Roshn Saudi League

The Roshn Saudi League, or the Saudi Pro League, is the official championship for football competitions in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Among other sports competitions, the Roshn Saudi League is the longest in duration, as the league continues for over ten months each year. Eighteen Saudi clubs compete for their title, within scheduled rounds played in a home and away format. A promotion and relegation mechanism affect the league. The championship is decided in favor of the clubs that accumulate the highest number of points. The football season runs from August to May, during which each team plays thirty-four matches.

The editions of the Saudi Pro League have seen variations in organizational levels, merging of tiers, changes in the number of teams, and policies for the participation of foreign players. The competition has also gone through several names.

Initially, football in the Kingdom was played based on regional championships, where teams from each region played independently. It was decided to unify them into a league points system across all regions of the Kingdom. For the classification of clubs into Premier League clubs and First Division clubs, a classification league was held in 1975, with the participation of sixteen clubs from around the Kingdom, divided into two groups. The top four from each group qualified for the Premier League, while the bottom four from each group participated in the First Division.

The Premier League continued with the points system for fourteen years between 1976 and 1990. During this period, there was one year when the league was named the Joint League in 1982, due to the participation of the Saudi national team in the World Cup qualifiers that year. The Premier Division clubs and the First Division clubs were merged into one competition with twenty teams divided into two groups.

The competition's name was changed to the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques Cup. A new Golden Square system was introduced to determine the competition's champion from 1990-2007. In this system, the top four teams from the league would compete in a semi-final stage, played over two legs (home and away). The winners of these semi-finals would then face off in the championship final to clinch the title. This system lasted for seventeen years, after which it reverted back to the Saudi Pro League for two years.

The Saudi league transitioned to sponsorship-based naming for the first time in its history. The competition was renamed to Zain Pro League from 2010-2013. A new league name was introduced in the seasons 2014-2018, when it was named the Abdullatif Jameel League, and this lasted for four seasons. In the 2018 season, the league reverted to its old name, Saudi Pro League, but only for one season.

In the 2018-2019 season, the competition's name was changed to the Prince Mohammed Bin Salman Cup League, and it continued for four seasons. In the 2022 season, the league's name was changed to Roshn Saudi League.

The Saudi Pro League Association is the entity responsible for managing and discussing the regulations of the Saudi Pro League. It holds the commercial rights for the league competitions in its top tier. However, it operates financially and administratively independently. The association was established in 2008 under the auspices of the Saudi Football Federation, originally named the Saudi Pro League Authority. Over time, it evolved into the Saudi Pro League.

The Saudi league competitions were suspended during eight historical milestones, most of which occurred between the 1960s and 1970s. Four of these suspensions were due to political reasons, three were organizational, and the last one was due to a global health emergency in 2020. Despite this, the Saudi Pro League resumed its games in the Prince Mohammed Bin Salman Cup season. Football matches restarted and sporting activities resumed in August 2020. For the first time in the history of Saudi football competitions, the stadiums' stands were empty, adhering to precautionary measures due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Since the inception of the Roshn Saudi League, under its various designations, al-Hilal SFC has set a record by winning the competition title eighteen times. Following al-Hilal are al-Nassr FC and al-Ittihad Club with nine titles each, then al-Shabab FC with six titles, al-Ahli Saudi FC with three titles, al-Ettifaq FC with two titles, and al-Fateh SC with one title.