Salalah AI Hackathon: 22 Teams Build for Dhofar's Economy

Sixty innovators, 22 teams and four days of intensive building in Dhofar produced a fisheries marketplace platform, a restaurant supply-chain tool and a data privacy shield for AI workflows, as Oman's SME Development Authority (Riyada) and Omantel closed the Salalah AI Hackathon 2026 this week.

🎯 Key Takeaways

• Riyada, Oman's Small and Medium Enterprises Development Authority, ran the Salalah AI Hackathon 2026 in partnership with Omantel, drawing 60 participants organised into 22 teams, according to Wehj Al Khaleej.
• Team "Wafeer" won first place with an AI-powered platform connecting fishermen directly with buyers and markets, a direct hit on one of Dhofar's core industries.
• Team "Flow" took second place for a smart supply-chain and order-management tool for restaurants and food and beverage outlets, while third-placed team "SEER" built a data-privacy layer that screens sensitive organisational data before it reaches external AI tools.
• Projects spanned telecoms, business, SMEs, education, skills, tourism and smart and sustainable communities, according to Al Yaum Al Omaniya.
• The closing ceremony was held at the Sultan Qaboos Youth Complex for Culture and Entertainment in Salalah, presided over by Dr. Ahmed bin Mohsen Al Ghassani, President of Dhofar Municipality.

📍 What happened, and where

The Salalah AI Hackathon 2026 wrapped up in Dhofar Governorate around August 26-27, 2026, according to reporting from Wehj Al Khaleej and Al Yaum Al Omaniya, both of which cite Riyada, the government body responsible for developing Oman's small and medium enterprise sector, as the organiser working alongside Omantel, the country's flagship telecom operator.

Over four days, 60 participants split into 22 teams worked through an idea-to-prototype cycle culminating in final presentations before a judging panel, the reports note. An official from the authority's Dhofar branch, Mohamed Al Shahri, Assistant Director for Finance, Investment and Entrepreneurship, described the event as creating "a practical space to transform real challenges into implementable and scalable solutions and products."

🏆 Who won, and what they built

The winning solutions reflect Dhofar's economic priorities rather than generic AI demos:

• 1st place, "Wafeer": An intelligent platform designed to develop the fisheries sector by connecting fishermen directly with customers and markets, cutting out layers of intermediaries in a governorate where fishing remains a major livelihood.
• 2nd place, "Flow": A smart solution for restaurants and food and beverage establishments that improves supply-chain and order management, aimed at operational efficiency for Dhofar's growing hospitality and tourism sector.
• 3rd place, "SEER": A data privacy tool that screens and protects sensitive organisational information before it is shared with external AI tools, a practical response to the governance risk many Omani SMEs face as they adopt generative AI without dedicated security teams.

The closing ceremony featured recap presentations covering the hackathon's stages, the challenges teams tackled, and the "next steps" for the winning projects, according to Al Yaum Al Omaniya, though neither report specified whether Riyada or Omantel will fund further development or pilot the platforms commercially.

🧭 Part of a wider push in Dhofar and beyond

The Salalah AI Hackathon adds to a run of governorate-level tech competitions this year, from the Sur-based Smart Governorates Hackathon in January to the OQ Base Industries hackathon also held in Salalah. It also follows a busy August for Oman's AI ecosystem, from the national AI eye-screening rollout to sovereign AI infrastructure announcements. For readers tracking what else is opening for applications this season, 9 Startup & AI Programs Open in Oman This Fall (2026) rounds up other live opportunities.

Riyada's decision to route the hackathon through a governorate outside Muscat, and to pair it with Omantel's connectivity and data expertise, fits a broader pattern of decentralising Oman's innovation programming so that Dhofar-specific problems, fisheries logistics, tourism operations, get purpose-built AI tools rather than one-size-fits-all platforms designed in the capital.

🇴🇲 Why this matters for Oman

Hackathons only matter if they produce something usable, and the Salalah edition delivered three prototypes tied to real sector pain points rather than abstract demos. A fisheries marketplace platform speaks directly to Dhofar's traditional economy, while the data-privacy tool addresses a governance gap that will only grow as more Omani SMEs plug into generative AI without dedicated security budgets. For Oman's Vision 2040 push to spread digital capability beyond Muscat, a Riyada-Omantel hackathon landing in Salalah, with winning teams solving governorate-specific problems, is a small but concrete data point that the country's innovation pipeline is starting to reach beyond the capital.