Jeddah Tower Reaches 80 Floors: A 2026 Mega-Engineering Update

[00:00:01]For years, this tower was considered dead. An abandoned mega project.

[00:00:07]Hundreds of millions of dollars frozen in the desert.

[00:00:11][music] And yet, against all expectations, something happened.

[00:00:19]The Jedha Tower or [music] the Kingdom Tower. It is designed to be the first building that is 1 kilometer. In late December 2025, the Jedha Tower quietly crossed a critical threshold, 80 floors completed. But what really shocked the construction world wasn't the number of [music] floors. It was the pace.

[00:00:40]Today, a new floor rises every 3 days.

[00:00:44]If this pace holds, it could hit 1 km by [music] 2028, becoming the tallest structure ever built by humans. So, the real question is simple. Is this the greatest construction comeback ever or the setup for another collapse? Today, we're going to break down [music] exactly how this project came back from the brink of collapse. What engineering challenges have already been solved and what could still derail one of the most ambitious construction projects in history? Because after a 7-year shutdown, restarting a mega structure of this scale is something that has never been done before.

[00:01:24]The Jedha Tower isn't just a tall building in the desert. It's supposed to be the centerpiece of something much bigger. A $20 billion project called [music] Jedha Economic City stretching along the Red Sea coast filled with business districts, luxury residences, and tourist [music] attractions. The entire development is planned to cover 5.2 million [music] square meters. The goal, create a brand new urban hub, attracting international investors, diversifying the local economy, and eventually easing congestion in Jedha's packed city center.

[00:01:58]The idea of the Jedha Tower was first mentioned in 2008 at a time when Saudi Arabia wanted a worldclass architectural icon. It wasn't just about height. From the very beginning, the ambition was huge. This building had to symbolize Saudi Arabia's economic, technological, and cultural ambitions for decades to come. And the choice of Jedha wasn't random. Located on the Red Sea coast, it's both the gateway to Mecca and a major port connecting Africa, Asia, and Europe. Building the tallest tower on Earth here sends a very clear message.

[00:02:30]Saudi Arabia is serious about being a global player in innovation, luxury tourism, and global trade. But even with vision, ambition, and money, turning this dream into reality would require solving engineering challenges never attempted at this scale before. And right from the start, the tower was designed to break records. Not just in height, but in engineering.

[00:02:54]The architects, [music] Adrien Smith and Gordon Gil, the Chicago based firm behind the Burj Khalifa. From 2010, they designed the tower [music] to reach at least 1,07 m. But breaking the 1 km barrier isn't just an architectural milestone. [music] It's an engineering problem no one has ever fully solved before. When the Saudi Bin Laden group officially returned to the site in January 2025 under a contract worth $2 billion, they knew exactly what they were facing. Restarting a project after 7 years of inactivity isn't hard enough.

[00:03:27]Doing it at this scale, that's a nightmare waiting to happen. The first challenge, concrete. Not just any concrete. the kind that can support a 1 km tower. Every cubic meter has to withstand forces that would crush ordinary [music] buildings. During the ceremony marking the restart of construction, the group stated that the project now relies on cuttingedge [music] technologies capable of producing high-performance concrete at levels never achieved before. According [music] to Thornton Thomaseti, the structural engineering firm in charge, over 50% of the concrete work is already done. That's 250,000 cubic m of concrete poured. Enough to push the tower past 300 m. But here's where things get tricky. Getting concrete higher than 500 m isn't [music] just difficult. It's a logistics puzzle that could kill the schedule. The most advanced concrete pumps in the world work at around 150 bars of pressure. Pushing concrete up to 500 m under ideal conditions. There's a world record 621 m set in 2015. But beyond that, transporting concrete becomes far more complex and much slower. At that point, engineers have to use cranes [music] and suspended buckets, a method way slower and more complicated. Every extra floor risks delays, costs, and safety hazards. At this scale, even small delays translate into tens of millions of dollars. That's why for the top of the Jedha Tower, a radical decision was made. Steel instead of concrete. Switching to steel for the upper levels bypasses the pumping problem entirely and speeds up construction at [music] extreme heights.

[00:05:04]It's the same trick used on most skyscrapers over 600 m. Even the Burj Khalifa employed this strategy. Just like the Burj Khalifa, the top of the Jedha Tower won't even be occupied. This section called the Spire stretches about 350 [music] m into the sky, mostly housing technical equipment. It's also designed to be spectacular, a symbol, a statement, crossing the 1 km mark and claiming the crown as the tallest building on Earth. To achieve this, the project needs around 80,000 tons of steel. Think about it. That's like stacking 10 Eiffel Towers on top of each other. And the pace, mind-blowing. The construction team adds a new floor every 3 to 4 days. That's fast. Really fast.

[00:05:46]According to Thornton Thomaseti's updates on January the 6th, 2026, if this rhythm continues, [music] the 100th floor will be complete by February.

[00:05:56]Every test so far, from wind tunnel simulations to stress tests on the structural core shows the tower performing [music] exactly as expected.

[00:06:04]In this update, the American firm notes that the project made significant progress in 2025 and that the team is now combining cuttingedge technical innovations with advanced computer modeling to ensure the tower can withstand wind forces at 1,000 m above ground. At these heights, wind [music] isn't just a factor. It becomes a force of nature, powerful enough to push a building sideways by meters. To put things into perspective, a 500 m skyscraper must resist wind forces up to 60 times greater than a conventional 60 m building. Now imagine doubling their height.

[00:06:39]At the scale of the Jedha Tower, engineering constraints enter completely uncharted territory. Simulations show that during strong winds, the very top of the tower could sway as much as 2 m, while the highest occupied floors may experience movements of up to 1.2 m.

[00:06:56]Those numbers sound extreme, almost unsettling. [music] But for a structure of this size, they're not only acceptable, they're expected. These movements aren't signs of weakness. They're signs of control.

[00:07:08]The tower isn't fighting the wind, it's absorbing its energy, bending just enough to prevent damage. And the key to that control starts with the shape itself. The Jedha Tower's [music] ground footprint, often described as a three-pedal form, was never about aesthetics. It's an aerodynamic solution engineered to disrupt wind vortices.

[00:07:28]Before they can build up and amplify the sway. As skyscrapers [music] grow taller and heavier, they face two relentless enemies. Their own colossal weight and the horizontal forces of the wind. At 1,000 m tall and weighing an estimated 900,000 tons, the Jetta Tower demands a structure perfectly tuned to this extreme scale.

[00:07:48]But the stability of a giant like this doesn't begin in the sky. It starts underground. Before the first floor ever rose above the desert, engineers had to solve a brutal problem. How do you anchor 900,000 tons of concrete and steel into soft coastal soil? Because beneath the Jedha Tower lies not bedrock, but layers of sand and limestone, materials that shift, compress, and crack under pressure. The solution was to go deeper. The tower rests on more than 270 massive piles driven up to 110 m into the ground in places reaching stable geological layers far below the surface. It pushes foundation engineering to extreme limits. By comparison, the Burj Khalifa's foundations rely on piles approximately 50 m deep. These piles are tied together by a gigantic reinforced concrete slab nearly 5 m thick. On top of that, the Red Sea's proximity introduces another enemy, saltwater corrosion. To fight it, engineers used high-performance concrete mixes and specialized steel reinforcements designed to withstand decades of salinity, humidity, and extreme temperatures. Every stage of the foundation was monitored in real time.

[00:09:00]Continuous inspections in sensors embedded deep underground tracked how the soil moved and how the concrete behaved. At this level of complexity, there's no room for approximation because the Jedha Tower isn't designed for years. It's designed for decades.

[00:09:15]Restarting a construction site is hard.

[00:09:18]Restarting the tallest building ever attempted after 7 years of inactivity is something else entirely. When crews returned in early 2025, they weren't coming back to an empty site. They were returning to a tower already hundreds of meters tall, exposed for years to heat, humidity, strong winds, and the harsh coastal climate of the Red Sea. Before adding a single new floor, engineers had to answer one critical question. Was everything still safe?

[00:09:45]>> Media reports say the Saudi government is taking managerial control of the Saudi Bin Laden Group, Saudi Arabia's biggest [music] construction firm.

[00:09:54]Construction had been halted in 2018 after the tower had already begun rising above ground. The pause was caused by financial difficulties, internal tensions with the Saudi bin Laden group, and a complex political context in Saudi Arabia.

[00:10:07]>> Saudi Arabia. Dozens of princes and government officials have been detained in a high-profile corruption crackdown.

[00:10:14]>> The unfinished tower became a symbol of a project seen as too [music] ambitious or even impossible to complete. Many believed the Jedi Tower would never be finished. But in late 2024, everything changed. The project was officially relaunched with a new contractual framework, clearer financial backing, and strong political support [music] to see it completed. When teams returned in January 2025, the challenge was enormous. The site had to be reactivated, existing structures inspected, technical standards updated, logistics rebuilt, extensive audits were carried out to ensure the [music] concrete, steel reinforcement and foundations had not deteriorated after years of exposure to time and climate.

[00:10:57]Only then could large-scale [music] construction safely resume. Once it did, the ramp up was rapid.

[00:11:05]Today, the Jedha Tower is once [music] again a credible and closely watched project. A site that nearly vanished, now moving forward at full speed. Once construction was fully back on track, a new challenge took over. Coordination.

[00:11:19]Because building the tallest tower in the world isn't just an engineering problem, it's a logistics problem. And logistics at [music] this scale directly mean cost control, deadlines, and political credibility. Every day, thousands of decisions [music] have to be made in the right order at the right time by the right teams. Since March 2025, overall project [music] management has been handled by Turner Construction.

[00:11:42]The company known for its work on major international mega projects has described the Jedha [music] Tower site as one of the most complex construction environments in the world. It requires precise coordination between the towers [music] construction and the surrounding infrastructure of Jedha Economic City. A single coordination failure can cause delays, cost overruns, or even safety risks for workers on site. And there's another pressure point, speed. With a new floor added every 3 to 4 days, every trade must operate in a precisely controlled sequence without ever slowing the overall pace. There is no room for bottlenecks. To manage this, the site relies on advanced digital planning tools combining 3D modeling, logistic simulations, and real-time monitoring of operations. The goal is simple. Identify problems before they appear on site. At this scale, success doesn't depend on a single breakthrough. It depends on perfect coordination day after day, floor after floor. At 1 km above the ground, stairs are not an option.

[00:12:45]Without elevators, the Jedha Tower would be impossible to live in. And designing elevators for a building this tall may be one of the hardest engineering problems of the entire project. Because moving people vertically over 168 floors isn't just about speed, it's about safety, comfort, reliability. To solve this challenge, the project turns to Cone, the Finnish elevator specialist.

[00:13:08]In total, 59 elevators will be installed inside the tower, including five double-deck elevators capable of carrying two groups of passengers at the same time. But the system doesn't work like a typical skyscraper. No elevator runs directly from the ground floor to the top. Instead, the tower is organized around three major transfer lobbies.

[00:13:27]Passengers first take an express elevator to one of these sky lobbies, then switch to another elevator, serving a different zone of the building. This approach avoids the need for extremely long cables. Throughout the tower, technical floors and refuge areas are integrated for fire safety and emergencies. For cone, the Jedha tower is the ultimate test of its ultra rope technology. Unlike traditional steel cables, ultra rope is made from carbon fiber. It's lighter, stronger, and far more durable. This reduces the weight of the elevator system, improves energy efficiency, and increases service life.

[00:14:01]Thanks to this technology, each elevator can carry up to 26 people, or about 2 tons per trip, double that in the double-deck models. In terms of speed, the elevators will exceed 10 mph or more than 36 kmh. Fast, but intentionally controlled. While some towers like the Shanghai Tower reach speeds close to 20 m/s, cone chose a different balance.

[00:14:25]Higher speeds can reduce comfort, especially over long vertical journeys.

[00:14:30]According to Con, around 36 kmh is the optimal speed to minimize discomfort from acceleration and deceleration.

[00:14:37]Without this advanced elevator system, the Jedha Tower wouldn't be a skyscraper. It wouldn't even be usable.

[00:14:43]It would simply be the tallest empty structure ever built. Once completed, the Jedha Tower will function as a vertical city. The tower will house office spaces, more than 400 apartments, and luxury residences, as well as a five-star hotel with nearly 200 rooms.

[00:14:59]The tower will also include fine dining restaurants, a spa, fitness centers, swimming pools, and a wide range of amenities designed to make the building fully livable.

[00:15:10]But the most spectacular feature sits far above everything else. At 630 m above the ground, the Jedha Tower will feature a Cantaled observation deck.

[00:15:20]Once completed, it will become the highest observation deck in the world.

[00:15:25]From this platform, visitors will be able to see the Red Sea, the desert, and the entire city of Jedha, stretching to the horizon, not for those prone to vertigo. If the current schedule holds, the Jedha Tower is expected to be completed by August 2028. [music] Standing at at least 173 m taller than the Burj Khalifa, it would become the tallest structure ever built. But it won't just be a record. The tower will also be a physical symbol of Saudi Arabia's vision 2030 and its ambition to reshape its future beyond oil.

[00:15:57]But this won't end the race to the sky.

[00:16:00]Even taller projects are already being [music] discussed. One of them is the proposed rise tower in Ria, a skyscraper estimated at $5.3 [music] billion, designed to reach an almost unimaginable height of 2 km. For now, though, all eyes remain on Jedha.

[00:16:16]Because right now, along the Red Sea coast, one of the most expensive and ambitious construction bets in modern history is being built. One floor every 3 days. The tower is climbing fast, but will this pace hold? Will August 2028 really be the finish line? If there are no more interruptions, and that's a big if, it's entirely possible. And I'll be following this project very closely. So, if you want to stay [music] upto date on the most extreme mega projects on the planet, make sure to subscribe. See you soon on Looking Four.