Hajj 2026 by the Numbers: 1,707,301 Pilgrims, and No Published Death Toll

1,707,301. That is the Hajj 2026 number of pilgrims, published by Saudi Arabia’s General Authority for Statistics (GASTAT) on 26 May 2026 for the 1447 AH season [S1]. Of that total, 1,546,655 arrived from outside the Kingdom and 160,646 were citizens and residents already inside it. Men numbered 893,396, women 813,905 — a female share of 47.7%, level with the 2024 high and 3.3 points above 2019.

The season was, by the measures the Saudi state chose to publish, a good one: 34,071 pilgrims larger than 2025, and passing without the mass-casualty heat event that defined 2024, when Makkah reached 51.8°C and 1,301 pilgrims died [S8]. Temperatures during the core rituals ran between about 40.5°C and 42°C [S9]. The Ministry of Health declared the season free of epidemic outbreaks and the World Health Organization endorsed the result [S10].

One number is missing, and it is the number most people search for. No consolidated death toll has been published for Hajj 2026 — nor for Hajj 2025. That is a statement about disclosure, not an allegation. Saudi Arabia has issued an aggregate exactly once in recent memory, for 2024, and only after foreign governments had counted their own dead. In 2026, as in 2025, the only public numbers come from individual states reporting their own nationals: Bangladesh confirmed 41 deaths by 1 June, rising to 54 by 22 June [S6][S7]; Indonesia reported roughly 130 by 30 May, against 267 at the same point a year earlier [S11].

This page sets out every figure GASTAT published for 1447 AH, places it in the eight-year series, and handles the death-toll question with the precision it deserves. For the health-outcome analysis of the same season — the epidemiological claims and the heat-risk trajectory — see Hajj 2026 health scorecard. That page owns the health verdict; this one owns the numbers. For the Vision 2030 policy frame around both, see Umrah and Hajj: scaling the sacred journey.

Last verified: 31 July 2026.

How Many Pilgrims Performed Hajj in 2026?

1,707,301. GASTAT published the figure on 26 May 2026, the day of the standing at Arafat, covering the full 1447 AH season [S1].

GASTAT’s methodology matters for how much weight the headline carries. The authority does not survey pilgrims; it compiles the count from Ministry of Interior administrative records under a unified, register-based model used for six consecutive seasons [S1]. Every pilgrim in the total holds a permit and a record — which makes the figure precise for permitted pilgrims and structurally silent on anyone who entered the holy sites without one, the population that dominated the 2024 death toll.

The comparison that matters is two-sided, and most coverage gives only one half of it. Against 2025 the season grew: 1,707,301 versus 1,673,230, an increase of 34,071, or 2.0% [S5]. Against 2024 it shrank: 2024 recorded 1,833,164, so 2026 came in 125,863 lower, a fall of 6.9% [S12]. Against the last pre-pandemic season it is smaller still — GASTAT counted 2,489,406 pilgrims in 1440 AH (2019), making Hajj 2026 just 68.6% of the 2019 season [S13].

That is the most under-reported fact in the series: seven years after 2019, and four seasons after full capacity resumed, the pilgrimage has not returned to its pre-pandemic size. The reason is not international demand, which has largely recovered. It is domestic.

How Many Hajj Pilgrims Came From Outside Saudi Arabia?

1,546,655 — 90.6% of the total. International pilgrims now dominate the Hajj to a degree without precedent in the published series. The mirror image is a collapse in domestic participation that no competing coverage foregrounds.

In 2019, 634,379 pilgrims came from inside the Kingdom: 25.5% of the season. In 2026, the domestic figure was 160,646, or 9.4% [S1][S13] — a fall of 74.7% in absolute terms, while international arrivals recovered to 83.4% of their 2019 level. The decline has been continuous through the recovery: 221,854 in 2024, 166,654 in 2025, 160,646 in 2026 [S5][S12]. That rules out a one-off pandemic artefact and points instead to the once-in-five-years domestic eligibility rule, cost, and the deliberate reallocation of finite capacity toward international quota holders.

The mode split shows how the modern Hajj actually arrives:

Air carried 96.1% of international arrivals, up from 95.3% in 2025. The 18.1% fall in road arrivals is the line worth watching: land crossings are the historical route for regional pilgrims and, in past seasons, for pilgrims travelling without permits, and 2026 combined intensified border enforcement with a sharp regional contraction — most visibly Iran, whose participation fell to about 30,000 against roughly 86,000 expected [S2]. That question is treated in Iranian pilgrims, war and Saudi diplomacy. Sea arrivals, despite the 27.5% rise, remain 0.42% of international pilgrims — a rounding error against the aviation corridor into King Abdulaziz International Airport and the historic role of Jeddah Islamic Port.

How Many Women Performed Hajj in 2026?

813,905 women — 47.7% of all pilgrims, against 893,396 men [S1]. The share sits at the top of the band GASTAT has published since full capacity resumed, a fraction below the 2024 reading and well above 2019.

The 3.3-point rise between 2019 and 2026 is a policy artefact with a date attached, and the post-2023 seasons have held it within a fifth of a point. In 2021 the Ministry of Hajj and Umrah removed the requirement that women be accompanied by a male guardian, or mahram, in order to register for Hajj, allowing them to travel in organised female groups. The proportional effect appears immediately in 2023, the first full-capacity season after the change, and has held since. Whether the ratio reaches parity is one of the more meaningful things to watch in the Hajj and Umrah Programme.

Hajj Pilgrim Numbers by Year, 2019 to 2026

The eight-year series shows a pandemic collapse, a fast recovery to a 2023–24 plateau, then a settling band around 1.7 million. The deaths column is the point of this table.

The 2019 and 2023–2026 rows come directly from GASTAT releases [S1][S5][S12][S13][S14]. The 2020–2022 seasons were capacity-capped by pandemic policy and are shown for continuity only; those approximate figures were not read from a GASTAT release for this page.

Read down the final column and the disclosure pattern is plain. In seven of eight seasons, no aggregate mortality figure exists. The exception was the season with a mass-casualty event and a foreign body count already public.

How Many People Died During Hajj 2026?

No one has published a total, and no Saudi authority has said it intends to. That is the honest answer, and the one that matters, because searching for the figure returns either thin aggregator pages inventing precision or 2024 coverage misread as current.

What does exist is a set of national reports. Each government tracks its own citizens through its Hajj mission, medical teams and repatriation process, publishing as those complete. The reports available for 2026:

Bangladesh sent roughly 78,500 pilgrims in 2026 [S6]; its confirmed toll of 54 is a crude rate near 0.7 per 1,000. Indonesia, the largest contingent at a quota of roughly 221,000 [S15], reported about 130 deaths by 30 May — a rate near 0.6 per 1,000, and, per Deputy Hajj and Umrah Minister Dahnil Anzar Simanjuntak, a halving: “As of the same date last year, the number of pilgrims who died had reached 267, while this year the figure is only around 130” [S11].

Two things follow. First, deaths at Hajj are not in themselves an anomaly. The pilgrimage draws a disproportionately elderly cohort, many with cardiac and respiratory conditions, into a strenuous multi-day ritual in a hot climate; the Bangladeshi deaths were attributed overwhelmingly to natural causes, predominantly sudden cardiac events [S6]. A season with zero deaths among 1.7 million people, a large share of them over 60, has never occurred and is not a plausible outcome.

Second, the Bangladeshi sequence — 41 on 1 June, rising through successive Hajj Office bulletins to 54 by 22 June — is itself evidence for why a real-time aggregate is hard. Deaths continue to be recorded for weeks after the rituals end, as hospitalised pilgrims die and missions close their books. Anyone publishing a global total on the day of Eid would be publishing an undercount.

That is the honest case for the difficulty. It is not a case for publishing nothing.

Why Hasn’t Saudi Arabia Published a Hajj 2026 Death Toll?

Because it has never committed to publishing one annually, and no mechanism obliges it to. The 2024 disclosure was the exception, and understanding why it happened explains why 2025 and 2026 produced silence.

By late June 2024, foreign governments had already confirmed more than a thousand deaths among their own nationals — Egypt alone accounted for 658, of whom 630 held no Hajj permit. Saudi Arabia then confirmed 1,301 deaths, stating that 83% of those who died were pilgrims without authorisation who had walked long distances in direct sun without shelter. A senior Saudi official framed it as: “The state did not fail, but there was a misjudgement on the part of people who did not appreciate the risks” [S8]. The figure arrived after the external count made silence untenable, attached to an explanation that located responsibility outside the state’s operational perimeter.

The structural obstacles to a routine annual figure are real, and worth setting out fairly rather than assuming bad faith:

• Jurisdiction is split. A pilgrim who dies at Mina is a Saudi statistic by location and a Bangladeshi, Nigerian or Indonesian statistic by nationality. Consular notification, certification and repatriation can take months.
• The denominator is contested. Where unpermitted attendance is significant, the number physically present is not the number in GASTAT’s register — so a mortality rate cannot be computed from published data at all.
• Cause attribution is difficult. Distinguishing a heat-precipitated cardiac event in an 80-year-old from an expected death from natural causes is a clinical judgement made at scale under field conditions.
• There is no external audit. No independent body counts Hajj deaths. The one serious attempt — the Associated Press tally after the 2015 Mina crush — diverged from the official figure by a factor of three.

That precedent needs stating precisely, because it is why the absence of a 2026 figure carries weight rather than being a routine data gap. Saudi Arabia’s official toll for the 24 September 2015 Mina crush was 769 dead and 934 injured. An Associated Press count assembled from state media and official statements in 36 of the more than 180 participating countries reached at least 2,411; Agence France-Presse reached 2,236. The official figure was never revised, and the full toll has never been acknowledged [S16].

None of that establishes that anything was concealed in 2026. Temperatures were far below 2024’s, no crowd-crush event occurred, the two largest reporting contingents recorded ordinary or improved mortality, and the Ministry of Health’s operational claims are consistent with a well-run season. The point is narrower and stands regardless: for a gathering of 1.7 million people, in a state that publishes pilgrim counts to the last digit within hours, mortality is the one operational statistic that goes unpublished. That is a standing accountability gap, and it is the one thing the 2026 numbers cannot tell you.

How Saudi Arabia Delivered a Hajj of 1.7 Million

The headline count is not an outcome of demand. It is an outcome of allocation, then of logistics. Hajj is the most tightly rationed mass gathering on earth, and the machinery below produced the 2026 number.

The country quota system

Since the 1987 Organisation of Islamic Cooperation summit, each country’s allocation has been set at roughly one pilgrim per 1,000 Muslims in its population, adjusted for logistics and bilateral agreement [S17]. That formula, not aggregate demand, is why the total sits where it does. For 2026 the largest allocations went to Indonesia (~221,000), Pakistan (179,210) and India (175,025) — well over a third of the international total between them [S15]. Waiting lists in the largest source countries run to decades. The Hajj cannot grow to meet demand; it can only be redistributed.

Nusuk and the end of paper permits

The Nusuk platform became the single gate. Its card is now mandatory for entry to Makkah, the holy sites and Al-Rawdah Al-Sharifah at the Prophet’s Mosque in Madinah, integrating identity, accommodation, transport and access in one credential; 1.6 million were distributed in the preceding season [S18]. From 1 June 2026, all Makkah entry permits issue digitally through Nusuk, with no country-level exemptions [S19]. Every permitted pilgrim is now a database row before arrival — precisely what makes GASTAT’s count exact, and precisely what makes the absence of an equally exact mortality figure conspicuous.

The Makkah Route Initiative

Pre-clearance moved further upstream. Run by the Ministry of Interior under the Pilgrim Experience Programme, the Makkah Route Initiative completes immigration, visa and baggage processing at departure airports abroad. In 2026 it covered 17 entry points across 10 countries — Senegal and Brunei joining Morocco, Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Türkiye, Côte d’Ivoire and the Maldives — and served 388,694 pilgrims, up 23.7% from 314,337 in 2025 [S20]. A quarter of all international pilgrims now clear the Saudi border before boarding.

Enforcement against unpermitted pilgrims

The 2024 death toll made permit enforcement a mortality question rather than an administrative one. For 2026 the Ministry of Interior set fines of up to SAR20,000 ($5,330) plus deportation and a 10-year re-entry ban for entering Makkah or the holy sites without a Hajj permit between 1 Dhul Qi’dah and 14 Dhul Hijjah, and up to SAR100,000 ($26,660) for transporting, hosting or accommodating an unpermitted pilgrim, doubling for repeat offences, with confiscation of vehicles used [S21]. The 18.1% fall in road arrivals is consistent with that regime biting, though not proof of it.

Moving 1.7 million people

The Al-Mashaaer Al-Mugaddassah Metro — the 18km line linking Mina, Muzdalifah and Arafat across nine stations plus Jamarat — carried more than 1.9 million passengers across about 1,800 trips, against a plan of 2 million over 2,000 journeys; its 17 trains hold roughly 3,000 each, a theoretical throughput of 72,000 an hour [S22]. Longer-haul movement ran on the Haramain High-Speed Railway, which offered 2.21 million seats across 5,300 scheduled journeys, alongside 24,000 buses under automated control [S18]. The wider city picture is set out in Makkah pilgrimage logistics, hotels and transport capacity.

Shade, mist and the 16:00 rule

Heat mitigation was the visible lesson of 2024. The second phase of the Arafat shading and cooling project took shaded and cooled area beyond 272,000 square metres — around five times the previous season — with 18 canopies, 36 misting fans, seven cooling units and 107 misting columns at Jabal Al-Rahmah, 400 further misting units at Jamarat, 6,000 mist columns across five stations, 25,000 chilled taps and 1,050 water coolers producing 1,500 cubic metres an hour [S18]. Pilgrims were instructed to remain in their camps until 16:00 local time [S9]. Whether 42°C Hajj days become the baseline is analysed in Hajj heat and climate risk.

What the health operation measured

The Ministry of Health reported 1,206,035 health services delivered by 10 Dhul Hijjah and more than 2.5 million by 12 Dhul Hijjah (29 May 2026) — different cut-offs of one cumulative count, not a contradiction; the higher figure is the season total. Within it: 114,889 people used health centres and urgent care, emergency departments handled 58,462 cases, outpatient clinics saw 29,846, and 8,342 were admitted, including 410 surgical procedures, 323 cardiac catheterisations and 33 open-heart operations [S23]. Minister of Health Fahad Abdulrahman Al-Jalajel said the season “was free of epidemics and health threats in the wake of consecutive global health challenges” [S10], and WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus congratulated the Kingdom on the outcome [S24]. The technology layer — drone medicine delivery, surgical robotics, smartwatch monitoring of high-risk pilgrims — is covered in Smart Hajj: the AI operations platform.

One delivery figure carries a genuine discrepancy. GASTAT’s Hajj 1447 report puts volunteers at 26,701 against a workforce of 441,049 [S3]; the National Center for the Non-Profit Sector reported more than 39,000 across 16 government and non-profit entities [S4]. They count different populations — GASTAT’s statistical frame for the Hajj operation versus every volunteer registered through the NCNP platform, including those at border crossings, miqats and roadside rest areas outside the holy sites. Both are right within their frame; neither is the “official volunteer number”.

Why This Matters for Vision 2030

Hajj is the emotional centre of Saudi Arabia’s religious-tourism ambition and almost none of its growth. That distinction is the story.

Vision 2030 targets 30 million annual Umrah pilgrims, up from roughly 8 million at baseline [S25]. Hajj cannot contribute meaningfully, because Hajj is quota-bound: the OIC formula, the physical constraint of Mina and the fixed five-day ritual calendar together cap it between roughly 1.7 and 2 million. Eight seasons of GASTAT data show exactly that — a band, not a trend. The entire 30-million burden therefore sits on Umrah, which is uncapped, year-round and scalable through visa policy alone.

Umrah is delivering. Foreign Umrah pilgrims reached 16.92 million in 2024 and more than 18 million in 2025, tracked on our foreign Umrah pilgrims KPI page. The 1448 AH season opened strongly: between 15 Dhul Hijjah and the end of Muharram, international arrivals exceeded 1.27 million, 931,500 of them on Umrah visas — a 22.5% rise year on year, led by Pakistan (200,000), Indonesia (170,000) and Iraq (130,000), 75% arriving by air [S26][S27]. The General Presidency for the Affairs of the Grand Mosque and the Prophet’s Mosque separately reported a single-day peak of about 904,000 at the Grand Mosque on 4 Ramadan 1447 (21 February 2026). That figure is reported rather than documented here — the Saudi outlets carrying the release blocked automated retrieval for this page — and it counts prayer attendance alongside Umrah performers, so it is not comparable with the arrival series above.

The gap analysis is still unforgiving. Reaching 30 million from roughly 18 million requires sustained double-digit compound growth against accommodation constraints in Makkah; our modelling puts the central case at 22–26 million and a 4–8 million shortfall, set out in the 30 million Umrah pilgrims gap alert. Nothing in the Hajj 2026 numbers changes that arithmetic. What Hajj 2026 does provide is the operational proof-of-concept: digital permitting, pre-cleared border processing, metro-scale mass transit and a functioning heat regime, validated at 1.7 million and transferable to a much larger Umrah flow. That is the real read-across, and it sits inside the broader Hajj and Umrah Programme and the wider Saudi tourism sector, where the domestic and international series moved in the opposite directions to Hajj’s — as our breakdown of the early-2026 visitor numbers sets out.

Risks, Contradictions and Open Questions

The mortality gap is the largest unresolved item. Saudi Arabia publishes pilgrim counts to the individual within hours and has published a death figure once in eight seasons. The tension is not explained by methodological difficulty alone — the same register that produces 1,707,301 could produce a deaths-in-register figure. Until one exists, external observers cannot compute a Hajj mortality rate, compare seasons, or verify whether the 2026 heat regime worked or merely coincided with a cooler year.

The domestic collapse is unexplained. A 74.7% fall in Saudi-based pilgrims between 2019 and 2026, continuing through the full recovery, is a large structural change no Saudi authority has commented on publicly. Cost, the once-every-five-years eligibility rule and deliberate reallocation toward international quota holders are all plausible; none is documented.

The 2026 heat result may not be repeatable. Rituals fell in late May 2026 at 40.5–42°C. The Hajj calendar moves roughly 11 days earlier each Gregorian year, so the season is currently drifting out of the hottest months — a temporary reprieve that reverses in the 2040s. Attributing 2026’s outcome to cooling infrastructure rather than to the calendar is not yet supportable from published data.

Key figures come from different frames. 26,701 versus 39,000+ volunteers; 1.2 million versus 2.5 million health services. All four are defensible on their own cut-off and definition, and all four circulate without their qualifiers. Any figure cited from this season should carry its date and its issuer.

Unpermitted attendance in 2026 is unknown. GASTAT counts the register. If unpermitted pilgrims were present — the enforcement regime implies the authorities expected some — they are absent from every published number, including the denominator of any mortality calculation.

What to Watch Next

• GASTAT’s Hajj 1448 AH release, expected around mid-May 2027. Watch the domestic line: a fourth consecutive decline confirms a structural shift rather than a recovery lag.
• Whether any Saudi authority publishes a 2026 or 2027 mortality figure. The 2024 precedent suggests disclosure follows external pressure. Absent a mass-casualty event, expect continued silence — and treat any published aggregate as a policy change, not routine reporting.
• Bangladeshi and Indonesian mission reports for 1448 AH, from late May 2027. These are the two most consistent national mortality series and the only basis for season-on-season comparison.
• Umrah arrivals through the 1448 AH season. Sustaining the 22.5% opening rise across a full year would put the 30 million target back in reach; a fade below 10% growth confirms the 22–26 million central case.
• The 2027 Arafat heat regime. Rituals fall in mid-May 2027. Further expansion beyond 272,000 square metres of shaded and cooled area would indicate the Kingdom treats heat as structural rather than seasonal.

Related Vision 2030 Context

• Umrah and Hajj: scaling the sacred journey — the Vision 2030 priority and its 30 million pilgrim target.
• Hajj 2026 health scorecard — the health-outcome verdict on the same season.
• Hajj — the pilgrimage explained: obligation, rituals and calendar.
• Umrah — the year-round pilgrimage carrying the growth target.
• Makkah Route Initiative — pre-clearance at departure airports abroad.
• Nusuk platform guide — permits, visas and the mandatory pilgrim credential.
• 30 million Umrah pilgrims gap alert — the shortfall analysis against the Vision 2030 target.
• Smart Hajj civil defence and geospatial command — crowd safety and emergency response at the holy sites.

Sources

• [S1] General Authority for Statistics (GASTAT), Total Number of Pilgrims for Hajj 2026 Reaches (1,707,301), official statistical release, 26 May 2026. https://www.stats.gov.sa/en/w/news/194
• [S2] Türkiye Today, Saudi Arabia Closes 2026 Hajj Season With Over 1.7M Pilgrims, news report, 30 May 2026. https://www.turkiyetoday.com/region/saudi-arabia-closes-2026-hajj-season-with-over-17m-pilgrims-3220939
• [S3] Saudi Gazette, Saudi Arabia Records 1.7 Million Pilgrims for Hajj 2026, news report carrying the GASTAT Hajj 1447 report, 26 May 2026. https://saudigazette.com.sa/article/661643/saudi-arabia/saudi-arabia-records-17-million-pilgrims-for-hajj-2026 (the site blocked automated retrieval; the workforce and volunteer figures were read via the Zawya syndication of the same report)
• [S4] Arab News, More Than 39,000 Volunteers Help Power Successful Hajj 2026 Operations, news report, 1 June 2026. https://www.arabnews.com/node/2645607/saudi-arabia
• [S5] General Authority for Statistics (GASTAT), Total Number of Pilgrims Performing Hajj 1446H (2025) Reaches (1,673,230), official statistical release, 5 June 2025. https://www.stats.gov.sa/en/w/news/49
• [S6] Prothom Alo, 41 Bangladeshi Pilgrims Died During Hajj in Saudi Arabia So Far This Year, news report, 1 June 2026. https://en.prothomalo.com/bangladesh/87euk8ooe6
• [S7] Daily Sun (Dhaka), Hajj Death Toll Among Bangladeshis Rises to 41, news report, 1 June 2026, and subsequent Bangladesh Hajj Office bulletins reported by Bangladeshi media through 22 June 2026. https://www.daily-sun.com/bangladesh/877604/hajj-death-toll-among-bangladeshis-rises-to-41 (the site blocked automated retrieval; the 22 June total of 54 was read from Bangladeshi wire summaries, not from the Hajj Office directly)
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• [S9] Al-Monitor, Between Heat and War, Saudi Arabia Seeks Incident-Free Hajj, news analysis, 26 May 2026. https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2026/05/between-heat-and-war-saudi-arabia-seeks-incident-free-hajj
• [S10] Qatar Tribune, Saudi Health Ministry Declares Hajj Season Free of Epidemic Outbreaks, news report, 30 May 2026. https://www.qatar-tribune.com/article/236779/latest-news/saudi-health-ministry-declares-hajj-season-free-of-epidemic-outbreaks
• [S11] The Jakarta Post, Indonesia Records Significant Drop in Haj-Related Fatalities, news report, 4 June 2026. https://www.thejakartapost.com/indonesia/2026/06/04/indonesia-records-significant-drop-in-haj-related-fatalities
• [S12] General Authority for Statistics (GASTAT), Total Number of Pilgrims in 1445H Hajj Season Is 1,833,164, official statistical release, 15 June 2024. https://www.stats.gov.sa/en/w/gastat-total-number-of-pilgrims-in-1445-h-hajj-season-is-1-833-164
• [S13] General Authority for Statistics (GASTAT), The Total Number of Pilgrims for the 1440 AH Hajj Season Is 2,489,406, official statistical release, 2019. https://www.stats.gov.sa/en/w/gastat-the-total-number-of-pilgrims-for-the-1440-ah-hajj-season-is-2-489-406-an-increase-of-4.96-from-last-year-the-kingdom-has-provided-over-350-thousand-employees-to-serve-them
• [S14] General Authority for Statistics (GASTAT), Total Number of Pilgrims in 1444H Reaches (1,845,045), official statistical release, 2023. https://stats.gov.sa/en/w/total-number-of-pilgrims-in-1444-h-reaches-1-845-045-
• [S15] Dawan Africa, Indonesia, Pakistan, India Lead Hajj 2026 Quotas as Costs Rise, news report, May 2026. https://www.dawan.africa/news/indonesia-pakistan-india-lead-hajj-2026-quotas-as-costs-rise
• [S16] Fox News, Death Toll From Saudi Hajj Stampede Now at Least 2,411, Three Times the Number Reported by Kingdom, Associated Press wire report, 10 December 2015. https://www.foxnews.com/world/death-toll-from-saudi-hajj-stampede-now-at-least-2411-three-times-the-number-reported-by-kingdom
• [S17] Almeer, Dur and Phan, Allocating Hajj Quotas, academic working paper, February 2024. https://econworkshop.ku.edu.tr/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Hajj_Paper.pdf
• [S18] The Siasat Daily, Saudi Arabia Rolls Out Extensive Haj 2026 Service Improvements, news report, 14 May 2026. https://www.siasat.com/saudi-arabia-rolls-out-extensive-haj-2026-service-improvements-3467699/
• [S19] Gulf News, Nusuk Card for Hajj 2026: Everything Pilgrims Need to Know, explainer, 2026. https://gulfnews.com/living-in-uae/ask-us/nusuk-card-for-hajj-2026-everything-pilgrims-need-to-know-1.500505196
• [S20] Wego Travel Blog, Makkah Route 2026: How Saudi Arabia’s Hajj Pre-Clearance Works, explainer citing Ministry of Interior figures, 2026. https://blog.wego.com/makkah-route/
• [S21] Khaleej Times, Hajj 2026 Rules: Saudi Arabia Warns of Up to SAR100,000 Fine for Permit Violations, news report, May 2026. https://www.khaleejtimes.com/world/gulf/hajj-2026-rules-saudi-arabia-permit-violations-fine-deportation
• [S22] Saudi Gazette, SAR Transports Over 1.9 Million Pilgrims on Mashair Metro During Hajj, news report, 30 May 2026. https://saudigazette.com.sa/article/661751/saudi-arabia/sar-transports-over-19-million-pilgrims-on-mashair-metro-during-hajj
• [S23] Saudi Gazette, Ministry of Health Provides Over 2.5 Million Services During Hajj Season, news report, 30 May 2026. https://saudigazette.com.sa/article/661752/saudi-arabia/ministry-of-health-provides-over-25-million-services-during-hajj-season
• [S24] Gulf Insider, Saudi Arabia Hajj 2026: WHO Praises Health Protection, news report, June 2026. https://www.gulf-insider.com/saudi-hajj-2026-who-health-protection/
• [S25] Saudi Vision 2030, Pilgrim Experience Program, official programme page, accessed 31 July 2026. https://www.vision2030.gov.sa/en/explore/programs/pilgrim-experience-program
• [S26] Arab News, Umrah Pilgrim Numbers Surge by 22.5%, news report, 18 July 2026. https://www.arabnews.com/node/2651416/saudi-arabia
• [S27] Saudi Gazette, Umrah Visa Arrivals Rise 22.5% to 931,500 at Start of New Season, news report, July 2026. https://saudigazette.com.sa/article/663077/saudi-arabia/saudi-arabia-records-225-rise-in-umrah-visa-arrivals-at-start-of-1448h-season