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Architecture

Saudi 1km tower nears halfway point – already cracks tallest top 15

By Adam Williams
October 08, 2026
Saudi 1km tower nears halfway point – already cracks tallest top 15
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
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
View 4 Images
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
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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
The Jeddah Tower will eventually exceed a height of 1 km (0.62 miles)
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The Jeddah Tower will eventually exceed a height of 1 km (0.62 miles)
The Jeddah Tower will be over three times the height of the Eiffel Tower once completed
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The Jeddah Tower will be over three times the height of the Eiffel Tower once completed
The Jeddah Tower will feature the world's highest observation point
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The Jeddah Tower will feature the world's highest observation point
View gallery - 4 images

The 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.

The Jeddah 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's current tallest building, the Burj 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's Central 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, the One World Trade Center.

The Jeddah Tower will eventually exceed a height of 1 km (0.62 miles)
The Jeddah Tower will eventually exceed a height of 1 km (0.62 miles)

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, with multiple reports naming 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 the Mukaab and the Line – have fallen by the wayside. Completion is still due for late 2028.

Sources: AS+GG, Ian Norman Miller, Thornton Tomasetti

View gallery - 4 images

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ArchitectureBuilding and ConstructionSkyscrapersWorld's TallestSaudi Arabia
4 comments
Adam Williams
Adam Williams
Adam scours the globe from his home in Spain in order to bring the best of innovative architecture and sustainable design to the pages of New Atlas. Most of his spare time is spent dabbling in music, tinkering with old Macintosh computers and trying to keep his even older VW bus on the road.

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4 comments
Simon by the Sea
There are only,2 reasons to build a really tall building instead of multiple small buildings which have better accessibility: vanity and a lack of building space in a crowded city. Given that there is basically nothing around this site the first explanation is the correct one.
GLB
Simon by the Sea, I purposely signed in from my email to make the very same statement you've made. So Instead of repeating you I'll just add my sentiment.., it makes the entire country seem ridiculous, and also makes an easy target for a larger percent of casualties in case of conflict.
pete89
At some point, the plumbing fails, catastrophically.
IdealistPragmatist
Having watched a recent video on how much of the Burj Khalifa is empty due to the exorbitant cost of spaces as well as the monthly building maintenance fees on top of monthly leasing rates, I have high doubts this will fare any better.