WIPO Information Notice No. 35/2026 confirms that Saudi Arabia’s accession to the Madrid Protocol will take effect on October 8, 2026, and sets out several procedural points for designations of the Kingdom. Most importantly for filing practice, Saudi Arabia has declared an 18-month time limit for notifying provisional refusals rather than the standard one-year period; refusals based on opposition may, in specified circumstances, be notified after that period. Saudi Arabia will also apply individual fees to designations, subsequent designations and renewals, although the amounts were not published in this notice and are to be announced separately by WIPO.
Applicants planning to use the Madrid System for Saudi protection should therefore avoid treating the 12-month mark as the point at which examination risk has largely cleared. Another practical constraint is equally important: because Saudi law does not provide for the relevant mechanism, SAIP will not transmit requests to divide an international registration in respect of Saudi Arabia, nor requests to merge international registrations resulting from such a division. Madrid membership will make the filing route more convenient, but it will not remove local procedural differences; fee planning, prosecution timelines and goods-and-services strategy still need a Saudi-specific check.
