Al Raya (Arabic: الراية, romanized: The Banner) is an Arabic daily newspaper published in Doha, Qatar. It is semi-official newspaper of the country and is one of the five leading Qatari dailies.^[1] As for Arabic dailies published in the country Al Raya is among the three major newspapers along with Al Sharq and Al Watan.^[2]

Al Raya was launched by Gulf company for printing and publishing as a weekly newspaper on 10 May 1979.^[3][4] The company which was founded by Ali bin Jaber Al Thani also owns Gulf Times, an English-language daily.^[3][5] Based in Doha,^[6] Al Raya is the second Arabic newspaper published in Qatar.^[7] On 27 January 1980 Al Raya was relaunched as a daily newspaper.^[4]

In 1996 a corpus was created which included 187 articles published in Al Raya.^[8] On 27 April 2012 the paper launched the mapping mangroves project.^[9]

Nasser Mohamed Al-Othman is the first editor-in-chief of the daily newspaper.^[3] In the initial period many leading Arab journalists wrote for the daily.^[10][11][12] Abdulla Ghanim Al Binali Al Muhannadi was the editor-in-chief of the daily in 2014.^[13] As of 2023 Abdulla Taleb Al Marri was serving in the post.^[14]

Although Al Raya is privately owned, it is the semi-official newspaper of Qatar.^[15][16] Therefore, it has a pro-government stance.^[17] The major rival of the daily is another Arabic Qatari newspaper Al Sharq which has opposite political stance.^[18]

Al Raya mostly provides news about the receptions and activities of the ruling family, Al Thani, as well as about official events.^[15] In addition, the daily has large supplements on sports and business as well as a special supplement called He and She.^[15] The paper offered a weekly page on the environmental issues from 1999 to 2005.^[19]

Following the 2013 coup in Egypt, Al Raya concentrated on the ongoing demonstrations of supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood and ousted President Mohamed Morsi.^[18] In August 2013, an editorial of the paper argued that possible US-led intervention against Syria would not be celebrated, but the Assad regime was "useless" and caused no other option than such intervention.^[20]

In the early 1990s Al Raya had a circulation of 10,000 copies and was distributed in Saudi Arabia and Egypt in addition to its native Qatar.^[10] Until 1995 when the other Arabic daily, Al Watan, was launched the paper enjoyed higher levels of circulation, but then lost its one-third of circulation.^[7] In 2000 Al Raya was the second best selling newspaper in Qatar with a circulation of 18,000 copies.^[21] The estimated circulation of the paper in 2003 was 8,000 copies.^[7] Al Raya's circulation increased to 18,000 copies in 2008.^[1] The online version of the paper was the 47th most visited website for 2010 in the MENA region.^[22]

• Official website