List of megaprojects
This is a list of megaprojects. The number of such projects is so large that the list may never be fully completed.
Legend
Definitions
may be defined as:- Projects that cost more than US$1 billion and attract a large amount of public attention because of substantial impacts on communities, environment, and budgets.
- Projects can also be "initiatives that are physical, very expensive, and public".
This list identifies a wide variety of examples of major historic and contemporary projects that meet one or both megaproject criteria identified above.
Aerospace projects
- Airbus A380, a double-deck, wide-body, four-engine jet airliner manufactured by Airbus.
- Antonov An-225 is the longest and heaviest aircraft in service. Only one unit was ever completed.
- Boeing B-29 Superfortress, the first nuclear bomber, which cost 50% more than the development of the bombs in the Manhattan Project.
- Boeing B-52 Stratofortress, with six decades of service as a strategic nuclear bomber, it is one of the largest military aircraft ever built. Every other bomber produced in the US after the B-52 have been megaprojects; however, it has not been replaced nor will it be in the foreseeable future.
- Boeing 2707 and Lockheed L-2000 supersonic aircraft projects, initiated in 1963 via a US government-funded competition to build the United States' first Supersonic Transport, prototypes never built, ultimately canceled due to political, environmental and economic reasons in 1971.
- Boeing 747, a wide-body commercial airliner first produced in 1970, often referred to by the nickname Jumbo Jet, is among the world's most recognizable aircraft with uses for long-distance passenger transport, cargo, the US President's official shuttle plane, and as NASA's Shuttle Carrier Aircraft.
- Boeing 787, made in the United States with local and globally sourced parts, is the first major aircraft to be made largely out of composite materials
- Concorde, a supersonic passenger airliner, a product of an Anglo-French government treaty that combined the manufacturing efforts of Aérospatiale and the British Aircraft Corporation, first flown in 1969, Concorde entered service in 1976 and continued commercial flights for twenty-seven years.
- Convair B-58 Hustler, an all-weather, high altitude supersonic bomber with a fixed delta wing and 4 engines. The Hustler was operational from 1960 to 1970 in the US Air Force's Strategic Air Command for the deployment of up to 5 gravity nuclear weapons.
- Lockheed C-5 Galaxy was the largest and heaviest aircraft of any kind for over a decade. This military cargo plane has the dubious distinction of being the first development program with a billion dollar cost overrun.
- F-22 Raptor, a single seat, twin-engine fifth-generation fighter manufactured by Lockheed Martin that uses stealth technology.
- Sukhoi Su-57/HAL FGFA, two variants of fifth-generation stealth fighters jointly being developed by Sukhoi and Hindustan Aeronautics Limited for the Russian and the Indian Air Forces as a combined effort by Russia and India.
- Northrop Grumman B-2 Spirit, also known as the Stealth Bomber, a US heavy bomber with "low observable" stealth. Total program cost including development, engineering, and testing averaged $2.1 billion per aircraft in 1997.
- KH-11 reconnaissance satellite, manufactured by Lockheed Corporation and launched between 1976 and 1990.
- Rockwell B-1 Lancer, a supersonic bomber with a variable-sweep wing built in the 1980s as a strategic bomber. It has since acquired conventional and multi-role capabilities.
- Tupolev Tu-144, the first supersonic transport aircraft, made by the Russian aircraft company Tupolev, first flown on 31 December 1968 and entered service on 26 December 1975.
- Tupolev Tu-160, the world's largest and heaviest combat aircraft, the world's largest supersonic aircraft, and the largest variable-sweep aircraft ever built.
Disaster cleanup
- The Chernobyl New Safe Confinement was built to enclose the #4 reactor that was destroyed in the Chernobyl disaster of 1986
- The Fukushima disaster cleanup is ongoing, and includes the removal of spent nuclear fuel stored at the site of the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster.
- Cleaning up the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, Exxon Valdez oil spill, and AZF chemical factory explosion were megaprojects.
- Storing nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository is designed to prevent a disaster from leaking nuclear waste.
- Many hurricanes and typhoons have caused extensive damage and required large cleanup efforts, the largest of which included projects that targeted the damaged infrastructure. The list of costliest Atlantic hurricanes covers the ones in the Atlantic region, including Hurricane Katrina from 2005.
- Many earthquakes have caused enough damage to infrastructure that enormous projects were undertaken. The 1994 Northridge earthquake, the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami, and the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami are some of the most notorious and recent events that led to a megaproject.
- Flooding is the cause of many disasters. Some have caused enough damage that a megaproject would be used to recover. The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and the 2011 Mississippi River floods are examples.
- The cleanup and recovery from the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens in rural Washington state was of megaproject proportions.
- The rescue and recovery effort after the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center.
- Major restoration was necessary after the destruction caused by World War I and II, some of which was paid for by German reparations for World War I and for World War II.
Energy projects
- Boundary Dam Power Station, the world's first large-scale, coal-fired Carbon Capture & Storage plant.
- Olkiluoto 3, a nuclear power-plant in Eurajoki, Finland, planned to be completed in 2021.
- Kemper Project, or Kemper County Energy Facility, is the world's first construction attempt of an Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle plant with Carbon Capture & Sequestration. However, after significant delays and cost overruns, the gasification process is currently suspended and the power plant runs just on regular natural gas.
- The Panamanian Natural Gas electric power plant, is a project with an investment of 1.15 billion US dollars located in Colon province. It is also meant as a port for supplying Natural Gas to other Central American countries.
- Tres Amigas SuperStation, an interconnection to connect the Eastern Interconnection to the Western Interconnection and the Texas Interconnection.This will effectively connect nearly all electrical grids in North America.
- Three Gorges Dam, the largest hydro-electric facility in the world.
- Virgil C. Summer Nuclear Generating Station, was a project to construct some of the first new nuclear units in the United States in over 30 years, at an existing nuclear power plant in Jenkinsville, South Carolina. The project was cancelled and all work stopped in July 2017.
- Vogtle Electric Generating Plant, is a project to construct two new nuclear units at an existing nuclear power plant in Waynesboro, Georgia.
| Name | Capacity | Location | Year Completed |
| Bhadla Solar Park | 2,245 | Rajasthan, India | 2020 |
| Pavagada Solar Park | 2,245 | Karnataka, India | 2019 |
| Tengger Desert Solar Park | 1,547 | Ningxia, China | 2016 |
| Benban Solar Park | 1,500 | Egypt | 2019 |
| Noor Abu Dhabi | 1,177 | United Arab Emirates | 2019 |
| Name | Capacity | Location | Notes |
| Quaid-e-Azam Solar Park | 1000 | Bahawalpur, Pakistan | Phase-1 of 100 MW Operational since 2015. other under construction. |
| Ivanpah Solar Power Facility | 392 | Mojave Desert, California, USA | Operational since February 2014. Located southwest of Las Vegas. |
| Solar Energy Generating Systems | 354 | Mojave Desert, California, USA | Commissioned between 1984 and 1991. Collection of 9 units. |
| Mojave Solar Project | 280 | Barstow, California, USA | Completed December 2014 |
| Solana Generating Station | 280 | Gila Bend, Arizona, USA | Completed October 2013 Includes a 6h thermal energy storage |
| Genesis Solar Energy Project | 250 | Blythe, California, USA | Completed April 2014 |
Science projects
- Atacama Large Millimeter Array
- Copernicus programme, €8.4 Billion European satellite project for global, total and permanent Earth observations.
- COVID-19 vaccine
- Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment Long Baseline Neutrino Facility
- Envisat, an Earth observation satellite of European Space Agency
- European Spallation Source, strongest ever spallation source for advanced and new material research development.
- European X-ray free electron laser, used for material research.
- Extreme Light Infrastructure, European centers for the most intense lasers
- Extremely Large Telescope, world's largest optical to mid infrared telescope
- Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research, in Germany
- Five hundred meter Aperture Spherical Telescope, the world's largest static/semi-static radio telescope measuring 500 meters across located in Guizhou Province, People's Republic of China.
- Giant Magellan Telescope, a large ground-based optical and near infrared telescope
- Human Genome Project, investigation to determine human genetic sequence – cost $14.5bn, but generated an output of $965bn, personal income exceeding $293bn and more than 4.3 million job-years of employment.
- India-based Neutrino Observatory
- ITER, International nuclear fusion project, in France at a cost of $20,000,000,000.
- Large Hadron Collider, a 13 TeV CERN particle accelerator, in Switzerland and France
- Advanced LIGO, a large-scale physics experiment and observatory to measure gravitational waves, with total cost more than US$1 billion.
- Manhattan Project, in the United States – 30bn in 2012 dollars
- Materials Genome Initiative, an advanced manufacturing partnership
- MYRRHA, prototype of an accelerator-driven system to transmute nuclear waste.
- National Ignition Facility, United States nuclear fusion project
- Ocean Networks Canada cabled Observatories. Largest underwater observatories, providing 24/7 access to hundreds of instruments in the Pacific Ocean and the Salish Sea
- Square Kilometre Array in South Africa
- Superconducting Super Collider, canceled 40 TeV particle accelerator in Texas
- Tevatron 1 TeV particle accelerator, in the United States
- Thirty Meter Telescope, a large optical and near infrared telescope
- Very Large Array, a radio astronomy observatory in the US
- Wendelstein 7-X, an experimental stellarator in Greifswald, Germany.
Spacecraft
- Advanced Telescope for High Energy Astrophysics, a planned X-ray telescope being developed by ESA which will launch in 2028.
- Cassini–Huygens, a joint NASA/ESA/ASI spacecraft mission studying the planet Saturn and its many natural satellites since 2004. The total cost of this project is about $3.26 billion.
- Chandrayaan program, a lunar exploration program of ISRO of India.
- Chang'e 1 to Chang'e 6, a series of lunar exploration spacecrafts sent by People's Republic of China for their lunar exploration program, equipped with landers, orbiters and rover. It will for the first time in history explore the 'dark-side' of the Moon.
- Compass navigation system, an independent system of satellite navigation by People's Republic of China
- Europa Clipper, an interplanetary mission in development by NASA to study Jupiter's moon Europa.
- Gaia spacecraft, an ESA mission to create a 3D map of local Milky Way.
- Galileo Navigation Satellite System, a European Union and European Space Agency global satellite navigation system, €5 billion
- Galileo spacecraft, a mission to Jupiter
- Global Positioning System, a global satellite navigation system created by the United States Department of Defense, $21.7 billion or more
- GLONASS, the Russian global navigation satellite system
- Herschel Space Observatory, ESA space observatory sensitive to the far infrared and submillimetre bands
- Hubble Space Telescope, an optical telescope orbiting in low Earth orbit, $10 billion
- International Space Station, multinational space station in low Earth orbit, 150bn in 2010 dollars
- James Webb Space Telescope
- Juno spacecraft, a NASA New Frontiers mission to the planet Jupiter
- Jupiter Icy Moon Explorer, a planned mission to Jupiter
- Laser Interferometer Space Antenna, an L3 class mission by ESA designed to detect and accurately measure gravitational waves.
- Lunokhod, was a series of Soviet robotic lunar rovers designed to land on the Moon between 1969 and 1977. Lunokhod 1 was the first roving remote-controlled robot to land on another world.
- Mangalyaan, a Mars mission from ISRO of India. It is the first nation to reach Mars orbit on its first attempt, and the first Asian nation to do so.
- Mars program was a series of unmanned spacecraft launched by the Soviet Union between 1960 and 1973. The spacecraft were intended to explore Mars, and included flyby probes, landers and orbiters.
- Mars Science Laboratory, $2.5 billion
- Mars 2020, a Mars rover mission by NASA's Mars Exploration Program, launched 30 July 2020.
- Mir, Russian space station in low Earth orbit.
- Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, a planned wide field infrared space telescope by NASA.
- NAVIC, the Indian equivalent of GPS developed by ISRO.
- Orion spacecraft, a planned spacecraft that is being built by Lockheed Martin for NASA.
- Planck spacecraft, an ESA's mission to measure the cosmic microwave background.
- Venera series space probes were developed by the Soviet Union between 1961 and 1984 to gather data from Venus. Venera 7 became the first spacecraft to land on Venus and first to transmit data from there back to Earth.
- Sutherland Spaceport, a planned space port in the north of Scotland
Other spaceflight projects
- Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, a $2 billion particle physics experiment module that is mounted on the International Space Station since 2011
- Apollo program, as a centerpiece of the US Space Program, culminated in manned exploratory missions to the Moon, $203.4 billion in 2015 dollars
- Ariane, a family of European launch vehicles; the most recent development is Ariane 6
- Avatar RLV, Indian version of the Space Shuttle, being developed by the DRDO and ISRO.
- Baikonur Cosmodrome is the world's first and largest operational space launch facility. It was originally built by the Soviet Union in the late 1950s as the base of operations for the Soviet space program.
- Buran program, canceled Soviet version of the Space Shuttle
- Constellation program, canceled planned moon landing spacecraft and space shuttle replacement, part lives on as future Crew Escape Vehicle for ISS
- SpaceX Mars transportation infrastructure, a privately funded spaceflight system capable of enabling human settlements on Mars
- Kennedy Space Center, the main spaceport for US manned space flight, located in Cape Canaveral, Florida.
- Shenzhou program, Chinese human spaceflight program
- Soyuz program, Soviet/Russian human spaceflight program
- Soviet Moonshot, canceled Moon landing program
- Space Launch System, an American Space Shuttle-derived heavy expendable launch vehicle
- Space Shuttle program, low Earth orbiters designed as manned cargo vessels that could be reused after each spaceflight and landed like a glider, $203.6 billion in 2015 dollars
- Vostochny Cosmodrome is a Russian spaceport on the 51st parallel north in the Amur Oblast, in the Russian Far East.
- Vostok program, Soviet program to put the first man in space
Sports and culture projects
Olympic Games
- See Cost of the Olympic Games—Note: Some values here are not shown on the other list due to research, which needs verification. The costs listed here were converted to US Dollars at the time of the games.
Major League Baseball (MLB)
National Football League (NFL)
National Hockey League (NHL)
Roads and transport infrastructure
Ground transportation systems like roads, tunnels, bridges, terminals, railways, and mass transit systems are often megaprojects. Numerous large airports and terminals used for airborne passenger and cargo transportation are built as megaprojects.[Africa]
[West Africa]
[Nigeria]
[Asia]
[East Asia]
[People's Republic of China]
[Japan]
[South Korea]
[South Asia]
[India]
[Pakistan]
[Southeast Asia]
[Indonesia]
[Malaysia]
[Philippines]
[Thailand]
[Vietnam]
[Southwest Asia] ([Middle East])
[Bahrain]
[Iran]
[Israel]
[Kuwait]
[Qatar]
[Saudi Arabia]
[United Arab Emirates]
[Central America] ([Latin America])
[Costa Rica]
| Project | City | Status | Cost | Notes |
| Orotina Mega Airport | ||||
| Green Costa Rican Canal | ||||
| Electric Train of The Great Metropolitan Area |
[Panama]
[Europe]
Serbia-North Macedonia-Greece
Serbia-Hungary
[Serbia]
| Project | City/Country | Status | Cost | Notes |
| Belgrade Waterfront | Serbia | $3,500,000,000 | Belgrade Waterfront is an urban renewal development project headed by the Government of Serbia aimed at improving Belgrade's cityscape and economy by revitalizing the Sava amphitheater, a neglected stretch of land on the right bank of the Sava river, between the Belgrade Fair and Branko's bridge. It was started in 2014 with the reconstruction of the Belgrade Cooperative building, which was finished in June of the same year. It is the second largest mixed use complex under construction in Europe, just after Minsk Mir worth 3.5 billion dollars. 6.000 apartments, seven hotels including W Hotel and St Regis, 2000 offices, the largest shopping mall in South East Europe and public buildings are planned for the area.Its building new skyscrapers,apartments,Buildings,Jobs,... |
[European Union] (As a whole)
[Czech Republic]
[Germany]
[Greece]
[Hungary]
[Montenegro]
[Norway]
[Poland]
[Portugal]
[Serbia]
[Switzerland]
[United Kingdom]
[North America]
[Canada]
[Mexico] ([Latin America])
[United States]
[Oceania]
[Australia]
Planned cities and urban renewal projects
Infrastructure systems that include electricity, sewer, telecommunications, and transportation. Building cities that include Skyscrapers, housing, etc. requires concrete, steel, glass, and most especially that workers in all the trades to undertaker the massive scale of these megaprojects.[Africa]
[Eastern Africa]
[Kenya]
[Northern Africa]
[Egypt]
[Southern Africa]
[South Africa]
[Western Africa]
[Nigeria]
[Asia]
[East Asia]
[China]
| Project | City/Country | Status | Cost | Notes |
| Todtown | Shanghai | $1,500,000,000 | A mixed-use development. Started construction in 2014 and is set for completion in 2022. |