فهد البتيري

Comedy, stand-up and online video

Fahad Albutairi is a pioneer of the Saudi comedy and online-video scene. The stand-up comedian, actor and screenwriter from Khobar is widely credited as the first Saudi to perform professional stand-up on stage in the Kingdom and the wider Gulf, and as one of the country’s earliest and most influential YouTube comics.

He started doing stand-up as a student in Austin, Texas, then brought it home, making his Arab-world debut in 2008 just as online video was opening a stage that did not exist before. That timing matters: Albutairi helped build the on-ramp a generation of Saudi comedians and creators would later take for granted.