Al Rajhi Bank has claimed the top spot among Saudi Arabia’s most valued brands, leading a kingdom where local champions dominate over global giants, according to YouGov’s 2026 Best Brand Rankings released this week.
The Riyadh-based Islamic bank scored 56.6 on YouGov’s Index, narrowly edging out dairy giant Almarai at 55.7 and fast-food chain Al Baik at 55.1, based on over six million consumer surveys across 28 markets.
National carrier Saudia tied for third place with Al Baik, while global sports brand adidas rounded out the top five at 54.1.
Al Rajhi Bank, one of the world’s largest Islamic financial institutions, scored particularly high on reputation (58.9) and quality (59.2), reflecting strong consumer trust in Sharia-compliant banking services. The bank’s consistent performance across all six metrics—impression, quality, value, satisfaction, reputation and recommendation—underscored its deep roots in Saudi Arabia’s financial landscape.
Almarai, the kingdom’s leading dairy and food producer, demonstrated similarly robust scores with a 59.2 impression rating and 57.8 quality score. The vertically integrated company, which controls everything from farms to retail distribution, has maintained its position as a household staple across multiple product categories including dairy, juices and bakery items.
Among Saudi Arabia’s most-improved brands, social media platform TikTok led with a 4.9 percentage point increase to reach 25.9, followed by Samsung Pay at 13.5 and McDonald’s at 19.2. The data showed growing appetite for digital payment solutions and international fast-food chains in the kingdom.
Global Picture
Globally, messaging app WhatsApp retained its crown as the world’s best brand with an Index score of 41.5, followed by Samsung at 41.4 and YouTube at 41.1. Tech platforms dominated the top rankings, with Google placing fourth at 38.6 despite recording one of the year’s sharpest declines at -5.1 percentage points.
Sports apparel brands adidas and Nike ranked fifth and sixth globally at 35.3 and 34.5 respectively, though both saw slight year-on-year declines. Netflix climbed into seventh place with a 2.7 percentage point gain to reach 34.1, while consumer goods brands Dettol, Colgate and Toyota completed the top ten.
Toyota posted one of the strongest gains among global brands, rising 2.8 percentage points to 32.3, while PayPal suffered the steepest drop, falling 8.5 percentage points.
The YouGov Best Brand Rankings 2026 are based on the company’s always-on BrandIndex tracker, analyzing brand health across six metrics: impression, quality, value, satisfaction, reputation and recommendation.
Data was collected between January 1 and December 31, 2025, across 28 markets including Australia, Brazil, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, the United Kingdom and the United States.
To qualify for global rankings, brands must be tracked in at least 10 markets with a minimum sample size of 300 respondents per brand. Individual market scores are averaged to create global Index scores, with all figures rounded to one decimal place.
