Jeddah Tower vs Burj Khalifa: who wins the height race?

Quick heads-up: Jeddah Tower is still on track to become the tallest building on earth, and it’s going to beat Burj Khalifa by a lot – more than 170 metres, if everything goes to plan.

I know this isn’t a Kuwait story exactly, but a lot of us travel to both Dubai and Jeddah, and this is one of those regional bragging-rights things worth knowing properly instead of just half-remembering headlines.

So let’s go through it properly, the way I’d explain it over karak, because the numbers alone don’t tell the whole story.

So is Jeddah Tower actually going to be taller?

Yes, assuming it finishes as planned. Burj Khalifa is 828 metres. Jeddah Tower is designed to pass 1,000 metres, which is more than 172 metres taller – over 20 per cent higher.

But here’s the bit people miss: height on paper isn’t the same as usable space. Burj Khalifa’s highest occupied floor is around 585 metres up, with another 243 metres of pure spire above that. Jeddah’s planned observatory sits at 652 metres, still 348 metres short of the building’s actual tip. So neither tower lets you stand right at the very top – most of that extra height is spire, not floor space.

Both buildings share an architect, Adrian Smith, who clearly doesn’t mind beating his own record. Structural engineer William F. Baker, who worked on Burj Khalifa, said in a 2021 lecture that the design grew by 310 metres during the process –