China is the country with the most supertall buildings at 109 entries, followed by the United Arab Emirates and the United States with 35 and 31 supertall buildings respectively. The city with the most supertall buildings is Dubai at 31 entries, followed by Shenzhen and New York City with 20 and 18 supertall buildings respectively.
As of 2025[update], there are 70 cities across the world with at least one supertall building, and 248 completed supertall buildings in the world.
History
The first supertall skyscraper to be completed was the Chrysler Building in New York City in 1930, which was 319 meters (1,047 feet) tall.[6] This was followed a year later by the Empire State Building, which rose to a height of 381 meters (1,250 feet). No supertall buildings would be constructed for 38 years until the completion of the John Hancock Center in Chicago in 1969. The John Hancock Center was the first supertall to be built outside New York City. Supertalls remained the purview of New York City and Chicago until the completion of the JPMorgan Chase Tower in Houston. Two more American cities gained a supertall skyscraper in the 20th century: Atlanta with the Bank of American Plaza, and Los Angeles with the U.S. Bank Tower, both office buildings.
After the September 11 attacks, New York City was left with only two supertall buildings. This preceded a significant boom in the construction of supertall buildings, which began with The New York Times Building in 2007. and accelerated in the 2010s with the development of the Hudson Yards complex and residential supertall skyscrapers on Billionaires' Row. Currently, New York City has 17 supertall buildings, and 2 more under construction. In 2018, two more US cities gained their first supertall buildings: the Salesforce Tower in San Francisco, and the Comcast Technology Center in Philadelphia. Construction is underway on Waterline in Austin and Waldorf Astoria Miami in Miami, both of which would be the first supertall buildings in their respective cities.
The Bank of China Tower in Hong Kong was the first supertall skyscraper to be built outside of the United States in 1990. This preceded a rise in the construction of supertall skyscrapers internationally, which accelerated in the 2010s, especially in China.
East Asia has become a hotspot for building such tall skyscrapers.[7] The first supertall buildings to be built in Mainland China were CITIC Plaza in Guangzhou and Shun Hing Square in Shenzhen, both built in 1996. In the 2010s, China overtook the United States to become the country with the most supertall buildings. Other cities in China that have built multiple supertall buildings since 2000 include Guiyang, Nanjing, Nanning, Tianjin, and Wuhan. Taiwan completed its first supertall building, 85 Sky Tower, in the city of Kaohsiung in 1997. This was followed by Taipei 101 in Taiwan's capital of Taipei 7 years later, which became the tallest building in the world at the time. Japan and South Korea both constructed their first supertall buildings in the 2010s; Japan with Abeno Harukas in Osaka in 2014, and South Korea with the Northeast Asia Trade Tower in Incheon in 2012. In North Korea, construction of the Ryugyong Hotel in Pyongyang has been completed, but the hotel remains unopened as of ‹See RfD› 2025.
Baiyoke Tower II in Bangkok, Thailand became the first supertall building in Southeast Asia when it was completed in 1997. They were followed by the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia in 1998, which overtook the Sears Tower as the tallest buildings in the world at the time, and the World Trade Center as the tallest twin towers in the world. Vietnam received its first supertall building in 2012 upon the completion of Landmark 72 in Hanoi. Likewise, Indonesia completed its first supertall building, Autograph Tower in 2022.
Dubai completed the Burj Al Arab hotel in 1999, the first supertall building in the United Arab Emirates and the Middle East. Saudi Arabia became the next country in the Middle East with a supertall building with the construction of the Kingdom Centre in 2002. Qatar completed its first supertall building, Aspire Tower, in 2007, while Kuwait completed its first supertall skyscraper, Arraya Tower, two years later. The Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey in Istanbul, currently under construction, will become the first supertall building in Turkey. Azrieli Spiral Tower in Tel Aviv and Beyond Tower in Givatayim, both in construction, will become the first supertall buildings in Israel.
Mexico is the only country besides the United States to have a supertall building in North America – T.Op Torre 1 in Monterrey, which was built in 2020. Torre Rise is currently under construction in the same city, which would become the tallest building in all of Latin America if completed. While Canada has no completed supertall buildings, it has three under construction – The One, Skytower at Pinnacle One Younge, and Concord Sky, all of which are in Toronto. In Australia, supertall buildings have been built in Gold Coast and Melbourne, making Australia the only Oceanian country with supertall skyscrapers.
This list includes completed skyscrapers that stand between 300 and 599 m (984 and 1,965 ft) in height, based on standard height measurements. This includes spires and architectural details but does not include antenna masts. This list does not include topped out buildings that have not been fully completed.
Supertall skyscrapers under construction and on-hold
Supertall skyscrapers under construction
This list includes skyscrapers under construction that are planned to be between 300 and 600 meters (984 and 1,968 feet) tall. based on standard height measurements. The "year" column indicates the expected year of completion. This list does not include buildings whose construction has been suspended indefinitely, which are listed in the "On Hold" table below.[13]
This list includes unfinished buildings with no construction activity that were planned to be supertall skyscrapers. The height column indicates the intended height.
This list ranks cities by number of completed supertall buildings. This list is inclusive of megatall buildings (buildings above 600 meters in height). It does not include supertall buildings that are topped out or under construction.
A skyscraper is a tall continuously habitable building having multiple floors. Modern sources define skyscrapers as being at least 100 meters (330 ft) or 150 meters (490 ft) in height, though there is no universally accepted definition, other than being very tall high-rise buildings. Skyscrapers may host offices, hotels, residential spaces, and retail spaces.
The Shanghai World Financial Center is a supertall skyscraper located in the Pudong district of Shanghai. It was designed by Kohn Pedersen Fox and developed by the Mori Building Company, with Leslie E. Robertson Associates as its structural engineer and China State Construction Engineering Corp and Shanghai Construction (Group) General Co. as its main contractor. It is a mixed-use skyscraper, consisting of offices, hotels, conference rooms, observation decks, ground-floor shopping malls. Park Hyatt Shanghai is the tower's hotel component, comprising 174 rooms and suites occupying the 79th to the 93rd floors, which at the time of completion was the highest hotel in the world. It is now the third-highest hotel in the world after the Ritz-Carlton, Hong Kong, which occupies floors 102 to 118 of the International Commerce Centre.
The Lakhta Centre is an 87-story skyscraper built in the northwestern neighbourhood of Lakhta in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Standing 462 metres (1,516 ft) tall, it is the tallest building in both Russia and Europe, and the sixteenth-tallest building in the world. It is also the second-tallest structure in Russia and Europe, behind the Ostankino Tower in Moscow, in addition to being the second-tallest twisted building and the northernmost skyscraper in the world.
Shanghai Tower is a 128-story, 632-meter-tall (2,073 ft) megatall skyscraper located in Lujiazui, Pudong, Shanghai. It is the tallest building in China and the world's third-tallest building by height to architectural top. It is the tallest and largest LEED Platinum certified building in the world since 2015. It had the world's fastest elevators at a top speed of 20.5 meters per second until 2017, when it was surpassed by the Guangzhou CTF Finance Center, with its top speed of 21 meters per second. Designed by the international design firm Gensler and owned by the Shanghai Municipal Government, it is the tallest of the world's first triple-adjacent supertall buildings in Pudong, the other two being the Jin Mao Tower and the Shanghai World Financial Center. Its tiered construction, designed for high energy efficiency, provides nine separate zones divided between office, retail and leisure use. The US-based Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat cites it as "one of the most sustainably advanced tall buildings in the world."
KK100, formerly known as Kingkey 100 and Kingkey Finance Tower, is a 100-story, 442 m (1,450 ft) supertall skyscraper in Shenzhen, Guangdong, China.
The City of Capitals is a mixed-use complex composed of two skyscrapers and an office building located on plot 9 in the Moscow International Business Center in Moscow, Russia with a total area of 288,680 square metres (3,107,300 sq ft). The two skyscrapers are named after the two historical capitals of Russia: Moscow and Saint Petersburg. Construction of the complex began in 2005, with the office building completed in 2008 and the two skyscrapers completed in 2009.
The tallest building in the world, as of 2025, is the Burj Khalifa in Dubai. The title of "world's tallest building" has been held by various buildings in modern times, including Lincoln Cathedral in Lincoln, England, and the Empire State Building and the original World Trade Center, both in New York City.
The Iconic Tower is a mixed-use supertall skyscraper in the New Administrative Capital of Egypt. With a total structural height of almost 400 metres (1,300 ft), it is both the tallest building and the tallest structure in Africa. It has 77 floors, mostly for office use, and is one of 20 towers being built as part of the central business district in the new capital city. The total area of the tower exceeds 265,000 m2 (2,850,000 sq ft).
↑ "Which World City Has The Most Skyscrapers?". The Urban Developer. 11 March 2016. Retrieved 26 March 2018. "The majority of international organisations, such as the CTBUH and Emporis, define a skyscraper as a building that reaches or exceeds the height of 150 metres."
↑ "Huge New Rogers Skyscraper Proposed". skyscrapernews.com. 3 December 2007. Archived from the original on 4 October 2018. Retrieved 3 December 2007. ...their eleventh proper skyscraper, that is by definition buildings above 150 etres
↑ Ambrose, Gavin; Harris, Paul; Stone, Sally (2008). The Visual Dictionary of Architecture. Switzerland: AVA Publishing SA. p.233. ISBN978-2-940373-54-3. Skyscraper: A tall, multi-storey building. Skyscrapers are different from towers or masts because they are habitable. The term was first applied during the late-nineteenth century, as the public marvelled at the elevated, steel-frame buildings being erected in Chicago and New York, USA. Modern skyscrapers tend to be constructed from reinforced concrete. As a general rule, a building must be at least 150 metres high to qualify as a skyscraper.
↑ Data Standards: skyscraper (ESN 24419)[usurped], Emporis Standards, accessed on line July 2020. "A skyscraper is defined on Emporis as a multi-story building whose architectural height is at least 100 meters. This definition falls midway between many common definitions worldwide, and is intended as a metric compromise which can be applied across the board worldwide"
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
