The world’s tallest building has been under construction since 2013 and, as of March 2026, has not been completed. For seven of those thirteen years, it did not move. Jeddah Tower — Saudi Arabia’s attempt to build the first structure to reach 1,000 metres, surpassing the Burj Khalifa by at least 180 metres — stood frozen at approximately one-third of its planned height while the political crisis that halted it resolved itself through the mechanisms that Saudi political crises resolve: behind closed doors, at the pleasure of the Crown Prince, and on terms that were never publicly disclosed.
The tower’s story is not part of the Vision 2030 graveyard in the way that The Line, the Mukaab, and Trojena are. It predates the programme. It serves a conventional commercial purpose. And it is, as of April 2026, actively under construction — past the 95th floor, adding a new storey every three to four days, with a target completion date of 2028. It is the counter-narrative: a megaproject that was halted, frozen, and restarted, and that may actually be completed.
But its seven-year freeze is the most vivid illustration available of the risk that Saudi Arabia’s construction ambitions carry: the risk that is not engineering, not budgetary, and not environmental, but political. The tower was not stopped by physics. It was stopped by a prince’s arrest. And the conditions that produced that arrest — the concentration of political power, the absence of institutional checks, the personal authority of the Crown Prince over every major capital allocation in the Kingdom — are the same conditions that have halted The Line, suspended the Mukaab, and cancelled Trojena.
The Dream
Kingdom Tower, as it was originally named, was announced in 2011 by Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, then the wealthiest non-royal businessman in the Arab world and one of the most prominent international investors of his generation. The project would build the world’s tallest structure — a needle-shaped tower rising 1,000 metres (3,281 feet) from the desert north of Jeddah, within the planned Jeddah Economic City development.
The tower was designed by Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture, the Chicago firm that had previously designed the Burj Khalifa’s competitor, the planned Nakheel Tower in Dubai (never built). The structural engineering was handled by Thornton Tomasetti. The construction contract was held by the Saudi Binladin Group, one of the Kingdom’s oldest and most politically connected construction firms.
The 1,000-metre target was not arbitrary. It was chosen to exceed the Burj Khalifa (828 metres) by a margin that would be visually and statistically decisive. The Burj had claimed the title of world’s tallest building in 2010. Jeddah Tower would reclaim the superlative for Saudi Arabia — a statement of national capability expressed in vertical concrete.
The tower would contain a Four Seasons hotel, luxury residences, commercial office space, and an observation deck at approximately 650 metres — the highest occupied floor in any building on earth. The original estimated cost was approximately $1.23 billion — a figure that has since been revised to nearly 100 billion riyals ($26 billion) as of 2025. The tower would contain 157 floors, approximately 530,000 square metres of floor space, 56 elevators moving at up to 12 metres per second, and the highest observation deck in the world at 630 metres. The structural design uses a bearing wall system in reinforced concrete with a buttressed core configuration — a triangular central core with intersecting concrete walls radiating outward into three wings, designed by the same architect, Adrian Smith, who designed the Burj Khalifa while at Skidmore, Owings and Merrill. The design was inspired by the folded fronds of young desert plant growth, and the three-petal footprint and tapering wings reduce structural loading from wind vortex shedding. Construction formally began in April 2013. By 2017, the tower had reached the 63rd floor. The pace was steady. The engineering was sound. The concrete was rising.
The Arrest
On 4 November 2017, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman launched what was officially described as an anti-corruption campaign and what critics described as a consolidation of power. Hundreds of Saudi Arabia’s wealthiest businessmen, princes, and officials were detained at the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Riyadh. Prince Alwaleed bin Talal was among them.
Alwaleed was held for approximately 83 days. The terms of his release — reportedly involving a financial settlement with the state whose value has been variously reported between $6 billion and undisclosed — were never officially confirmed. Upon release, Alwaleed stated that the matter was resolved and resumed his public activities.
The tower stopped immediately. Saudi Binladin Group, the primary contractor, faced its own difficulties — a separate investigation, financial restructuring, and workforce reductions that affected its capacity across the Kingdom. The construction site fell silent. The partially completed tower — approximately 252 metres of concrete core and structural framework — stood in the desert north of Jeddah, exposed to sun, wind, and the chemical processes that affect unreinforced concrete left without protection.
The Freeze
Seven years is a long time for a partially completed supertall to sit idle. The structural engineering community monitored the situation with professional interest because the freeze raised questions that have no precedent in supertall construction.
Concrete cures and strengthens over time, which is favourable. But exposed concrete also degrades — carbonation, chloride ingress in coastal environments, thermal cycling, and wind erosion affect the material’s long-term structural properties. The Jeddah site is approximately 30 kilometres from the Red Sea, in a climate characterised by extreme heat, high humidity, and salt-laden air — conditions that accelerate concrete degradation.
The design includes low-permeability concrete to resist Red Sea salt water corrosion and a cathodic protection system to prevent reinforcement degradation — features that were specified for the operational life of the building but that also served to protect the structure during its unplanned dormancy. Whether the seven-year exposure compromised the existing structure to a degree that requires remediation has not been publicly disclosed. The tower’s restart in January 2025 — and its steady vertical progress since — suggests that the structural assessment was favourable, but the assessment itself has not been published. The engineering firms involved would have conducted testing and analysis before adding weight to a structure that had been static for seven years. The results of that testing are commercially confidential.
The cost of maintaining a frozen construction site for seven years is also unreported but inferrable. A construction site of this scale requires security, environmental monitoring, erosion protection, insurance, and administrative oversight. The annual carrying cost of a dormant supertall site, based on comparable projects, ranges from $5 million to $15 million — implying a seven-year maintenance cost of $35 million to $105 million. The cost is modest relative to the project’s total budget but represents capital spent to produce nothing.
The Restart
In January 2025, construction on Jeddah Tower resumed. The restart was not accompanied by the kind of promotional spectacle that characterised NEOM’s announcements. It was communicated through contractor mobilisation, site activity, and gradually through industry reporting as the tower’s vertical progress became visible.
As of 27 March 2026, the tower had surpassed the 95th floor. The construction pace — adding a new floor every three to four days — is consistent with standard supertall construction methodologies using a slip-form or jump-form core system. If the pace is maintained, the tower could reach its full height by 2028, as projected by CEO Talal Almaiman.
The restart coincided with NEOM’s contraction — a timing that may not be coincidental. As PIF’s giga-project portfolio was written down and The Line was suspended, Jeddah Tower offered an alternative narrative: a supertall building with a conventional purpose, a single wealthy backer, and a construction timeline measured in engineering milestones rather than architectural fantasies. The tower is, in the context of Vision 2030’s failures, an advertisement for ambition that is conventional enough to succeed.
What the Tower Proves
Jeddah Tower’s trajectory — launch, progress, political arrest, seven-year freeze, restart, steady progress — illustrates a principle that the graveyard of giga-projects confirms from the opposite direction.
The tower has standalone economic logic. A supertall building in Jeddah serves the city’s commercial and hospitality market. It attracts tenants, tourists, and hotel guests on the basis of its height, its location, and its facilities — not on the basis of a broader megacity thesis that requires 9 million residents, a ski resort, and a floating platform to function. The tower’s revenue model does not depend on The Line being completed, on the Mukaab being built, or on NEOM becoming a city. It depends on Jeddah being Jeddah — a city of 4.7 million people with an established economy, an established real estate market, and established demand for commercial and hospitality space.
The standalone logic is why the tower survived a political arrest, a seven-year freeze, and the collapse of the broader giga-project portfolio. A project with conventional purpose can withstand disruption because the demand it serves exists independently of the disruption’s cause. A project that depends on an ecosystem — The Line requires a city, which requires transport, which requires residents, which requires employment, which requires an economy — cannot survive the failure of any single link in the chain.
The tower also proves the political risk. The seven-year freeze was not caused by engineering failure, budget constraints, or market conditions. It was caused by the arrest of a single individual whose political relationship with the Crown Prince determined the project’s viability. The arrest was not related to the tower. The tower was collateral damage — a $1.4 billion construction programme halted because its backer’s political standing changed overnight.
This political risk is not unique to Jeddah Tower. It is the defining risk of every major capital project in Saudi Arabia. The Crown Prince’s personal authority over PIF, over NEOM, over the giga-project portfolio, and over the political standing of every businessman in the Kingdom means that any project can be started, stopped, or redirected by a single decision. The Line was suspended by PIF. The Mukaab was paused. Trojena was cancelled. Jeddah Tower was frozen. In each case, the decision was political, not technical. In each case, the decision-making process was opaque. In each case, the affected parties — contractors, workers, investors — had no mechanism to challenge, appeal, or even understand the decision.
Jeddah Tower is now rising because the political conditions that halted it have been resolved. It will likely be completed because its purpose is simple and its backer’s political standing has been restored. But the lesson it teaches is not reassuring. It teaches that in Saudi Arabia, the distance between a rising tower and a frozen one is measured not in metres of concrete but in the Crown Prince’s disposition toward the person who is paying for it.
The tower is currently past the 95th floor. It is adding a floor every three to four days. If nothing changes, it will be the tallest building in the world by 2028. Whether anything changes is not an engineering question.
This analysis draws on Jeddah Economic Company construction updates; MEP Middle East reporting on floor progress (March 2026); Newsweek reporting on construction pace; historical reporting on Prince Alwaleed bin Talal’s detention (November 2017); Reuters, Bloomberg, and the Financial Times coverage of the Ritz-Carlton purge; Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture project documentation; Saudi Binladin Group corporate history; structural engineering literature on long-term concrete exposure; and public statements by Jeddah Tower CEO Talal Almaiman. Vision2030.AI is editorially independent and is not affiliated with the Jeddah Economic Company, PIF, or any official Vision 2030 entity.