Saudi Arabia executed 356 people in 2025, highest number on record

Analysts attribute increase to kingdom’s ‘war on drugs’ as authorities kill 356 people by death penalty

Saudi authorities executed 356 people in 2025, setting a new record for the number of inmates put to death in the kingdom in a single year.

Analysts have largely attributed the increase in executions to Riyadh’s “war on drugs”, with some of those arrested in previous years only now being executed after legal proceedings and convictions.

Official data released by the Saudi government said 243 people were executed in drug-related cases in 2025 alone, according to a tally kept by Agence France-Presse.

The figures mark the second consecutive year in which Saudi Arabia has carried out its highest number of executions, after authorities executed 338 people in 2024.

Saudi Arabia resumed executions for drug offences at the end of 2022, after suspending the use of the death penalty in narcotics cases for about three years.

The Gulf kingdom is one of the biggest markets for fenethylline, an illicit stimulant widely known under the brand name Captagon, which was Syria’s largest export under its former leader, Bashar al-Assad, according to the UN.

Since Saudi Arabia launched its “war on drugs”, authorities have increased the number of police checkpoints on highways and at border crossings, where millions of pills have been confiscated and dozens of traffickers arrested.

To date, most of those who have been executed in drugs-related cases have been foreigners.

The kingdom has faced sustained criticism over its use of the death penalty, which rights groups have condemned as excessive and in marked contrast to Saudi Arabia’s efforts to present a modern image to the world.

Activists say Riyadh’s continued embrace of capital punishment undermines the image of a more open, tolerant society that is central to the Vision 2030 agenda of the country’s de facto leader, the crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman (MBS).

Saudi Arabia has made large investments in tourist infrastructure and top sports events such as the 2034 football World Cup as it tries to diversify its oil-reliant economy.

Authorities in the kingdom argue that the death penalty is necessary to maintain public order and is used only after all avenues for appeal have been exhausted.

Amnesty International began documenting executions in Saudi Arabia in 1990. Figures dating from before then are largely unclear.

Source: Agence France-Presse, Staff, January 1, 2026

"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted."

— Oscar Wilde

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