Six sites from the Middle East and North Africa have been added to the Unesco World Heritage List during the organisation’s 2026 committee session in Busan, South Korea.
They include Wadi Wurayah in Fujairah, which has become the UAE’s first natural World Heritage property, as well as Jordan’s Aqaba Marine Reserve, Iran’s Alamut Castle and Related Fortifications, the Tunisian village of Sidi Bou Said, Mount Amel Castles in Lebanon, and Sebastia in Palestine.
Two of the sites – Mount Amel Castles and Sebastia – were also placed on the List of World Heritage in Danger after being considered under an emergency procedure.
The decisions were made during the 48th session of the World Heritage Committee, which is taking place in Busan until Wednesday. The annual meeting examines nominations for the World Heritage List and reviews the condition of properties already recognised.
Here are the six sites from the region added this year.
Wadi Wurayah, UAE
Wadi Wurayah lies within the Hajar Mountains in Fujairah, where deep pools and chains of smaller pools linked by cascades create freshwater corridors through an otherwise arid landscape.
The 22,000-hectare property contains permanent freshwater habitats that support a rich concentration of plants and wildlife. Unesco has recorded 1,099 species here – 883 animal and 216 plant species – including at least 10 considered globally threatened.
The property contains about half of the terrestrial mammal species and nearly half of the terrestrial reptile species recorded in the UAE.
The surrounding mountains also contain extensive, well-preserved ophiolite sequences formed through tectonic processes during the Late Cretaceous period.
Its inscription makes Wadi Wurayah the UAE’s first natural World Heritage property and its third listed site overall. It follows the Cultural Sites of Al Ain, added in 2011, and Sharjah’s Faya Palaeolandscape, inscribed in 2025.
Aqaba Marine Reserve, Jordan
Jordan’s new World Heritage property protects coral reefs, seagrass beds and deeper marine habitats at the northern end of the Red Sea.
The Aqaba Marine Reserve is recognised as the world’s northernmost tropical coral reef system. Its corals have adapted over the past 10,000 years to high salinity, warm summer temperatures and marine heatwaves, giving them an unusual degree of thermal resilience.
The 701-hectare reserve contains more than 150 species of hard coral, more than 500 fish species and about 1,000 species of molluscs. It is also home to about 61 per cent of the hard-coral species found only in the Red Sea, while more than 80 fish species are endemic to the Red Sea or Gulf of Aqaba.
Alamut Castle and Related Fortifications, Iran
Alamut Castle and six associated fortifications stand across the rugged Alborz Mountains in Iran’s northern Qazvin province.
From the late 11th century, Alamut was the political, military and intellectual centre of the Nizari Ismailis. The movement established a network of mountain strongholds that provided protection while also supporting scholarship and cultural life.
The World Heritage property includes Alamut alongside the fortifications of Lambesar, Navizarshah, Shams Kelayeh, Qostinlar, Shirkuh and Ilan.
The network provided both refuge and spaces for scholarship, sustaining the Nizari community until Alamut fell in 1256.
The seven sites preserve evidence of the community’s military organisation and its wider place in the religious and intellectual history of Iran and the Islamic world.
Village of Sidi Bou Said, Tunisia
Sidi Bou Said stands on a promontory overlooking the Mediterranean, north of Tunis.
The village developed around the tomb of the 12th-century Sufi teacher and saint whose name it bears. Its streets and buildings were shaped by the contours of the cliff, creating a settlement closely connected to the surrounding landscape.
Unesco’s designation recognises the combination of Sidi Bou Said’s architecture, urban plan, distinctive colours and Sufi history. The village has also served as a long-standing source of inspiration for artists.
The listed property covers 76.54 hectares, surrounded by an 84.44-hectare buffer zone.
Mount Amel Castles, Lebanon
Five castles across the historic Jabal Amel region of southern Lebanon have been inscribed together as one World Heritage property.
They are Qalaat Al Chakif, also known as Beaufort Castle; Qalaat Tibnin, or Toron Castle; Qalaat Chakra, or Dubieh Castle; Qalaat Deir Kifa, or Maron Castle; and Qalaat Chama.
Built on hilltops and ridges overlooking major routes, the castles operated as a connected defensive and administrative network. They controlled movement and communication across the region, as well as access to surrounding agricultural land.
The sites were successively occupied and adapted by Crusader, Ayyubid, Mamluk and Ottoman powers, as well as local rulers, between the medieval period and the 19th century. Their surviving towers, gateways, keeps and residential areas record nearly a millennium of changes in military architecture.
The castles were added through an emergency procedure and immediately placed on the List of World Heritage in Danger after Unesco said the property was suffering heavy damage and that regional conflict directly threatened its conservation.
Sebastia, Palestine
Sebastia, near Nablus in the occupied West Bank, preserves evidence of successive periods of settlement stretching back to at least the ninth century BC.
Known in antiquity as Samaria and later Sebaste, the site served as the capital of the northern Kingdom of Israel. It was later developed during the Hellenistic and Roman periods, with further remains dating from Byzantine, Islamic, Crusader, Ayyubid, Mamluk and Ottoman rule.
The survival of remains from each period allows the site’s changing political, religious and urban history to be traced across more than two millennia. Sebastia is also traditionally associated with the burial place of John the Baptist.
Like Mount Amel Castles, it was inscribed through an emergency procedure and placed on the List of World Heritage in Danger at the same time.
