When will the construction of Jeddah Tower be complete?

TL;DR

My median completion date is August 1, 2029, with an 80% interval from August 17, 2028 to September 13, 2032. I assign 12% probability to completion by August 31, 2028, 29% by December 31, 2028, 63.5% by December 31, 2029, and 4% after December 31, 2037. The 2028 target is a tight upside case because the tower is active and funded, but its record-height upper structure and lagging envelope work leave little schedule buffer (Kingdom Holding, Thornton Tomasetti).

Context

Jeddah Economic Company signed a SAR 7.2 billion completion contract with Saudi Binladin Group on October 2, 2024. The filing said SAR 1.1 billion covered earlier work, 63 floors were complete, the anticipated construction period was 42 months, and the remaining work would use internal funding and bank facilities (Saudi Exchange). Concrete pouring restarted in January 2025, and the latest direct sponsor update on July 24, 2026 put the tower at 430 metres out of more than 1,000 metres (Saudi Exchange, CNN Arabic).

I interpret completion as the first clear declaration that the tower's structure, spire and architectural envelope are finished and it is no longer under construction. The date can precede hotel opening, tenant occupancy, final interior fit-out and completion of Jeddah Economic City. That makes the relevant milestone earlier than full operation, but later than a topping-out ceremony.

Evidence

The historical backbone is the lag between a supertall tower's structural top-out and architectural completion. Definitions differ, so I use the sample as a range, not a regression.

This is a small reference class of N=5, covering top-outs from 2009 through 2017 and completions from 2009 through 2019. The range is 8–29 months and the median is about 16 months. Burj Khalifa is the closest analogue: it reached Level 100 in January 2007, Level 160 in April 2008, topped out in January 2009 and completed cladding in September 2009 (Burj Khalifa fact sheet). Its Level-100-to-envelope-completion interval was 32 months. Jeddah Tower reached Level 100 in April 2026, so a literal Burj analogue points to December 2028 before adjusting for Jeddah's extra height, larger upper structure and restart risk (Thornton Tomasetti).

The full reliable post-restart milestone series I used is:

From March 25 to July 24, the reported gain was about 16 levels and 60 metres over 121 days: one level every 7.6 calendar days and 3.5 metres per week. The project engineer's June estimate was four metres per week, close to that measured height pace (Argaam, Thornton Tomasetti). Going from 430 metres on July 24, 2026 to the 1,000-plus-metre tip by August 31, 2028 would require an average of about 5.2 metres per week. That comparison overstates the difficulty because the tower tapers and the upper erection sequence differs from repetitive concrete floors, but it shows why the public deadline has little visible float (CNN Arabic, Argaam).

Height alone also understates progress. The April 2026 company update said more than 274,000 cubic metres of concrete had been poured, about 61% of the planned total, while façade cladding covered 36-plus floors, MEP first-fix work covered office Levels 7–14, and about 6,000 workers were operating around the clock (Kingdom Holding). The façade restarted with its first new curtain-wall unit on November 30, 2025; KONE has an order for 67 elevators and escalators; façade-seal deliveries began in the third quarter of 2025; and the steel package above Level 120 was awarded in May 2026 (Jangho, KONE, Trelleborg, Zhejiang government). These are stronger signals than a promotional completion date because they show long-lead systems entering production and installation.

Financial failure is less likely than it was before the pause. Kingdom Holding's audited 2025 statements tie Saudi Binladin Group's economic rights to completion, testing and pre-commissioning, and record a payment due on completion in 2028 (Kingdom Holding financial statements). Saudi Arabia's Ministry of Finance raised its direct stake in Binladin International Holding Group to 86.38% in December 2025 through a debt conversion (Reuters). That reduces contractor-solvency risk. It does not remove engineering or coordination risk.

Construction delays are right-skewed, so the forecast must keep a long tail. A 2024 study using 180 construction schedules and roughly 300,000 activities found that residual activity delays followed a lognormal pattern after controlling for project factors (Physica A). I therefore used a scenario mixture rather than a symmetric date range: 28% near schedule centered on October 15, 2028; 42% ordinary slippage centered on September 1, 2029; 18% substantial delay centered on September 1, 2030; 8.1% major disruption centered on October 1, 2033; 0.1% before 2028; and 3.8% explicit cancellation or unresolved delay beyond 2037. The continuous late-scenario tails lift the total probability after December 31, 2037 to 4.1%. After setting this model, I checked the industry database: CTBUH lists 2030 as its expected completion year, which is consistent with the forecast but was not used as a mechanical input (Skyscraper Center).

What's non-obvious

Floor count is a bad completion gauge here. Level 160 is around the 630-metre observation and sky-terrace zone, and the project engineer said in June 2026 that this milestone was about 60 weeks away (Zawya). Reaching it around August 2027 would still leave roughly 370 metres to the architectural tip. CTBUH describes about 300 metres of the top as aspirational spire height, so being near two-thirds of the nominal floor count is not the same as being near two-thirds of structural completion (CTBUH technical paper).

The opposite shortcut also fails. Saying the tower is only 43% complete because it is 430 metres tall ignores tapering, the 61% concrete-volume figure and concurrent façade work (Kingdom Holding). Public descriptions of the upper construction method are not detailed enough to turn the Level-120 steel award into a simple fast-steel forecast: the steel package is real, while Thornton Tomasetti has also discussed pumping concrete to the full height and CTBUH describes the primary support as cast-in-place concrete (Zhejiang government, Zawya, Skyscraper Center). I treat the award as procurement de-risking, not proof that the remaining height will rise at ordinary steel-frame speed.

Uncertainties

• The public August 2028 date is not accompanied by a tower-level critical-path schedule that defines whether it means structural top-out, architectural completion, contract pre-commissioning or opening. The 42-month filing and the project engineer's statement confirm a real target, but not its exact acceptance test.
• Floor labels differ across sources, and the latest 430-metre figure is a sponsor statement rather than an independent quantity survey. Monthly verified data on core height, completed slabs, façade area, MEP floors and upper-package fabrication would narrow the forecast sharply.
• The reference class is small and mixes cladding completion, civil completion, occupancy approval and CTBUH completion. Jeddah Tower is taller than every member of the sample, so the upper-structure base rate is extrapolation.
• The right tail depends on another pause. Government backing, procurement and active work lower that risk, but the 2018–2024 stoppage shows that a multi-year interruption is possible (Skyscraper Center). I keep 4% beyond 2037 rather than treating current momentum as irreversible.