Oman Ranks 69th Again: The Patent Gap Behind the Score

The Sultanate of Oman has stayed exactly where it was a year ago, 69th out of 139 economies, in the World Intellectual Property Organization's (WIPO) Global Innovation Index (GII) 2026, released on September 29, 2026. But the headline number hides a more interesting split: Oman's underlying innovation conditions are improving fast, while its ability to turn that activity into patents, research papers and high-tech exports is getting worse, not better.

🔑 Key Takeaways

• Oman held at 69th globally in the GII 2026, the same position it reached in 2025, after climbing from 74th in 2024.
• The Innovation Inputs pillar jumped 8 places to 47th globally, according to Times of Oman.
• Knowledge and Technology Outputs, the pillar that captures patents, scientific publications and high-tech exports, fell to 105th, Oman's weakest score of the seven GII pillars.
• Oman still landed in the global top 40 on 15 separate indicators, including 9th for foreign direct investment inflows and 33rd for business-funded R&D spending, up 23 places.
• Regionally, the UAE reached 25th place, while Saudi Arabia (42nd), Qatar (47th), Kuwait (62nd) and Bahrain (64th) all rank behind Oman's immediate neighbourhood but above or near it on the global table.

📊 What WIPO actually measured

The GII is WIPO's annual scorecard of innovation performance across 139 economies, built from roughly 80 hard data points and survey indicators. The 2026 edition, its 19th, carried a special thematic focus on "Deep Science Entrepreneurship", tracking more than 30,000 science-based startups and university spinouts worldwide now valued at a combined $7.6 trillion, according to WIPO's official press release. Switzerland topped the overall ranking for a 16th consecutive year, followed by Sweden, the United States, South Korea and Singapore.

Each economy is scored across seven pillars split into two halves: Innovation Inputs (Institutions, Human Capital and Research, Infrastructure, Market Sophistication, Business Sophistication) and Innovation Outputs (Knowledge and Technology Outputs, Creative Outputs). Oman's overall rank is essentially an average of how it performs across both halves, which is why a sharp gain on one side can be masked by stagnation on the other.

📈 Where Oman is pulling ahead

According to the breakdown reported by Times of Oman and corroborated by Muscat Daily, six of Oman's seven pillars improved year on year. The input side of the index, essentially the policy environment, infrastructure and capital available for innovation, showed the clearest movement:

Within those pillars, Oman placed in the global top 40 on 15 individual indicators, led by 9th place for net foreign direct investment inflows as a share of GDP, 14th for specialised cluster development, 16th for electricity output per capita, 20th for ICT access and 22nd for STEM graduates, per the Times of Oman breakdown. The biggest single-year jumps came in venture capital deals per billion dollars of GDP (up 32 places) and industrial designs by country of origin (also up 32 places), alongside a 25-place climb in the share of research talent employed by businesses rather than universities or government labs.

Business-funded R&D spending as a share of total research expenditure rose 23 places to rank 33rd globally, a signal that Omani companies, not just the state, are starting to pay for research. That trend lines up with what AI in Oman has tracked in the startup funding landscape, where new grant and investment programmes have multiplied through 2026.

🧪 The patent problem that's dragging the score down

The Knowledge and Technology Outputs pillar, which rolls up patent filings by origin, scientific and technical publications, high-tech exports and new business creation, is now Oman's single weakest score at 105th out of 139 economies. That is a marked reversal from the momentum Oman built in 2025, when Dr Saif Alhadabi, Undersecretary of the Ministry of Higher Education, Research and Innovation and head of the national team tasked with improving Oman's GII performance, told the Ministry of Finance that Oman had jumped 60 places in patents by origin that year.

The gap matters because it is exactly the stage where Oman's research base is supposed to meet its economy: university-industry R&D collaboration, where Oman still ranks a respectable 26th globally, is meant to feed patent filings and spinout companies. Local examples do exist, the Research and Innovation Authority's iLab Marine and Innotech programmes were cited in OERLive's coverage as cases of research converted into commercially viable projects, and the University of Technology and Applied Sciences logged 30 patents alongside 364 startups in its 2025/26 academic year. But at a national level, those wins are not yet enough to move the Knowledge and Technology Outputs needle.

🌍 How Oman compares in the Gulf

Oman's 69th place keeps it behind most of its Gulf neighbours on the overall table. The UAE climbed five places to enter the top 25 for the first time, according to WIPO's global results, while Saudi Arabia sits at 42nd and Qatar at 47th. Kuwait (62nd) and Bahrain (64th) are the only GCC economies Oman currently outranks. The gap to Saudi Arabia and Qatar is significant enough that simply fixing innovation inputs, where Oman is already competitive, will not be enough to close it; the outputs side needs comparable investment.

🇴🇲 Why this matters for Oman

The GII 2026 result is a useful reality check for Oman's technology and research strategy heading into the final stretch of Vision 2040's first implementation decade. The data confirms that policy reforms, infrastructure spending and venture capital flows are working: Oman's inputs are genuinely competitive with much richer economies. But the index also shows, in hard numbers, what researchers and founders in Muscat already suspect: too few of Oman's research projects, university partnerships and R&D dollars are converting into patents, publications and exportable technology. For policymakers at MoHERI and the Research and Innovation Authority, the next test is not attracting more innovation spending, it is proving that spending produces intellectual property Oman can own and commercialise.