A Guide to the New Cities Being Built Around the World | 2026 Edition

Building a new city is the loftiest, craziest, and most ambitious real estate project imaginable. But that doesn’t stop people from trying, and it’s our job here at Thesis Driven to track them.

Today’s letter is our fourth annual guide to the new cities being built around the world. They range from futuristic pet projects of autocrats to cryptocurrency hubs to utopian endeavors and everything in between.

It's an interesting time to be on the new city beat. Without a doubt, the vibes are turning more in favor of big, ambitious real-world projects — the Trump administration's "Freedom Cities" initiative has put a spotlight on building new urban centers. But today's letter is about monitoring real sticks-and-bricks progress. So how likely are the good vibes to translate into real development?

You can find last year's edition here, although we'll note progression (or lack thereof) from last time here.

For each city we’ll tackle:

• The basics of the project;
• Our standard metrics (🧠s, 🚇s, 🪚s, and 🏗️s, measuring innovativeness, quality of urbanism, level of oppression, and feasibility, respectively);
• How it’s progressing (or not), measured in 📈s;
• Any updates to our ratings.

Category I: Autocratic Ambition

1. Neom | Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia's hyper-ambitious metropolis under development along the country's Red Sea coast is perhaps the best-known example of a new city under development today. It was also, until recently, perhaps the best example of what happens when nobody in the room is allowed to say "no."

Since our last edition, Neom has gone from "struggling but spending" to something closer to "existential reckoning." The year-long internal review launched by new CEO Aiman al-Mudaifer (who replaced Nadhmi al-Nasr in November 2024) has concluded that the project needs to be, in the Financial Times' words, "far smaller" than originally planned. MBS apparently agrees.

The biggest symbolic blow came in January 2026, when Saudi Arabia indefinitely postponed the 2029 Asian Winter Games at Trojena, Neom's planned desert ski resort. Within days, Almaty, Kazakhstan, was named as the replacement host. Trojena had been the one hard deadline forcing real progress, and without it the resort has lost its most compelling reason for prioritized spending.

Meanwhile, Sindalah, the luxury island resort that held a splashy opening party in October 2024 with superyachts and Alicia Keys, still hasn't actually opened to the public. It's being transferred to a different management entity.

The Line itself is in worse shape. As of early 2026, about 2.4 kilometers of foundation work has been completed out of the originally planned 170 kilometers. No above-ground superstructure exists. Construction was suspended in September 2025. An internal audit found "evidence of deliberate manipulation" by project managers. New contracts dried up entirely in 2025, and Neom wasn't even mentioned in Saudi Arabia's pre-budget statement for 2026.

The pivot now seems to be toward making Neom an industrial and data center hub. Saudi officials have openly said they're "reprioritizing toward technology and artificial intelligence." Neom signed a $5 billion deal with DataVolt for a 1.5 gigawatt AI data center, and the green hydrogen plant at Oxagon is reportedly 80% complete. This is a long way from flying taxis and robot butlers, but it's at least a business model.

With oil prices languishing around $60 a barrel and Saudi Arabia facing enormous financial commitments for the 2030 World Expo and 2034 FIFA World Cup, the money simply isn't there to build the original vision. At least $50 billion has already been spent. The foreign investment Riyadh hoped to attract never materialized. What remains is a question of whether Neom can be gracefully downsized into something useful or whether it joins the long list of monuments to unconstrained ambition.

We dropped Neom's progress score last year. We're dropping it again.

Ambition: 🧠🧠🧠🧠
Urbanism: 🚇🚇
Oppression: 🪚🪚🪚
Probability: 🏗️🏗️ (-1 from 2025)
Progress: 📈📈 (-1 from 2025)

2. New Administrative Capital (Now "The New Capital," Maybe Soon "Memphis") | Egypt

In case you missed it, Egypt is building a massive new city in the desert 45 kilometers east of Cairo. And unlike many projects on this list, it's actually being built right now.

Since our last edition, Egypt's capital finally got a name. Sort of. In November 2025, the government officially rebranded it from "New Administrative Capital" to "The New Capital." Then in February 2026, an official submitted a draft law to rename it "Memphis" after the ancient Pharaonic capital, grant it special provincial status, and formalize its role as the seat of government. The proposal has sparked a heated debate about whether a Pharaonic name sidelines Egypt's Arab identity. Stay tuned.

On the ground, this remains the most "real" new city on our list. Government ministries, parliament, the Central Bank, and the presidential office are all operating from the new site. Around 1,500 families live there. Africa's tallest building (the 385-meter Iconic Tower) is complete, and China State Construction signed a deal to operate and maintain the entire Central Business District. Hospitals, universities, and commercial towers are entering full operation in 2026.

The perennial concern remains: Egypt is spending somewhere between $58 billion and $100 billion on this project. The city was built to be revolution-proof, not affordable, and it risks bankrupting the entire country, which already sits on shaky financial ground.

Ambition: 🧠🧠🧠
Urbanism: 🚇
Oppression: 🪚🪚🪚🪚
Probability: 🏗️🏗️🏗️🏗️ (+1 from 2025)
Progress: 📈📈📈📈 (+1 from 2025)

3. Nusantara | Indonesia