1 Riyal

Qatar Central Bank's 2003 series replaced the earlier Qatar Monetary Agency notes following the agency's formal conversion to a full central bank in 1993 — the delay of nearly a decade before a new series appeared reflects how gradually that institutional transition was completed in practice. Thomas De La Rue printed this series under what were by then fairly routine contract arrangements with Gulf state central banks, several of which were modernizing their currency infrastructure around the same period.

The watermark remains the sole listed security feature, which is notably sparse for a note issued well into an era when intaglio printing, security threads, and color-shifting inks were standard on comparable denominations regionally.