Jeddah Tower has moved beyond 100 floors and 400 metres in height, marking the clearest sign yet that Saudi Arabia’s long-delayed bid to build the world’s first one-kilometre tower is back on a firm construction track. The structure in Jeddah, designed to rise above 1,000 metres, is set to overtake Dubai’s Burj Khalifa and become the tallest building ever completed if the current programme holds. The milestone was confirmed on April 20 by structural engineering firm Thornton Tomasetti, which said the tower had officially reached 100 floors and 400 metres. That matters not only as a symbolic threshold, but as evidence that the project has regained momentum after years of uncertainty, contractor disruption and financing questions that left one of the Gulf’s most ambitious developments standing idle for a prolonged period.
Jeddah Tower is the centrepiece of the wider Jeddah Economic City scheme, a large mixed-use urban development planned on the Red Sea coast. Project material describes the tower as a vertical mixed-use complex combining a Five-Star Four Seasons hotel, hospitality facilities, branded serviced apartments, residences, office space, public podium areas and what is intended to be the world’s highest observation platform. Industry references place the broader development footprint in the millions of square metres, underlining that the tower is being pitched not simply as an isolated supertall building but as the anchor of a new district.
For Saudi Arabia, the timing is significant. The kingdom has spent the past several years tying high-profile construction schemes to a wider narrative of economic diversification, tourism growth and global positioning. Jeddah Tower predates many of the megaprojects now associated with Vision 2030, yet its return to active construction gives it renewed political and commercial relevance. A project once seen as a stalled monument to excess is being reframed as a deliverable piece of a broader national building cycle, with foreign project managers, international engineering advisers and major regional contractors all now back in the mix.
The road to this point has been unusually long. Construction began in 2013, but the project stalled in 2018 with roughly one-third of the superstructure completed. By the time work resumed in practical terms, the building had reached about 63 floors. Progress accelerated after an official restart in January 2025, when concrete pours resumed and contractor payments were released to push the scheme forward under a renewed timetable. Turner was appointed project manager, Saudi Binladin Group remained the main contractor, and specialist packages including façade work continued to be reassigned and advanced.
That restart has been followed by a visibly quicker vertical climb. By March 2025, Turner’s role had been publicly tied to the revived programme, and by mid-April 2026 the building had crossed the 100-floor mark. Industry reporting from late 2025 and early 2026 had already pointed to a faster pace on site, helped by renewed equipment deployment and a stronger management structure. While construction schedules on megatall towers are notoriously vulnerable to delay, the present trajectory has revived expectations that the tower could be structurally topped out within the next few years, with several references pointing to 2028 as a working completion target.
The tower’s commercial logic rests on more than height. Luxury hospitality, branded residences and premium office space remain central to the revenue model, and the building’s engineering credentials are also part of its market appeal. Technical references describe a structure with a triangular footprint shaped to reduce wind loads, a very high observation level, and advanced vertical transport systems designed for extreme travel distances. KONE, one of the suppliers tied to the project, says the tower will rise to more than one kilometre and use high-speed lifts built for an unusually tall building envelope.
Yet the project still carries risks familiar to anyone tracking Gulf real estate cycles. Towers of this scale depend on sustained financing, uninterrupted contractor performance, smooth materials supply and continued demand for premium real estate. Jeddah Tower also faces the challenge of converting global attention into long-term occupancy and district-level economic activity. Its engineering ambition is no longer in doubt; the larger question is whether the surrounding city fabric, commercial absorption and infrastructure roll-out can keep pace with the tower’s return to prominence.
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