Will the Jeddah Tower, the world's tallest skyscraper, ever be completed?

In 2008, Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal announced plans to build the world’s tallest building, a skyscraper that would soar over 3,280 feet. The Jeddah Tower, a groundbreaking project, was to be the centerpiece of Jeddah Economic City, an expansive urban development aimed at transforming the city into Saudi Arabia's version of Dubai. To put this into perspective, the One World Trade Center in the U.S. stands at 1,776 feet, nearly half the height of the planned Jeddah Tower.

After construction came to a standstill in 2018, the grand vision of the world’s tallest building remained in limbo until the fall of 2023. Delayed by political factors and COVID shutdowns, only a third of the tower has been constructed, but work is now expected to pick up. The website of the Jeddah Economic Company, tasked with bringing the project to life, presents a vibrant rendering of the towering Jeddah Tower alongside the phrase 'It's Happening.' But the real question remains: when will it finally be finished?

Jeddah Economic City - The Potential New Dubai?

The current record-holder for the tallest building in the world is the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, standing at 2,717 feet. Designed by American architect Adrian Smith, this groundbreaking structure accomplished exactly what its creators envisioned, according to Antony Wood, president of the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat, a global nonprofit organization that bestows the title of "tallest building".

"Dubai literally transformed from a desert into a bustling metropolis," says Wood. "The developer, Emaar, envisioned a vast development filled with numerous towers and a massive shopping mall, all anchored by the Burj Khalifa — the world's tallest building, serving as the crown jewel. What they've achieved is extraordinary."

When Saudi Prince Alwaleed first dreamed of building the world's first kilometer-high tower, the Burj Khalifa was still in the midst of construction. However, the goal from the outset was to replicate Dubai's success model in Saudi Arabia, says Wood. Jeddah Economic City was envisioned as a futuristic, glittering city on the Red Sea, anchored by the Jeddah Tower, the world's future tallest building.

Jeddah is situated between the two holy cities of Mecca and Medina. "Before the tower was here, this area wasn't considered a place for people to settle," said Hisham Jomah, chief development officer of Jeddah Economic Company, in a 2018 CNN interview. "We are creating an independent city... one where people don’t have to leave."

The Burj Khalifa vs. the Jeddah Tower

Adrian Smith, the architect responsible for the Burj Khalifa, is also the visionary behind the Jeddah Tower. Both of these iconic structures share several design traits and are classified as "megatall" buildings, a term used for skyscrapers taller than 600 meters (1,968.5 feet).

A key common feature of both the Burj Khalifa and Jeddah Tower is their Y-shaped design, featuring three exterior walls rather than the usual four. Through rigorous wind-tunnel studies, Smith and his team discovered that this three-wall design offered superior aerodynamics, making the towers more resilient to wind shear at extreme heights.

Unlike the Burj Khalifa, which narrows progressively in stages as it reaches its peak, the Jeddah Tower is designed as a single, continuous tapering structure that ascends like a towering needle, piercing the sky.

What Will the Tower Include?

The Jeddah Tower's most talked-about feature is its open-air observation deck, which stands at a staggering 2,187 feet, making it the tallest in the world. Initially intended as a helipad, the deck was reimagined after the architects realized that unpredictable desert winds would make it too dangerous to land a helicopter at such extreme heights.

Should it be built as originally planned, the Jeddah Tower will require 80,000 tons of steel and will be equipped with 59 elevators (including five double-decker cars) and 12 escalators. The bottom third of the tower will be dedicated to office space, followed by a luxury hotel, and the top of the 167 floors will feature apartments. A grand penthouse will crown the tower.

A Bumpy Start for the Kingdom Tower

Construction of the Jeddah Tower, initially known as the Kingdom Tower, began on April 1, 2013. It took over a year just to complete the massive foundation, which featured concrete pilings that measured 10 feet in diameter and stretched longer than a football field. Above-ground construction commenced in September 2014.

The base of the towering structure slowly and steadily rose until 2017, when Saudi Arabia was shaken by a political crisis. In a bold attempt to centralize power, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) initiated a wide-ranging anti-corruption "purge" that saw the arrest of 11 Saudi princes, including key financial backer Alwaleed bin Talal, along with some of his partners in the Saudi Binladin Group.

The men were ultimately freed after paying enormous fines amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars, and in 2018, construction of the Jeddah Tower resumed, with an anticipated completion date set for 2020. As Mounib Hammoud, CEO of Jeddah Economic Company, remarked, "As of 2020, we'll start seeing things: you'll see the tower, you'll see the shopping mall, you'll see many other projects," as reported by CNN.

However, in late 2018, labor disputes with a contractor derailed these plans, and the onset of the COVID pandemic squashed any hopes of continuing construction at that time. Currently, the base of the Jeddah Tower reaches only a third of its planned height. A 2021 update revealed that while 90 percent of the roadwork and landscaping for Jeddah Economic City was completed, progress on the megatower itself has yet to advance—though that is expected to change soon.

The Future of the Jeddah Tower

In early 2018, Wood visited the Jeddah Tower construction site and described the scale and ambition of the Jeddah Economic City project as "absolutely massive." The partially completed base of the Jeddah Tower already qualifies as a "supertall" structure, and according to him, the view from the top was nothing short of awe-inspiring.

"You're 300 meters in the air looking down at a city that's not yet built around you," Wood reflects. "It's almost like archeological ruins around you, but it's the opposite of that — it's brand-new infrastructure being put in against this desert backdrop."

Wood rejects the notion that the incomplete base of the tower could be dismissed as "a little stump in the ground." He further remarked, "It's already a third of its height. And I genuinely do believe that at some point the project will be finished, because it's an embarrassment not to finish it. What I don't know is if it will adhere to its original design or if it will ultimately be the tallest building in the world."

Wood remains hopeful that some iteration of the Jeddah Tower will rise in the future, though he acknowledges that the construction process so far has been far from ordinary.

"This is not a project running behind schedule; this is a project that totally stopped," says Wood. "There's no question it's atypical. It's not a construction delay, it's stopped." Naturally, the recent update about construction resuming supports Wood's optimism. While no new schedule for the Jeddah Tower has been established, construction is now finally moving forward.

Competition for the World's Highest Observatory

In 2016, Emaar, the company behind the Burj Khalifa, revealed plans to construct an observation tower (not technically a "building") in Dubai, which would be slightly taller than the Burj Khalifa. However, like the Jeddah Tower, that project faced delays due to the pandemic. As a result, the Jeddah Tower is not the only monumental project worth watching.