Saudi passports directorate demos a palm-scan contactless e-gate

Saudi Arabia's General Directorate of Passports showcased a contactless e-gate at LEAP 2026 in Riyadh, part of a broader push by the directorate — known locally as Jawazat — to speed up how travellers cross the Kingdom's borders. The gate works by biometric hand recognition: a traveller holds a palm over a reader without touching it, the system matches that against records on file, confirms identity, and opens the gate — all without the traveller presenting a passport or any other physical document. That is a step beyond the fingerprint and facial-recognition e-gates already deployed at a number of Saudi airports, which still typically involve scanning a travel document to begin the process. The directorate is demonstrating the technology at the Ministry of Interior's pavilion during LEAP week, described in the available coverage as part of its wider effort to modernise how passengers move through international ports of entry. That phrasing — showcasing at a pavilion — is worth being precise about: nothing in the reporting states that the contactless e-gate is now operating at a live Saudi port of entry, and the accurate reading is a demonstration of the technology rather than confirmation of a national rollout. Contactless, touchless biometric border control has been building momentum internationally since the pandemic pushed airports worldwide to look for ways to move people through immigration without shared surfaces, and a handful of countries — including the UAE, at Dubai and Abu Dhabi airports — have already deployed similar palm- or iris-based systems at scale. Saudi Arabia's passport directorate positioning itself in that group fits the Kingdom's broader pattern of investing in airport and border technology ahead of the traveller volumes expected around Hajj seasons, Expo 2030 and the 2034 World Cup, all of which will push far more people through Saudi ports of entry than the system handles today. The e-gate is one of two Passports Directorate stories at LEAP this week, and the two should not be confused with each other. This one is aimed at travellers passing through a physical port — the "front door" use case. The directorate's other announcement, enabling residents to update their photograph on Absher , is a back-office administrative service for people who already hold Saudi residency, with no port crossing involved. Both come from the same directorate but solve different problems for different populations. The e-gate sits alongside the rest of the Interior Ministry's LEAP presence, which spans civil affairs, passports, civil defense and the Border Guard's Zawal maritime security platform , gathered under one dedicated technology pavilion . What has not been published is which ports, if any, will receive the contactless gate first, what the deployment timeline looks like, or how its throughput compares with the fingerprint and facial-recognition gates already in service. TechScoop is reporting from LEAP 2026 in Riyadh.