What is the role of culture - and specifically intellectual production - in the construction of Saudi national identity? This paper argues that the notion of a distinct Saudi culture plays a fundamental role in the construction and recent popularization of Saudi national identity and nationalism. Historically, the authors that I call cultural entrepreneurs pushed back against the dominance of the Islamist Sahwa movement in the public discourse by advancing the idea of Saudi Arabia as a culturally distinct nation within a territorially defined nation state, contrasting the Islamists’ exclusively religious and transnational identity construction. It is this understanding of Saudi culture that makes it a powerful tool in the contemporary state-led identity project that emphasizes territorial and political sovereignty and that marginalizes Islamist elites. To make the case, the paper compares historical intellectual production, crafted by Saudi intellectuals and cultural entrepreneurs, particularly between the 1970s and 1990s with contemporary state-led discourses about Saudi national identity. The article analyzes previously ignored intellectual production from Saudi cultural identity entrepreneurs such as ʿAbdallah Alghadhdhami, Turki Alhamad or Saad Albazei as well as writings published in the cultural magazine Alyamama. The historical sources collected in Saudi archives will be complemented with semi-structured interviews conducted in Riyadh, Jeddah, and the Eastern province between December 2021 and spring 2022. The paper is going to compare the historical intellectual production with the contemporary state-led discourse, particularly by analyzing the projects conducted by the newly founded Ministry of Culture and the Dirʿiyah Gate Development Authority - which excavates and re-constructs the “old” Saudi capital. Further, the paper is going to draw on a comparison of highschool history curricula between the 1990s and 2022 to demonstrate how “culture” becomes the dominating basis of Saudi national identity at the expense of religious identity construction and references to Mohammed ibn ʿAbd Alwahhab. Thereby, the paper demonstrates that the contemporary national identity discourse is much more than just a recent invention by the political leadership - as many observers of the country claim - but one which partly builds on a rich intellectual tradition that now has been repackaged and popularized.