Mr Zelenskyy will not be at the meeting with US secretary of state Marco Rubio, but his team will try to improve relations following his disastrous visit to Washington, which descended into an argument with President Donald Trump and JD Vance.
Mr Zelenskyy briefly met Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman after the end of the daily Ramadan fast on Monday.
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Mr Rubio is also in the Saudi coastal city of Jeddah for the talks.
He was not due to meet Mr Zelenskyy but he held talks with the crown prince to discuss Yemen, Syria and the reconstruction of Gaza.
The Ukrainian team will today try to convince the US to restore military aid and intelligence – which it recently paused.
Mr Rubio told reporters that if Ukraine and America reach an understanding acceptable to Mr Trump, it could accelerate his administration’s push towards peace talks.
“What we want to know is, are they interested [in] entering some sort of peace conversation and general outlines of the kinds of things they could consider, recognising that it has been a costly and bloody war for the Ukrainians,” Mr Rubio said.
“They have suffered greatly and their people have suffered greatly. And it’s hard in the aftermath of something like that to even talk about concessions, but that’s the only way this is going to end and prevent more suffering.”
Mr Rubio said: “I’m not going to set any conditions on what they have to or need to do. I think we want to listen to see how far they’re willing to go and then compare that to what the Russians want and see how far apart we truly are.”
He added: “The most important thing that we have to leave here with is a strong sense that Ukraine is prepared to do difficult things, like the Russians are going to have to do difficult things to end this conflict.”
Meanwhile, British prime minister Sir Keir Starmer also spoke to Mr Trump on Monday.
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Downing Street said he had told the president that “UK officials had been speaking to Ukraine officials over the weekend and they remain committed to a lasting peace”.
“The prime minister said he hoped there would be a positive outcome to the talks that would enable US aid and intelligence sharing to be restarted,” the statement said.
“The two leaders also spoke about the economic deal they had discussed at the White House and the prime minister welcomed the detailed conversations that had already happened to move this forward. Both leaders agreed to stay in touch.”
The European Union agreed last week to boost the continent’s defences and free up hundreds of billions of euros for security in response to the Trump administration’s shift in policy towards Ukraine.
A US intelligence official said a pause on sharing US intelligence that can be used for offensive purposes by Ukrainian forces remains in effect.
The official suggested that progress could be made towards reinstating intelligence sharing with Ukraine during the Saudi talks.
