that characterization in 2025, saying the WSJ was “incorrectly interpreting” the figures.

But by the Wall Street Journal‘s own account, more than $50 billion had already been spent on NEOM by the time the broader project ground toward a standstill, with additional billions required just to unwind contracts that couldn’t be finished. The numbers on paper could no longer be made to look better than the stark reality showed on construction sites. Trojena was far from nearing completion due to the sheer size. In January 2026, Saudi Arabia lost its host status for the 2029 Asian Winter Games and were reassigned to Almaty, Kazakhstan. On March 25, 2026, NEOM terminated a roughly $4.7–5 billion contract with Italian contractor Webuild to build the three dams and freshwater lake at the heart of the resort, along with an architectural centerpiece known as “The Bow,” and a separate contract with Eversendai for the structural steel of the ski village.

• Related: Saudi Arabia’s Trojena Ski Resort Dealyed Until After 2030

Both were canceled at approximately 30% completion. And yet Trojena was not declared dead. Wording spoke of delays or pause. And in reality, construction, by some accounts, is still visibly happening at the site even after those cancellations. What exactly is being built, and toward what end, isn’t something Saudi Arabia, NEOM or PIF has explained. Instead, Trojena has settled into the strange limbo that has come to define NEOM more broadly: projects delayed, contracts canceled, ambitions quietly narrowed — but the actual language of failure carefully, consistently avoided.

In August 2026, PIF published its 2025 Annual Report — a 154-page document detailing the fund’s investments, strategy and performance across every corner of its portfolio. Trojena appears in it exactly once, in a single passing clause listing NEOM’s various components: “the reimagined industrial city Oxagon, cognitive city THE LINE, mountain destination Trojena, the Nature Region…” That’s it. No detailed financial figures. No discussion of the canceled dam and steel contracts. No acknowledgment that Saudi Arabia lost the Asian Winter Games it had built the entire project around securing.

Instead, the report describes NEOM’s “delivery model” as having “evolved toward phased implementation and commercially driven prioritization to ensure progress is measurable, resilient and financially sustainable over time” —corporate language that describes a major change in direction without ever using the word failure. That opacity is perhaps the most revealing part of the entire saga. Trojena once had a launch video, a ski map, hotels, an artificial lake, an Asian Winter Games and a futuristic vision of skiing in the Saudi mountains. Now, the public language is increasingly about prioritization, phasing and financial sustainability.

The dream hasn’t necessarily been formally canceled. It has simply become much harder to see, maybe even for those on the inside. According to social media accounts by construction workers, work is progressing at Trojena but visions are no longer broadcast proudly across NEOM’s social media accounts. Instead, the gaze has turned to actually getting infrastructure installed in the mountains and creating something feasible — what exactly, time will tell.

It’s easy to mock Trojena — or even the entire NEOM project. But at the end of the day, great things always start with a dream. In a system that was flawed but flush with near endless funds, the dream became a gigantic nightmare as those on the inside shirked the accountability of reigning in the dream to something feasible. Creating a futuristic-looking ski resort in the Saudi desert with gravity-defying architecture and an artificial lake so big you can sail on it in a place that averages less than two days of natural snow cover a year was crazy. But maybe behind the crazy superlatives is a feasible, smaller, and more sustainable version that could become reality away from the hype and attention-grabbing headlines.

The failure, if that’s even the right word for something no one in Riyadh will use, wasn’t that someone dreamed too big. It’s that the dream came detached from financial and physical reality, inside a system where almost no one felt safe enough to say so out loud. Trojena may never be officially declared over. It may simply keep existing in the space between “under construction” and “quietly abandoned” — but maybe, just maybe, a better version can rise like phoenix from the ashes of NEOM.