World's new tallest building cracks top 15, and it's only at halfway point
By
Adam WilliamsOctober 08, 2026
World's new tallest building cracks top 15, and it's only at halfway point
As of writing, the Jeddah Tower has now reached a height of 474 m (1,555 ft) and includes 118 floors, making it one of the world's tallest buildings
Omarnizar05/Creative Commons enhanced using AI)
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As of writing, the Jeddah Tower has now reached a height of 474 m (1,555 ft) and includes 118 floors, making it one of the world's tallest buildings
Omarnizar05/Creative Commons enhanced using AI)
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The Jeddah Tower will eventually exceed a height of 1 km (0.62 miles)
Thornton Tomasetti/YouTube
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The Jeddah Tower will be over three times the height of the Eiffel Tower once completed
Jeddah Economic Company
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The Jeddah Tower will feature the world's highest observation point
Adrian Smith & Gordon Gill Architecture
View gallery - 4 imagesThe incredibly ambitious Jeddah Tower is currently under construction in Saudi Arabia. Due to be the world's new tallest building once complete, it has already made it into the top 15 tallest buildings worldwide – and it's still less than halfway to its final height.
TheJeddah Tower(aka JEC Tower and Kingdom Tower) is designed by skyscraper specialist AS+GG – i.e. Adrian Smith and Gordon Gill, with Smith responsible for the design of the world'scurrenttallest building, theBurj Khalifa, when he was at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill.
To put the scale of this mind-bogglingly huge project into perspective, the Jeddah Tower is already a supertall skyscraper. As of writing, it now consists of 118 floors and sits at 474 m (1,555 ft) in height, narrowly surpassing the USA's second-tallest skyscraper, New York City'sCentral Park Tower, also by AS+GG. However, the finished building will eventually rise more than twice as high. Though its final exact height hasn't yet been revealed, we do know that it will exceed 1,000 m (3,281 ft), easily eclipsing the Burj Khalifa and bringing it to about twice the height of the USA's tallest building, theOne World Trade Center.
Inside, a collection of 59 elevators will zoom people around at high speeds, allowing them to navigate between a luxury hotel, lots of office space, and multiple palatial apartments, along with numerous tourist facilities, including the world's highest observation point.
The Jeddah Tower will anchor a new urban development in the Saudi port city of the same name. It's being developed by Kingdom Holding, and construction originally started back in 2013. However, work stalled at the 60th floor and was paused for several years, withmultiple reportsnaming palace intrigues and purges by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman as the cause for the delay.
Now that it's back under construction, the skyscraper is poised to be a remarkable success story for Saudi Arabia, thriving at a time when several of the country's other ambitious "gigaprojects" – like theMukaabandthe Line– have fallen by the wayside. Completion is still due for late 2028.
Sources:AS+GG,Ian Norman Miller,Thornton Tomasetti
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