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What will be the world’s tallest building is once again gaining momentum. The Jeddah Tower in Saudi Arabia has resumed construction after years on hold and is already moving ahead at a good pace: It has passed 460 meters in height and is still rising.
When it is finished, it will stand more than 1,000 meters tall, surpass the current record-holder, Dubai’s Burj Khalifa, and become the first building in history to cross that mark.
The world’s tallest building
Jeddah Tower, formerly known as Kingdom Tower, is a skyscraper under construction in the city of Jeddah, in Saudi Arabia, as the centerpiece of a massive urban development called Jeddah Economic City, about 20 kilometers north of the city. Its stated goal is to become the tallest building ever built and the first to reach 1,000 meters in height, a threshold no structure has yet achieved.
The tower is designed to reach at least 1,008 meters, though the final exact figure remains undisclosed. That would put it about 180 meters above the Burj Khalifa, which at 828 meters is now the world’s tallest building. As for floors, the latest reports on the project put it at around 157 stories (the project specifications also include additional structural levels). Taken together, it will be a unprecedented structure in scale.
Construction resumes on the future world’s tallest building
The project has not followed a straight path. Construction began in 2013, but stopped in January 2018, when the owners halted structural work over problems with a contractor, amid an anti-corruption campaign in Saudi Arabia. By then, the tower was about one-third complete. Later, the COVID-19 pandemic added new delays. For years, the steel and concrete frame sat waiting for a decision.
The project is moving again: after a restart agreement announced in late 2024, construction officially resumed in January 2025. Since then, progress has been steady. According to the developer, by September 2026 the tower had reached the 116th floor and stood about 466 meters tall, more than halfway up the Burj Khalifa, with a little more than 40 floors left. The figure was confirmed by the company’s chief executive during a mega-projects summit in Riyadh.
It will be unique in the world
Beyond the height record, Jeddah Tower aims to stand out for what it will include. Plans call for a Four Seasons hotel, private residences, premium office space, luxury apartments and what would be the world’s highest observation deck, a viewing platform at an unprecedented height for the public. All of that is part of a carefully engineered design meant to withstand wind and the conditions at such extreme height.