One of the predominant themes of post-2015 transformation in Saudi Arabia has been the push to build a strong national identity that centers around the state. In what seems to be a paradoxical combination, the same project that has mobilized an aggressive nationalism also identified opening up to the world and promoting a cosmopolitan mindset as a priority for its developmental scheme. Understandably, some scholars and commentators have dismissed the latter part as a branding practice at best and a propaganda operation at worst. Against such assessments, this paper utilizes empirical insights to explore the construction of cosmopolitanism within the nationalist project. I argue that the engagement with the “world” is animated by actors within the Vision 2030 coalition who have expressed their belonging and concern for the nation primarily through a preoccupation with the global gaze. The drastic reshuffle in prestige and privilege in the art field in Saudi Arabia demonstrates this point. The contemporary art movement, which thrived in the global network linked to centers of the global art field before 2015, was at the receiving end of sudden empowerment, resources and key positions in the new cultural institutions. The movement emerged in the late 2000s with a group of young artists introducing provocative political art that was not welcomed by the establishment. A few years later, the positions were flipped. The Vision’s empowerment of the avant garde came unintentionally at the expense of the Modernist art establishment who found themselves alienated despite throwing their support behind the Vision’s liberalizing policies. Unpacking the dynamics of the shift, the paper shows how central state cosmopolitanism was to the very structure of the cultural transformation. For state cosmopolitanism, the art establishment’s networks, self-presentation and aesthetics have little relevance, with recognition and resources directed to those who can identify with the “world.” The argument is based on an ethnographic narrative, interviews with key figures, artworks and exhibition booklets. It builds on an alternative account of the relationship between the arts movement and the state, where both actors share a fundamental interest in the “global” in what can be described as a strategic convergence, in dynamics missed by existing narrative of the movement. The national imagined community formulated by the Vision is informed by an imagined world associated with the Global North, spaces with which state economic vision engages, while promoting a nationalism that sharpens the distinction vis-à-vis other transnational solidarities.