Where the skyline never stops climbing
10 Cities With the Most Skyscrapers in the World
From Hong Kong's record-setting density to the new towers of Shenzhen and Dubai, these are the cities with the most high-rises on Earth.
A skyscraper, by most counts, is any building at least 150 metres (about 490 ft) tall, and a 'supertall' is one over 300 m. By those definitions, just ten cities account for nearly half of every tall tower ever built. The leaderboard is dominated by Asia and the Persian Gulf, with New York the lone Western city left in the top five after a decade of construction booms in Shenzhen, Shanghai and Dubai. The numbers in this article come from the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH), the closest thing to an official scorekeeper for skyscraper counts.
How we chose these ↓ — jump to the full scoring system at the bottom of the article.
Istanbul, Türkiye · pop. 15,701,602
For most of its history Istanbul was a low-rise city defined by Ottoman minarets, Byzantine domes and red-tiled roofs. The skyline of the historic peninsula is still protected by UNESCO-driven height restrictions. The change has all happened in the Levent and Maslak districts on the European side north of the Golden Horn, where since the late 1990s a wall of 200-300 m office and residential supertalls has gone up around the city's stock exchange and main bank headquarters.
The 369 m Çamlıca TV-Radio Tower (on the Asian side) and the 261 m Skyland Istanbul residential triplet are the most visible additions, and CTBUH now counts more than 80 buildings above 150 m across the metropolitan area. A 2019 ruling forced the demolition of several illegally constructed towers in Onaltı Dokuz Istanbul whose silhouettes intruded on the sightlines from Hagia Sophia, an unprecedented victory for heritage planning that has slowed but not stopped the city's vertical growth.
Istanbul's Levent business district skyline. Photo via Wikimedia Commons. 
The Maslak financial district north of Levent. Photo via Wikimedia Commons. 
Seoul, South Korea · pop. 9,635,445
Seoul is the only city in the world where the dominant supertall typology is not the office tower but the apartment block. The 555 m Lotte World Tower, completed in 2017, is the headline, but the more telling number is the count of residential supertalls clustered in Gangnam, Yongsan and the new towns around the city: Korea's love affair with branded high-rise apartment estates has produced more than 130 buildings above 150 m, almost all of them flats.
Seoul also has the densest collection of post-1970s urban skylines anywhere outside Asia's three giants. Walk through Banpo or Jamsil and you'll see entire neighbourhoods of 50-storey apartment 'complexes', each one branded by a chaebol developer (Hyundai, Samsung, Daewoo). It's a uniquely Korean skyline language and looks quite different from the office-tower clusters of Hong Kong or the supertall trophies of Dubai.
The 555 m Lotte World Tower in Songpa District, Seoul. Photo via Wikimedia Commons. 
The Gangnam skyline at night, dominated by branded apartment supertalls. Photo via Wikimedia Commons. 
Bangkok, Thailand · pop. 5,527,948
Bangkok is Southeast Asia's other vertical capital and the regional rival to Kuala Lumpur. CTBUH counts over 115 buildings above 150 m across the city, anchored by the 314 m MahaNakhon (with its trademark 'pixelated' notches) and the 318 m Magnolias Waterfront Residences. The Sukhumvit and Sathorn corridors are now lined with luxury condo and hotel supertalls, and the new Bang Sue Grand Station has triggered a cluster of office towers around the city's main rail hub.
Bangkok's skyline is unusually photogenic at street level because so many of its tall buildings are oriented for view rather than density. Rooftop bars (Lebua's Sky Bar, Vertigo, Octave) have become a global tourist draw in their own right, and the city's mix of finance-district towers, riverside hotels and condo supertalls gives it more visual variety than most of the cities above it on this list.
The Sukhumvit corridor of Bangkok at sunset. Photo via Wikimedia Commons. 
The 314 m MahaNakhon, with its 'pixelated' notched facade. Photo via Wikimedia Commons. 
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia · pop. 1,982,112
Kuala Lumpur briefly held the world height record between 1998 and 2004, when the 452 m Petronas Twin Towers were the tallest buildings on Earth. The towers are still the centrepiece of the KLCC district and remain the tallest twin-tower structure in the world. CTBUH counts roughly 140 buildings above 150 m citywide, and the recently completed 678 m Merdeka 118, in the historic Bukit Bintang district, is now the second-tallest building on the planet behind Burj Khalifa.
What makes Kuala Lumpur unusual is that its supertalls sit alongside genuinely low-rise neighbourhoods, colonial-era shophouses and the rainforest fragments of Bukit Nanas. Stand at the foot of Merdeka 118 and you can still walk 10 minutes to a 1900s wet market. The pipeline of new towers in the TRX financial district and Bandar Malaysia is set to add another 20+ supertalls over the next decade.
Read more about Kuala Lumpur →
The KLCC skyline of Kuala Lumpur. Photo via Wikimedia Commons. 
The 452 m Petronas Twin Towers. Photo via Wikimedia Commons. 
Tokyo, Japan · pop. 13,613,660
Tokyo's skyscraper count is suppressed by some of the strictest seismic building codes on Earth, and yet the city still ranks comfortably in the global top ten with more than 175 buildings above 150 m. The pre-2000 generation of towers (the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building, Shinjuku Park Tower, the Shinjuku I-Land Tower) clusters around the artificial bedrock of west Shinjuku, while the new generation is concentrated in Marunouchi, Toranomon, Shibuya and the Tokyo Bay waterfront.
The game-changer is the 330 m Mori JP Tower in the Azabudai Hills complex, completed in 2023, which became Japan's tallest building and the centrepiece of a new 8.1-hectare downtown 'city within a city'. A further wave of 250-300 m supertalls is rising around Shibuya station, Tokyo station and the Toranomon-Azabudai corridor, suggesting Tokyo will close some of its rankings gap with Shanghai and Hong Kong by the end of the decade.
The Shinjuku skyscraper cluster, Tokyo's original 'sub-centre'. Photo via Wikimedia Commons. 
Tokyo's eastern wards seen from the Tokyo Skytree. Photo via Wikimedia Commons. 
Shanghai, China · pop. 24,870,895
Shanghai's Pudong district was farmland and warehouses in 1990. Today it holds the tallest building in China (the 632 m Shanghai Tower), the world's tallest twisting supertall, and roughly 250 completed buildings over 150 m across the city as a whole. The Lujiazui financial district, with the trio of Shanghai Tower, Shanghai World Financial Centre and Jin Mao Tower, is the most photographed supertall cluster in Asia.
What sets Shanghai apart is how integrated the supertalls are into the working financial district rather than standing as showpieces. The Bund's colonial-era waterfront on the opposite bank is preserved by law, creating one of the world's most jarring skyline contrasts: 19th-century European banking houses on one side of the Huangpu, 21st-century Chinese supertalls on the other. New construction has slowed sharply since the 2021 height-cap rule, but Puxi's western districts are still adding 200 m residential towers at a steady pace.
The Pudong skyline seen from the Bund. Photo via Wikimedia Commons. 
The 632 m Shanghai Tower, China's tallest building. Photo via Wikimedia Commons. 
Dubai, United Arab Emirates · pop. 4,248,200
Dubai has built more 300 m supertalls in the last 20 years than any other city in history. CTBUH counts over 200 buildings above 150 m and 28 supertalls (over 300 m) within the emirate, anchored by the Burj Khalifa, which at 828 m has been the world's tallest building since 2010 and will likely hold that title until Saudi Arabia's Jeddah Tower is completed. Sheikh Zayed Road, the spine of the city, is now a near-continuous canyon of 200 m-plus towers running for more than 5 km.
The building boom is also unusually narrow in time. Almost the entire Dubai skyline was built between 2000 and 2020, on land that was either desert or shallow Gulf seabed within living memory. The Palm Jumeirah, Dubai Marina and Downtown Dubai are all on reclaimed land. A new wave of supertalls is now under construction in the Business Bay and Marasi Drive areas, including the 524 m Burj Binghatti and the 565 m Six Senses Residences, which will rank among the tallest residential buildings ever built.
The Burj Khalifa, the world's tallest building at 828 m. Photo via Wikimedia Commons. 
The Dubai Marina cluster of supertall residential towers. Photo via Wikimedia Commons. 
New York, United States · pop. 8,478,072
New York is the city that invented the skyscraper. The 1902 Flatiron, the 1913 Woolworth, the 1930 Chrysler and the 1931 Empire State all set successive world height records, and the silhouette of midtown Manhattan remains the default mental image of what a skyline is supposed to look like. CTBUH lists over 320 completed buildings above 150 m across the five boroughs, with new supertalls along 'Billionaires' Row' on West 57th Street (Central Park Tower at 472 m, 111 West 57th at 435 m, One57 at 306 m) reshaping the central park-side view in the last decade.
What New York gives up to Hong Kong and Shenzhen in raw count, it makes up for in the variety and historical depth of its towers. Lower Manhattan, midtown, Long Island City and downtown Brooklyn each have distinct vertical character, and a new generation of pencil-thin residential supertalls has produced some of the slenderest tall buildings ever built (steinway tower's height-to-width ratio is 24:1, the highest in the world). One World Trade Centre at 541 m remains the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere.
Lower Manhattan from across the Hudson. Photo via Wikimedia Commons. 
Midtown Manhattan at night, including the new West 57th Street supertalls. Photo via Wikimedia Commons. 
Zhejiang, China · pop. 17,560,061
Shenzhen was a fishing village of about 30,000 people in 1980, when Deng Xiaoping designated it China's first Special Economic Zone. Forty years later, it is the second most vertical city on the planet. CTBUH currently counts more than 380 completed buildings above 150 m and more supertalls under construction than any other city, including the 599 m Ping An Finance Centre and the 600 m-plus Shenzhen-Hong Kong International Centre that will overtake it.
What makes Shenzhen's skyline distinctive is the speed of growth and the sheer concentration of supertall towers in Futian, Nanshan and Luohu. The Nanshan district alone holds roughly as many 200 m-plus buildings as the entire metro region of Toronto. The city's planners have also begun limiting new supertalls in response to a 2021 central-government rule banning new buildings above 500 m, but the existing pipeline guarantees Shenzhen will keep climbing the rankings for at least another decade.
The Futian CBD skyline of Shenzhen. Photo via Wikimedia Commons. 
The 599 m Ping An Finance Centre, Shenzhen's tallest building. Photo via Wikimedia Commons. 
Hong Kong, China · pop. 7,534,200
Hong Kong has more skyscrapers than any other city on Earth by a comfortable margin. The CTBUH database lists over 550 buildings above 150 m within the SAR, and Emporis counts more than 9,000 buildings of any height above 12 storeys, putting Hong Kong at the absolute extreme of urban verticality. The driver is geography: 75% of the territory is steep terrain or country park, leaving developers to pile residential and office towers onto a few flat strips of reclaimed land in Central, Wan Chai, Tsim Sha Tsui and Kowloon East.
The headline towers (the International Commerce Centre at 484 m and Two International Finance Centre at 412 m) are well known, but the real story is the hundreds of 40-to-60 storey residential blocks in places like Tai Koo Shing, Mei Foo and the new town developments of Tin Shui Wai. The skyline is also still growing: the redevelopment of the former Kai Tak airport site is adding another cluster of 200 m towers through the late 2020s. Hong Kong residents live higher above the ground, on average, than anyone else on Earth.
Hong Kong's Central skyline seen from Kowloon. Photo via Wikimedia Commons. 
The Symphony of Lights laser show over Victoria Harbour. Photo via Wikimedia Commons.
How we chose these
We ranked cities by the count of completed buildings above 150 m as tracked in the CTBUH Skyscraper Center database, cross-checked against Emporis and Skyscraperpage where they disagreed. Buildings still under construction are noted in the city write-ups but not counted in the rank. We treat 'city' the way CTBUH does, by administrative boundary rather than metro area, which is why Hong Kong's 9,000 high-rises are counted separately from Shenzhen's even though the two share a border. Where a city's count has moved by more than 5% in the last 24 months, the write-up flags it.
Sources & further reading
More lists
10 Cities With the Worst Traffic in the World
Where rush hour is a way of life
10 Cities With the Best Public Transportation
Where you really don't need a car
8 Highest-Altitude Cities in the World
Where the air gets thin and the views get long
8 Oldest Continuously Inhabited Cities in the World
Places where someone has been home for thousands of years
10 Coldest Inhabited Cities in the World
Where winter is genuinely dangerous
10 Hottest Cities in the World
Where summer routinely crosses 50°C
10 Largest Megacities in the World
Where tens of millions share a single metro
8 Cities Built on Water
Where canals are the streets
10 of the World's Best-Preserved Old Towns
Where history is still the street plan
10 Most Expensive Cities in the World
Where a coffee costs ten dollars
10 Most Visited Cities by International Tourists
Where the world goes on holiday
7 of the Rainiest Inhabited Places on Earth
Where the rain is the climate, not the weather
8 of the Northernmost Cities in the World
Where the sun stops setting in summer
7 of the Southernmost Cities in the World
Where the next stop is Antarctica
8 of the Sunniest Cities in the World
Where clouds are a special event
8 of the World's Greenest Cities
Where sustainability is a city policy, not a slogan
8 of the World's Most Famous Mountain & Ski Towns
Where altitude is the address
7 of the World's Most Multilingual Cities
Where the official languages run into the dozens
8 Cities With the Most Billionaires
Where extreme wealth concentrates
10 of the Best Cities for Digital Nomads
Where Wi-Fi, weather and visas all line up
10 Cities Most at Risk From Rising Sea Levels
Where climate change is a near-term planning problem
10 of the World's Most Walkable Cities
Where the car is a guest, not the host
10 of the World's Best Cities for Nightlife
Where 'last call' is a foreign concept
10 of the World's Best Food Cities
A transparent ranking of where eating is the point of visiting
For entertainment only. Rankings on this page are editorial picks compiled from public sources for fun and discovery — they aren't a scientific measurement. Population figures and place details come from open data; see the linked place pages for sources.