Construction on Saudi Arabia’s JEC Tower is accelerating again after years of delays, with the skyscraper now surpassing 80 floors and rapidly approaching the 100 floor mark, according to an update reported by New Atlas.
The tower, rising in the Red Sea port city of Jeddah, is designed to become the first building in history to exceed one kilometer in height. Once complete, it will stand significantly taller than the Burj Khalifa and nearly double the height of New York’s One World Trade Center.
Engineering firm Thornton Tomasetti confirmed in late December that the structure has passed 80 floors, while local reports suggest it may already be as high as 84 levels. At the current pace, the tower is expected to cross 100 floors within weeks, joining a very small group of megatall buildings worldwide that have reached triple digit stories.
Courtesy: Jeddah Economic Company
Architects Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill say the final structure will contain at least 157 floors. The exact total height remains undisclosed, but official projections confirm it will exceed one kilometer when completed, targeting a 2028 opening.
The JEC Tower is engineered as a vertical city. Plans include the world’s highest observation deck, a five star luxury hotel, office space, and high end residential apartments. The building will house 59 elevators, including double decker cars traveling at speeds of 10 meters per second, allowing rapid vertical transport across more than 5.7 million square feet of interior space.
The project is led by Jeddah Economic Company and backed by Prince Al Waleed bin Talal. Originally known as Kingdom Tower and later Jeddah Tower, construction began more than a decade ago but stalled at around 60 floors amid financial strain and political disruptions during Saudi Arabia’s internal anti corruption purges.
After years of inactivity, work resumed aggressively in 2024 and has since maintained a steady upward climb. The tower is intended to anchor a vast new urban district on Jeddah’s northern waterfront, forming part of Saudi Arabia’s broader push to diversify its economy through mega infrastructure and tourism projects.
The JEC Tower joins other ambitious developments such as NEOM’s The Line and the Mukaab in Riyadh, all central to the kingdom’s Vision 2030 strategy to reposition itself as a global destination.
As the tower races higher once again, Saudi Arabia is inching closer to claiming not just the tallest building in the world, but the first man-made structure to pierce the one kilometer barrier, a symbolic leap in both engineering and national ambition.
