This year has been pivotal for WOLF, its dedicated team and the WOLF Qanawat app. After the launch of the app’s Gaming Hub last year and the planned investment in new games, the result has been a very successful first half of 2026.
When we made our predictions for 2026, these included the evolving hybrid social and gaming experiences, the GCC region continuing to drive regional growth and AI-driven engagement and connectivity offering more exciting and immersive experiences. We have spent this year focusing on all these elements, to ensure our Arabic-speaking users continue building their ideal communities, while enjoying great gaming and social networking experiences every day.
We kicked off the year by offering an insight into WOLF, the company, by launching ‘Beyond the Game’ in January; a series of video interviews with our CEO, Gary Knight, where he talked in depth about social gaming.
Gary sat down with the interviewer – digital growth expert Sebuh Mesfin – to give a front-row view of how gaming and social have evolved and where community-first platforms in MENA go next. With Gary’s more than 30 years’ experience across EA Sports, SEGA and now nearly a decade leading WOLF, he knows what really drives success. The episodes were very well-received and included:
– Episode 1: The Evolution of Gaming
– Episode 2: The Power of Community
– Episode 3: The Social Gaming Revolution
We also celebrated a successful partnership with Edgegap, which has been central to expanding our Gaming Hub. By combining our vision for engaging, community-led entertainment with Edgegap’s expertise in game server-hosting and orchestration, we’ve been able to bring new games to our users faster, more smoothly and more reliably than ever before.
Our continued commitment to listen, learn and grow our app alongside our community led to some exciting new additions. In February, during the Holy Month of Ramadan, users enjoyed brand new app features, including Ramadan-themed events in the form of our Ramadan Evenings and the Ramadan Carrom gaming challenges.
These new features attracted high participation, resulting in numerous shows hosted and thousands of matches spectated across the challenges, with total gifting for shows in this period increasing by 49.9%.
These results meant objectives of engagement retention, entertainment value, gaming community growth, and revenue stimulation were all achieved, with 2,662 matched spectated, 1,954 minutes spent watching live gameplay, and 85 shows hosted with 35,332 unique listeners during the month.
On the back of this success, and users’ proven love of our in-app games, Carrom, Lonoo and XO, we knew the FIFA 2026 World Cup would give us an opportunity to add to our users’ passion for football with our next game, Golden Goal. This launched in early June, just before the start of the World Cup.
Golden Goal allowed fans to test their skills and compete with friends, while also giving users the option to customise the pitches and footballs with WOLF Qanawat’s first ever in-game store to make these tailored purchases.
The success was immediate. A few days after launch, users had spent $20,000 in in-app purchases in Golden Goal, and within two weeks, more than 32,000 users had played the game more than 305,000 times. Fortunately for them, now that the World Cup is over, we are transitioning some of the game’s features, while keeping the underlying infrastructure, thus allowing users to continue playing this football-related game permanently.
Behind the scenes, our valued team members have spent the last six months planning, innovating, strategising and implementing new app features, back-end upgrades, and business partnerships to ensure we are top of our game.
We have loved introducing some of our valued team members in our ‘Meet the Team’ LinkedIn posts, allowing people to see the personalities that work so hard to innovate on this unique app product.
Some team members attended the Games Forum in Barcelona in February, where our COO, Tamer Bawab, alongside Huda Aideed, Tala Matouk and Qais Khawaldeh, joined industry leaders for two days to hear industry insights across the mobile gaming space, and understand what’s really moving the needle right now that we can apply.
As always in March, we celebrated International Women’s Day, taking a moment to recognise the incredible contribution of our female team members in our Newcastle, London and Amman offices.
Also in March, many of our User Group Team from Amman visited both our London and Newcastle offices, attending hands-on workshops focused on an exciting new feature, as well as spending time with our tech teams and building relationships across the business; a hugely valuable visit.
Finally, in June, we brought our WOLF pack together in Amman and Newcastle for our annual company conferences. Teams and individuals from across the business all in one place, talking strategy, sharing ideas and challenging each other.
Gary Knight, CEO of WOLF, says: “We feel so proud of what we have already achieved this year, continuing to build our impressive global team that has evolved the business and app in a way that is delighting our users. We’ve worked hard to ensure the company can continue investing in what users want – more games, more engagement and a community that loves and trusts the WOLF Qanawat app. We’re currently working on more exciting new offerings, so watch this space for what the rest of 2026 will bring!”
