Royal Decree 86/2026: Oman Cements Its Global Digital Seat

On 21 September 2026, His Majesty Sultan Haitham bin Tarik issued Royal Decree No. 86/2026, formally ratifying the Charter of the Digital Cooperation Organization (DCO), a multilateral body dedicated to shaping global rules on the digital economy, according to the official decree text. The move was reported by Oman Observer, Times of Oman and Muscat Daily, and the decree was published in Official Gazette issue 1667 on 27 September 2026.

🔑 Key Takeaways

• Royal Decree 86/2026, issued on 21 September 2026, ratifies the Charter establishing the Digital Cooperation Organization, originally signed in Riyadh on 5 February 2023, according to the published decree.
• The three-article decree instructs Omani government departments to formally deposit the instrument of ratification, making Oman's DCO commitments legally binding under domestic law.
• Oman has been a founding member of the DCO since its 2021 launch and appointed its first permanent representative to the organization in 2024, so this decree completes a legal process rather than starting a new relationship.
• The DCO is expanding fast: in August 2026 its Council approved candidature for eight more countries, growing membership from 16 to 24 states, according to Oman Observer.
• DCO programmes that Oman's full ratification unlocks fuller access to include the Digital Trade Acceleration Initiative, the Digital Startup Passport, and a new GenAI Center of Excellence.

📜 What the decree actually does

Royal Decree 86/2026 is short but consequential. Article One ratifies the DCO Charter "in the form attached." Article Two directs the competent Omani entities, expected to be the Ministry of Transport, Communications and Information Technology (MTCIT) working with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, to deposit the instrument of ratification in line with the charter's provisions. Article Three orders publication in the Official Gazette with immediate effect, according to the decree's text. In practice, this converts Oman's political commitment to the DCO, made when the charter was first signed in Riyadh in February 2023, into a binding legal obligation under Omani law.

🌐 What the Digital Cooperation Organization actually does

The DCO, headquartered in Riyadh and led by Secretary-General Deemah AlYahya, was founded in 2020 to focus on digital economy governance, AI regulation, digital infrastructure and cross-border data flows, according to Oman Observer's coverage of the organization's August 2026 expansion. Oman is one of the DCO's 16 current member states, alongside Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Jordan, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nigeria, Rwanda, Ghana, Morocco, Djibouti, The Gambia, Cyprus and Greece.

Explaining why countries are lining up to join, Secretary-General AlYahya put it bluntly when the Council approved eight new candidate states in late August:

That expansion, reported by Oman Observer, would take the DCO from 16 to 24 member states representing roughly 980 million people, or about 12 percent of the world's population, once Albania, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Lebanon, Palestine, Syria and Zambia complete their own accession, with Tajikistan joining as an associate member.

🇴🇲 Oman's own paper trail with the DCO

Oman's relationship with the DCO did not start with this decree. His Highness Sayyid Faisal bin Turki bin Mahmoud Al Said, Oman's Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, presented his credentials as Oman's first permanent representative to the organization back in 2024, according to a DCO statement. The organization has also already produced a dedicated Digital Trade Acceleration Initiative country report for Oman, which found that advanced technology products made up 9.18 percent of Oman's imports but only 0.95 percent of its exports, a trade imbalance the report flags directly. The same report notes Oman already runs an operational government cloud platform, a government interoperability framework, and both an open government portal and an open data portal, though it also found Oman's overarching digital transformation strategy needed updating as of 2022 data.

That kind of granular assessment, repeated across all DCO member states, is one of the practical benefits ratification locks in: Oman's private sector and regulators now have a formal channel to act on findings like the export gap, rather than treating DCO engagement as advisory only.

💡 Why ratify now, and what it changes

Formal ratification matters for three reasons. First, it gives Oman full voting and governance rights within the DCO Council, made up of representatives designated by member states' ICT ministers. Second, it puts Omani entities squarely inside programmes such as the Digital Startup Passport, designed to let entrepreneurs registered in one member state expand into others with fewer administrative and financial hurdles, and the newer GenAI Center of Excellence. Third, it aligns with the broader push described in our earlier coverage of Oman's 2026-2030 digital economy roadmap, which set a target of lifting the digital economy's share of GDP toward 10 percent by 2040.

None of this replaces the domestic work already underway, from telecom regulators' digital service tools to ministries digitising thousands of services. But it does mean Oman is no longer just an observer as the DCO negotiates shared positions on AI governance and cross-border data flows among a membership set to nearly double in size this year.

🎯 Why this matters for Oman

A royal decree ratifying an international charter will never generate headlines the way a new app or a data centre groundbreaking does. But it is the legal mechanism that turns Oman's four-year, informal engagement with the DCO into an enforceable membership with full rights inside a body that is actively writing the rulebook for AI, digital trade and data flows that Omani exporters, startups and regulators will eventually have to operate within. With the DCO's own country report already flagging a stark gap between Oman's technology imports and exports, full ratification gives Muscat a seat, and a vote, in exactly the kind of multilateral forum where that gap could be addressed through shared standards, startup mobility programmes and coordinated digital trade rules rather than through unilateral policy alone.