The world’s best tall building projects for 2025 have been unveiled.

The Council of Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH) has announced that 118 projects have been given an Award of Excellence across 20 award categories.

Awardees will present their work and vie for the winning project in their category at the CTBUH 2025 International Conference in Toronto in October.

Categories include best tall buildings by height and region, urban habitat, future projects, 10-year award, construction, repositioning, innovation, structure, facades, building systems, space within and diversity, equity and inclusion.

In the Best Tall Buildings by height category, for example, five buildings have achieved excellence awards in the supertall category involving buildings of 300m or greater in height.

One such project in the Ciel Tower in Dubai (pictured above).

Design by NORR Group Consultants for The First Group, this building completed in 2024 is the world’s tallest hotel and stands at 364 meters with 81 floors.

All up, the hotel features more than 1,000 hotel keys and twelve atrium gardens which are vertically stacked within a 300-meter-tall atrium.

The tower includes restaurants, health facilities and four exterior swimming pools – including an ocean-facing infinity pool at level 76.

From the top, a glass observation deck offers 360-degree views from across Dubai Marina, the Palm Jumeirah and the Arabian Gulf.

The Tower will compete with the Citymark Centre residential and office tower in Shenzhen; the mixed use Merdeka 1118 building in Kuala Lumpur (the world’s second largest building); the 360 Ping An Financial Centre in Jinan; and the Zhanjiang Science Gate Twin Towers in Shanghai.

(Completed last year, the Karlatornet mixed use building is now the largest building in Sweeden)

Moving down to the 200m plus category, an interesting award winner is the Karlatornet mixed use (residential/hotel/office) building in Gothenburg, Sweeden.

Designed by Skidmore Ownings & Merrill LLP for developer Serneke (current owner Doxa AB) and completed last year, the building is the tallest in Sweeden and indeed in Scandinavia.

The tower is characterised by a gradual tapering, which sees each floor being slightly smaller compared with the one below. This creates a sense of verticality.

Distinct curvature between the 38^th and 58^th floor add to the building’s unique aesthetic whilst an observation deck provides panoramic views of Gothenburg.

This provides for an efficient design whilst offering apartment views which are focused on the city and the waterfront.

The building is part of a masterplan that will create a vibrant 143,000 square meter district with a range of retail, food and beverage opportunities and will help to establish Lindholmen as a premier north bank area.

A complete list of Award of Excellence winders can be seen here.

(Set to form a landmark in the new Cairo capital 45km east of Cairo when it opens in 2030, the Forbes International Tower has achieved an Award of Excellence in the Future Projects category.. The tower will generate 25 percent of its own energy by including one of the largest BIPV integrated into its facade, whilst it will use clean hydrogen for its remaining 75 percent of energy needs.)

Javier Quintana de Uña, CEO at CTBUH, congratulated the excellence award winners.

“This year’s cohort demonstrates not only technical sophistication and design ingenuity but also an ability to respond to the circumstances shaping the world right now—from regional issues and economic challenges to the accelerating climate crisis,” he said.

“These projects prove that tall buildings and the vertical urbanism they engender can instigate better quality of life, ecological resilience and urban equity simultaneously. That’s the direction our industry must move in.”

James Parakh, Urban Design Manager at the City of Toronto Planning Division and a juror in the Urban Habitat category said that the projects demonstrate how tall buildings can deliver social, economic and environmental value.

“This year’s submissions illustrate how tall buildings can do more than dominate skylines,” Parakh said.

“Vertical urbanism isn’t just about going taller—it’s about rethinking how height intersects with liveability, connectivity and the relationship of tall buildings with the street,” said —they can animate streets, enliven their contexts and shape cohesive, healthy neighbourhood.”

“The most compelling projects treat the base, the tower and the spaces between towers as a continuous urban experience. That kind of holistic thinking can benefit cities, improve liveability and create vibrant places where people thrive.”