A second Sphere is officially on the books. Dubai-based Alec Engineering and Contracting has been awarded the $1.7 billion main works contract for Sphere Abu Dhabi, the follow-up to the Las Vegas original that opened in 2023 and reset what a music-and-spectacle venue can cost to build.
The award gives Alec the kind of trophy job that doesn’t come along often, and it lands at a moment when Middle Eastern megaprojects are pulling capital and talent away from a U.S. market that’s busy but slowing. Sphere Las Vegas came in at roughly $2.3 billion. Abu Dhabi’s number is lower, but the building isn’t smaller, and the contracting environment is different. Alec is doing the work under a single main contract rather than the multi-package construction-management arrangement that Sphere LV used.
The Building Behind the Number
Sphere Abu Dhabi will sit on Saadiyat Island, joining the Louvre Abu Dhabi and the still-under-construction Guggenheim Abu Dhabi in one of the largest concentrated cultural-district builds anywhere. Sphere Entertainment, the U.S. parent, is licensing the design and operating model. Like the Vegas original, the Abu Dhabi venue will feature a 16K LED exosphere wrapping the exterior and an immersive interior screen that runs roughly 160,000 square feet of high-resolution display surface.
The structural challenge is what made Las Vegas an outlier. A geodesic exoskeleton supports a free-spanning interior dome with no internal columns, a design that pushes acoustic, MEP, and screen-mounting work into tolerances that are unusual at this scale. Alec’s selection signals that the joint venture market for this kind of one-off didn’t materialize the way some bidders had hoped. The contractor delivered the Coca-Cola Arena and the bulk of Expo 2020 Dubai’s pavilions, but a Sphere is a different problem from a flat-floor arena.
Why the Sphere Abu Dhabi Award Matters Beyond the Gulf
For Alec the contract is a credentialing event that opens doors across the Gulf. For the wider construction market, it’s confirmation that Sphere is now a building type rather than a one-off. Sphere Entertainment has talked publicly about additional locations, and at least one investor presentation has named London and Seoul as candidates. A successful Abu Dhabi build, on schedule and on budget, makes the next site selection easier to underwrite.
It’s also the latest data point on where the largest contracts are landing. The Gulf, Southeast Asia, and India are now writing checks at a pace that’s hard to match in the U.S., where federal megaproject funding has flattened and the bipartisan infrastructure law’s advance appropriations expire at the end of FY 2026. Construction Briefing’s running tally of $1 billion-plus awards puts U.S. megacontracts back in growth territory in early 2026, but the absolute size of single-package awards in the Gulf is still on a different curve.
Saadiyat Island’s master plan calls for Sphere Abu Dhabi to open in 2028. That’s tight for a structure of this complexity. Las Vegas took roughly five years from groundbreaking to opening. Abu Dhabi is starting with a contracting team that has a real reference building to copy from, and a delivery deadline that won’t have any of the same excuses. The reporting came via Construction Owners.