Abdulwahab al-Faiz came next for a brief period (9 October 2011 – 4 January 2013), and then came Mohammad Fahad al-Harthi, who was at the time also the editor of Sayidatti (the group's women weekly), and he served in that role until 26 September 2017[15] On 27 September 2016, Faisal J. Abbas was appointed as Editor-in-Chief following an announcement by SRMG's new chairman, Prince Badr bin Abdullah bin Farhan al-Saud.

Having previously re-launched and served as Editor-in-Chief at Al Arabiya English, Abbas's declared mandate was to make Arab News "more global, more digital".

It also witnessed an expanded the op-ed and analysis section with high-profile contributors such as former Saudi intelligence chief Prince Turki al-Faisal, former Turkish FM Yassar Yakis, UAE businessman Khalaf Ahmad al-Habtoor,[19] US–Arab affairs expert Dr. Amal Mudallali, Chatham House's Yossi Mekelberg, Chris Doyle from CAABU and senior business journalist Frank Kane who left the UAE's The National to join Arab News in February 2017.

[3] It published an op-ed written on the first anniversary of the September 11 attacks by Rasheed Abu Alsamh who commented: First, we must stop denying that any of the hijackers were Saudis or even Arab.

We must be mature and responsible enough to admit that these sick minds that hatched and perpetrated these dastardly attacks, were, sadly, a product of a twisted viewpoint of our society and our religion...We must stop the hatred being taught to our children in schools.

Stephan Shakespeare, chief executive of YouGov, said that the partnership would result in valuable research on public opinion in a part of the world where such information is rare.

[23] Some of the studies that were produced as a result of this partnership showed that 81 percent of Americans can't locate the Arab World on a map and that the majority of Saudis supported the decision to allow women to drive.

In March 1992, the editor-in-chief of the Arab News, Khalid Almeena, was briefly dismissed for reprinting an interview with the Egyptian Muslim leader Sheikh Omar Abdul-Rahman published in a US daily.

[25] In April 2007, another controversial incident occurred in which Saudi journalist Fawaz Turki was dismissed for publishing a column on the atrocities of Indonesia during its 1975–1999 occupation of East Timor.

[30] This was followed by a French language digital edition, Arab News en Francais, on 14 July 2020, which was launched virtually via Zoom due to the COVID-19 pandemic.