As of November 2026, the tallest building in the world is the Burj Khalifa in Dubai. It is 828 meters tall and has more than 160 floors. The second-tallest is Merdeka Maybank Tower in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. It is 678.9 meters (2,227 feet) tall. Shanghai Tower in China is third, at 632 meters (2,073 feet). Taipei 101 in Taiwan held the title from 2004 until the Burj Khalifa passed it. The Burj Khalifa is in the United Arab Emirates, and it opened in 2010.

People who measure tall buildings count the height from the lowest main entrance up to the top of the building. A spire counts as part of the building, but an antenna or a flagpole does not. A tower only counts as a building if at least half of its height has rooms people can use. Radio and TV towers that are mostly empty frame do not make the list. A steel skeleton holds up a skyscraper. The outside walls are only a skin that keeps out the weather.

Some buildings have special names. A supertall building is 300 meters (984 feet) or taller. A megatall building is 600 meters (1,968 feet) or taller. As of November 2026, the Jeddah Tower, in Saudi Arabia, is being built to be more than 1,000 meters tall. If it is finished, it would become the tallest building in the world. The Washington Monument in Washington, D.C., is a tall stone tower called an obelisk. It is 555 feet tall.

The Burj Khalifa took about six years to build. Work began in September 2004, and it opened on 4 January 2010. It has three wings that lean on each other and on a six-sided center. This shape, called a buttressed core, keeps the tall tower stiff. It also gets narrower as it rises, in a spiral of steps called setbacks. Wind pushes on a tall building. The taller the building, the more wind matters.

The Sears Tower in Chicago, now the Willis Tower, is built as a bundle of nine square tubes. As the tower climbs, some tubes stop, which reduces the wind forces on the building. The Eiffel Tower is a lattice, an open pattern of iron pieces, so wind can blow right through it. It was the tallest structure in the world from 1889 until 1930. It was finished in 1889 for a big fair in Paris. It is repainted about every seven years.

Words to know

• supertall: over 300 meters
• megatall: over 600 meters
• lattice: open iron frame
• setbacks: narrowing steps