What is taller than the Burj Khalifa right now?
No completed building is taller than Burj Khalifa right now. At 828 m, it has held the title of tallest building in the world since January 2010. The current second-tallest completed building is Merdeka 118 in Kuala Lumpur at 679 m, followed by the Shanghai Tower at 632 m, the Makkah Royal Clock Tower at 601 m and the Ping An Finance Center at 599 m.4
The Jeddah Tower has passed Central Park Tower this month but it is still under construction and does not yet count as a record holder. The Council on Vertical Urbanism, formerly the CTBUH, requires a building to be complete, clad and open to the public before it enters the ranking.4 The Burj Azizi in Dubai, planned at 725 m, is also under construction and is estimated to complete in 2028.1 Until one of those projects finishes, Burj Khalifa remains the tallest building in the world by year, as it has since 2010.
Why do supertall skyscraper records last so much shorter than cathedral records?
Cathedral records lasted centuries because the technology and ambition to beat them barely existed for long stretches of time. Lincoln Cathedral's central spire, completed in 1311, reached roughly 525 feet, and after a storm brought it down in 1548 no single structure surpassed its height for generations.2 Thomas Leslie, an architect and professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, notes that Gothic builders used pointed arches and flying buttresses to reach heights that stone construction could sustain almost indefinitely, with no rival technology on the horizon.2
Skyscraper records are shorter because the transition from stone to steel frames in the late 19th century opened a continuous competition with no natural ceiling.2 The Chrysler Building, the Empire State Building and every successor were each beaten within years or decades as capital, engineering and civic rivalry kept pushing higher. The tallest building in 1900 was Philadelphia City Hall at 167 m; by 1931 the Empire State Building stood at 381 m. That pace of change has no parallel in the cathedral era, when the same structural logic held for five centuries.
What will be the tallest building in the world in 2050?
No source consulted here names a specific building that will hold the record in 2050, and the chart does not project beyond 2026. What the sources do describe are the projects most likely to shape the next decade. The Jeddah Tower, planned at over one kilometre, and the Burj Azizi, planned at 725 m, are both estimated to complete in 2028 if construction stays on schedule.1, 3 If both finish as planned, the Jeddah Tower would be the tallest building in the world and the Burj Azizi would be third.1
Whether either holds the record in 2050 depends on projects not yet announced or funded. The pattern since 1894 is that records last years to decades, not generations. The Sears Tower's 25-year run is the longest in the modern era, and a Jeddah Tower finish in 2028 would fit a pattern of records measured in single decades. Beyond that, the sources point to active design ambitions in Shanghai, Seoul and Mumbai, but name no confirmed successor project.5
Who funds and builds a tower taller than one kilometre?
The Jeddah Tower is funded through a combination of Saudi state-linked capital and private development, and sits at the centre of Jeddah Economic City, a master-planned district intended to attract investment, tourism and international business.3 The project is closely tied to Saudi Arabia's Vision 2030 strategy, the government's plan to reduce reliance on oil by expanding tourism, logistics, technology and private investment.3 Height, in this context, is symbolic: the tower is designed to signal economic confidence and position Jeddah as a destination for commerce and foreign capital, in the same way the Empire State Building, the Petronas Towers and the Burj Khalifa each became linked to broader national growth narratives.3
The Burj Azizi in Dubai follows a different funding path. Azizi Developments, a private developer, bought the site in 2018 after the original project ran into financial difficulty, and restarted construction in 2025.1 Dubai's decision in January 2025 to open 128 plots along Sheikh Zayed Road to freehold conversion has drawn foreign property investment into the area, creating conditions that support large private-sector projects.1 Both towers illustrate that buildings above one kilometre require either sovereign backing, large private developers with deep capital, or both, combined with planning frameworks that actively encourage supertall construction.
What do architects and engineers say about the limits of building height?
Architects and engineers point to wind, foundations and materials as the main constraints on building height. At extreme altitudes, lateral wind forces can cause oscillations felt by occupants, and solving that problem requires purpose-built structural geometry. The Burj Khalifa's Y-shaped cross-section, inspired by the Hymenocallis flower, breaks up wind vortices and reduces vibrations.5 The Shanghai Tower's 120-degree twist reduces wind load on the structure by around a quarter.4
Foundations present a parallel challenge. The Burj Azizi, squeezed between two buildings on Sheikh Zayed Road, cannot have a wide base, so its foundations run 70 m below the surface, compared with 50 m for the Burj Khalifa, to compensate for the narrow footprint.1 The Merdeka 118 in Kuala Lumpur required piles reaching 75 m deep to find bedrock beneath unstable clay.5 Beyond structure, the sources note a growing debate about embodied carbon: megatall buildings require large quantities of concrete and steel, and critics argue that environmental cost must be weighed against operational efficiencies over the building's lifetime.3