Saudi Arabia is quietly lining up builders for a tower that would make the Burj Khalifa look small. The Public Investment Fund, the kingdom’s giant sovereign wealth fund, has started reaching out to construction contractors to gauge interest in building a 2-kilometre megatall tower in Riyadh, according to MEED. If it goes ahead, this would become the tallest structure ever attempted anywhere, and it’s the kind of project that UAE and GCC residents will be talking about for years.
What is Riyadh’s 2km megatall tower, and why does it matter for the UAE?
Let’s put the scale in perspective. Dubai’s Burj Khalifa stands at 828 metres and has held the title of world’s tallest building since 2010. The proposed Riyadh tower would be more than double that height. It’s also expected to beat Jeddah’s own megatall tower, which is already under construction and set to top 1,000 metres.
The market-sounding exercise is being run by a PIF subsidiary called the Tower District Real Estate Development Company. In simple terms, that means PIF is testing the waters with contractors before committing to a full tender, a normal early step for a project this ambitious.
The tower won’t stand alone. It’s the centrepiece of a much bigger plan called Project Rise, a new central business district on the outskirts of Riyadh. Project Rise itself sits inside an even larger masterplanned development to the north of the city known as North Pole. So this isn’t just one tall building, it’s meant to anchor an entirely new business hub for Saudi Arabia’s capital.
For UAE readers, the regional rivalry angle is hard to ignore. Dubai has built its global brand partly around having the world’s tallest building for over a decade. A 2km tower in Riyadh would shift that record firmly to Saudi Arabia, and it signals how seriously the kingdom is investing in iconic architecture as part of its broader economic diversification push. It’s also a reminder of how fast the innovation race in construction and urban design is moving across the Gulf, with each country trying to outdo the next on scale and ambition.
Who’s lining up to build it, and what will it cost?
British architecture firm Foster & Partners is already attached to the project as the designer, having won a design competition for the tower back in late 2022. That means the vision for the building has been settled for a while, even though construction hasn’t formally started.
On the construction management side, PIF had earlier received offers from several international firms for a project management consultancy contract covering the new central business district, which includes the tower. Those invited to bid were understood to include Aecom, Jacobs, Parsons and Turner from the US, plus the UK’s Mace. That was back in June last year, so the groundwork for this project has been building for some time before this latest contractor outreach.
As for cost, contractors who’ve priced similar megatall towers in the region estimate a 2km-tall structure could run to about $5 billion, though the final figure will depend on the design details that get locked in. That’s a huge number even by Gulf gigaproject standards, but it fits the pattern of Saudi Arabia’s willingness to spend big on flagship developments meant to put the kingdom on the global map.
It’s worth remembering this isn’t an isolated announcement. Saudi Arabia already has Jeddah’s 1,000-metre-plus tower under construction, and PIF has been steadily building out a pipeline of megaprojects across the country. A 2km tower would be the most extreme expression yet of that ambition, and it raises the bar for what “tallest building” even means going forward.
For now, nothing has been finalised. This is a sounding exercise, not a signed contract, so contractors are being asked for input rather than bids on a locked design. But the direction of travel is clear. Saudi Arabia wants to build something that eclipses everything else on the planet, and it’s putting its biggest wealth fund behind the effort.
What to watch next is whether PIF moves from this sounding exercise to a formal tender, and which contractors eventually get picked to build the structure. The timeline for construction hasn’t been detailed yet, but given the scale of ambition here, any confirmed progress will be closely watched across the region, especially in Dubai, where the Burj Khalifa has long been a symbol of the city’s global standing. Read the original report from MEED for more on how this megaproject is taking shape.
