Dubai’s New Year’s Eve fireworks will light up a different skyline this year.

For the first time ever the UAE brings in a new year as the home of the world’s tallest building.

Watching the growth spurts at the Burj Dubai has been great fun this year.

Dubai’s skyline has changed completely and the nearby Dusit and Shangri La hotels look tiny by comparison.

The latest count puts the Burj Dubai at 585.7m.

To put that into perspective it is the same size as more than 338 Elton John’s stacked on top of each other.

And we thought that his upcoming concert was going to be huge!

At the start of this year the Burj Dubai was less than 100 floors and the builders have managed to stack up to 156 by Christmas Day.

That is a rate of a more than new level every week.

We don’t know how tall it will be, but by this time next year the developers should be putting the final touches to the building.

While Dubai’s Burj Dubai is already the tallest building in the world, a new development could be bigger.

Lord Norman Foster has announced his firm are working on a development in Moscow which will, if completed, offer more floor space than any other building in the world. The Crystal Island development is not as tall as the Burj Dubai (early reports suggest it will be around 450m) but, as this early artistic impression shows it will be a lot wider.

It looks like the sort of tower that would not look out of place in Dubai. Keep checking the Time Out Blog for regular updates on Dubai’s most exciting new hotels.