Jeddah Tower

The building that’s supposed to finally beat the Burj Khalifa is climbing again. Jeddah Tower, the kilometer-high supertall on the northern edge of Jeddah, passed its 103rd floor in June 2026, roughly 18 months after construction restarted following a long stoppage. When it tops out, it will stand at least 180 meters taller than Dubai’s Burj Khalifa and become the first building on Earth to break the 1,000-meter mark.

Project Scope

The tower is the centerpiece of Jeddah Economic City, a new district planned around it. Adrian Smith and Gordon Gill, the architect behind the Burj Khalifa, designed the tapering, three-petal form, which sheds wind load as it narrows toward a needle-like spire. Saudi Binladin Group is the main contractor, working under a roughly $1.9 billion construction contract signed with Kingdom Holding to carry the structure to completion. Jeddah Economic Company, formed in 2009 specifically to develop the tower and its surrounding city, is the developer.

Inside, the program is mixed-use and weighted toward living space: luxury residences, a hotel, serviced apartments, and office floors, topped by an observation deck pitched as the highest in the world. Homes in the tower were slated to go to market in 2026, a sign the owner is selling the upper floors even as crews work the concrete below.

Why It Matters

Building past 1,000 meters is a genuine engineering frontier, not just a marketing record. Pumping concrete that high, bracing the slab against wind at extreme elevation, and moving workers and materials up a structure of this height all push past what most projects ever contend with. The three-petal plan and the tapering profile are direct answers to the wind problem, and getting the tower this far is itself a milestone after the years it sat idle.

The risk has always been continuity, not capability. This is a building that stalled before, and a kilometer-high tower lives or dies on whether the money and the will hold for the full run to the top. Targeting completion as early as 2028, the project sits alongside the world’s other record-chasing supertalls, and it’s the one with the longest history of stopping and starting. June’s progress says, for now, it’s moving.

Project Team & Details