Rendering of the planned White House ballroom, from the interior looking southwest.Donald Trump has been dreaming of build a White House ballroom since before he entered politics, and in July 2025 he announced he would make it happen by the end of his second term.Details on this 90,000-square-foot addition were hazy, but the president assured everyone that it wouldn’t “interfere with the current building.” Two months later, the East Wing was pile of rubble .
Now the National Trust for Historic Preservation is suing to stop the project, arguing that it must go through public review, and Trump can’t use private funding without congressional approval.Trump raised hundreds of millions of dollars for the project from companies and individuals that have business with the federal government, creating major ethical concerns.While Trump said he would pay for the ballroom, it’s unclear how much he’s contributed.
In February 2026, a federal judge allowed construction to continue as the suit proceeds.
Here’s a guide, which we’ll keep updated, to everything we know about the new White House ballroom , including artist renderings, cost estimates, and the construction timeline.
When did Trump announce he was building a ballroom? Trump has been talking about a White House ballroom for decades.It became clear that this was more than just weird Trumpian musing in June 2025, when he revealed on Truth Social that he’d selected a site for the project:
On July 31, 2025, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt announced that construction of a 90,000-square-foot ballroom would begin “soon”:
When did demolition start? Work began in mid-September 2025 with some tree removal.The White House said this landscape “preservation stage” might take weeks, and the Washington Post lamented , “Officials have not specified how many trees on the mansion’s grounds will be removed to make way for the new ballroom.”
It turns out reporters were missing the forest — or in this case the total destruction of a third of the White House — for the trees.
The public learned the “preservation stage” had concluded when photos emerged of a backhoe ripping through the façade of the East Wing on October 20, 2025.
Another shot of the East Wing demolition on October 21, 2025.By October 23, the East Wing was just a pile of rubble:
Did Trump really say he wouldn’t demolish the East Wing? From July to October 2025, Trump and other White House officials made contradictory claims about the fate of the East Wing.
The first White House press release on the ballroom said it would be located “where the small, heavily changed, and reconstructed East Wing currently sits.” In retrospect, that meant the entire East Wing was coming down.
But no one realized that at the time — partly because Trump claimed just a few hours later that his ballroom “won’t interfere with the current building … It’ll be near it but not touching it — and pays total respect to the existing building, which I’m the biggest fan of.”
Don’t worry “it won’t interfere with the current building”.
Another Trump LIE! pic.twitter.com/XmiLhC679o
— Ken S 🇨🇦 (@kstaubin) October 22, 2025 The fate of the East Wing remained shrouded in mystery even as construction vehicles were tearing into the building.The Treasury Department told employees, whose offices are next to the East Wing, not to share photos of the demolition.And it took days for a White House official to euphemistically confirm to ABC News that the “entirety of the East Wing will be modernized.”
National Park Service records released in December 2025 revealed that while the public was misled about the scope of the project, Trump knew the East Wing was coming down for at least two months before demolition began.
Per the Washington Post :
But the planned demise of the East Wing was known to a tight inner circle of White House officials involved with the ballroom project.In an Aug.28 report, Park Service officials noted that the ballroom building would require the “existing East Wing and East Colonnade … be deconstructed.”
How did Trump defend the East Wing demolition? As photos of the shocking destruction went viral, Trump told everyone to chill out because the East Wing was small and ugly anyway.
Trump on the demolition of the White House’s East Wing: “It was never thought of as being much.It was a very small building, and rather than allowing that to hurt, a very expensive, beautiful building that frankly they’ve been after for years…In order to do it properly, we had… pic.twitter.com/HXvNKXgXy7
— The Bulwark (@BulwarkOnline) October 22, 2025 In an interview with Fox News’s Laura Ingraham on November 10, Trump acknowledged that he didn’t really have to tear down the entire East Wing, he just felt it was standing in the way of his vision for ballroom greatness.
“I could’ve built the ballroom around it, but it would not have been — we’re building one of the greatest ballrooms in the world,” Trump said .
Is the ballroom project illegal? Maybe! Federal preservation law says the National Capital Planning Commission must vet even relatively minor construction and renovation projects at the White House, as the Washington Post reported in August 2025:
Three former planning commission members told The Washington Post that a review of any exterior construction project at the White House is required by federal law.
“If we had jurisdictional review over a fence, we would logically have jurisdiction over an entire wing being added to the White House,” said L.
Preston Bryant Jr., who chaired the commission for nearly a decade before stepping down in 2019.
This process often takes years.So why was the East Wing façade torn down just months after Trump announced the ballroom project? Well, conveniently for Trump, commission chair Will Scharf — one of his top aides, whom he appointed to lead the commission just before announcing the ballroom project — doesnt think the board has jurisdiction over demolition or site preparation work on federal property.
“What we deal with is essentially construction, vertical build,” Scharf said at the September 2025 meeting of the National Capital Planning Commission.
So is anyone going to stop this ballroom project? The National Trust for Historic Preservation, a nonprofit group chartered by Congress to preserve historical buildings, is trying.The group sued the Trump administration in December, asking the judge to pause ballroom construction until the project goes through legally require reviews and congressional authorization.
Justice Department lawyers have argued that the project can’t be paused, citing unexplained national security concerns.(The White House’s bombproof bunker , known formally as the Presidential Emergency Operations Center, was located under the East Wing.) Below-ground work has continued despite the suit.
On Truth Social, Trump said “IT IS TOO LATE!” to stop the project, and asked why the National Trust didn’t file the suit before he bulldozed the East Wing with no warning.
U.S.District Judge Richard Leon declined to halt construction in a February 26, 2026 ruling, citing procedural issues.Trump immediately celebrated on Truth Social, falsely claiming that the federal judge had “just thrown out, and completely erased, the effort to stop [ballroom] construction.”
But Judge Leon actually invited the National Trust to revise its claim to focus more on the president’s power to make sweeping changes to the White House with no outside input.He said he would “expeditiously” consider the revised complaint and “address the merits of the novel and weighty issues presented.” A spokeswoman for the National Trust said the group will amend its suit.
Judge Leon previously said he expects the case to be appealed no matter how he rules, possibly going to the U.S.
Supreme Court.
Who owns the White House? We do.The White House and the surrounding grounds officially became a national park in 1961 .“The White House is owned by the American people and stewarded by the National Park Service,” according to NPS.gov.
Who is the architect on the ballroom project? The project was initially helmed by McCrery Architects.But architect James McCrery II reportedly disagreed with President Trump on the ever-increasing size of the ballroom.By early December, McCrery had been replaced by architect Shalom Baranes, as the Washington Post reported :
Baranes’s firm has handled a number of large Washington projects dating back decades, including projects involving the main Treasury building near the White House, the Federal Reserve and the headquarters of the General Services Administration.
Baranes led a $1 billion renovation of the Pentagon immediately after the terrorist attacks of Sept.11, 2001, which he described as his “proudest moment” in a 2017 Washington Post op-ed .His architectural approach, which includes modernist buildings, is different from McCrery’s classical style.
Have plans for the ballroom been submitted for review? In late December 2026, months after the destruction of the East Wing, the Trump administration formally submitted application to two committees required to to review federal construction: the National Capital Planning Commission and the Commission of Fine Arts.Since returning to office, Trump has packed both committees with his allies.
(For example, there are no longer any landscape architects on the Fine Arts panel, but Trump just added his 26-year-old deputy director of Oval Office operations.)
The White House said it planned to complete the approval process by early March 2026, which is an unbelievably fast timeline for for a federal project of this size.The Commission of Fine Arts gave the project its final approval on February 19, 2026.The National Capital Planning Commission is expected to approve both the preliminary and final site and building plans for the ballroom at its March 5, 2026 meeting.
Are there renderings of the new ballroom? Sort of; shortly after Leavitt’s July 2025 announcement, the White House posted eleven artist renderings of what the new event space would look like from various angles.
But the finished product might look nothing like this, since the design has changed multiple times since these images were released.
Interior view looking south.
Interior view looking west.
Exterior view from southwest.
View from northeast.
Trump posted a different rendering to Truth Social on February 2, 2026:
While the plans are still in flux, Trump seems to have a clear picture in his mind.
Trump stops mid-sentence to admire his ballroom:
“Wow.What a beaut…Unusual time to look, but I figured we might as well” pic.twitter.com/uf9kcpzhHi
— FactPost (@factpostnews) January 9, 2026 How big will the ballroom be? The White House initially said it would seat 650 people, but Trump kep throwing out higher and higher numbers, claiming at one point in the fall of 2025 that it would seat about 1,000 people .(The East Room, currently the largest room in the White House, can only seat 200.)
Photos of the president showing off models of the project to his grandchildren, which were shared by Lara Trump, show that the new ballroom will dwaf the White House:
Just being a grandpa.
🥹🥰 pic.twitter.com/7csv5AshLv
— Lara Trump (@LaraLeaTrump) December 19, 2025 Last summer a National Parks Service official said the new building would be 55 feet tall.But in a January 2026 presentation to the National Capital Planning Commission, architect Shalom Baranes said it will be 60 feet high on its north side and 70 feet high on its south side.
That would make the ballroom as tall as the White House’s main mansion, which “breaks with long-standing architectural norms requiring additions to be shorter than the main building,” according to the Post .
Baranes’s presentation contained some other surprises:
Baranes told the panel that the White House had abandoned plans to make the ballroom larger.But he said officials are now considering a one-story addition to the West Wing’s colonnade to create symmetry with the planned two-story colonnade that would lead from the White House to the ballroom building.Other features presented Thursday include an office suite for the first lady, a commercial kitchen and a rebuilt White House movie theater.
What is Trump doing to the West Wing? He’s looking into building another story on top of the colonnade that connects the West Wing to the residence.Trump first shared this plan with the New York Times in January 2026, referring to it as the “Upper West Wing.”
A day later, architect Shalom Baranes mentioned the addition during his NCPC presentation, saying it may be needed “reinstate symmetry along the central pavilion of the White House.”
How much will the ballroom cost? Initially the White House said it would cost approximately $200 million, but that number keeps getting larger, too.In mid-October, Trump told reporters he’d raised “more than $350 million” for the project.In a January 2026 Truth Social post , the president put the cost at “300 to 400 Million Dollars (depending on the scope and quality of interior finishes!)”
Is Trump paying for the White House ballroom? While ranting about a White House ballroom over the years, Trump always made it sound like he’d pay for it on his own.
But Leavitt said in her initial annoucement, “President Trump and other patriot donors have generously committed to donating the funds necessary to build this approximately $200 million structure.”
The White House declined to give details on what Trump would pay versus how much would be covered by these “other patriot donors.”
So far the only Trump contribution we know of is the $24.5 million YouTube paid to settle a lawsuit he brought after the site suspended his account following the Capitol riot.Court documents said the money would go to the Trust for the National Mall and the ballroom project.
Who’s donated to the ballroom so far? Amid the furor over the leveling of the East Wing in late October, the White House released a list of 37 corporations and individuals that have donated to the project.However, it does not say how much each donor contributed.
On September 19, 2025, CBS News reported that multiple companies have already pledged to donate $5 million or more to the project:
Google, R.J.Reynolds, Booz Allen Hamilton, Lockheed Martin, Palantir and NextEra Energy have donated, and so have firms in the tech, manufacturing, banking and health industries, sources told CBS News.
Lockheed Martin is among the companies that have pledged more than $10 million, according to one of the sources.Company officials declined to confirm the amount, but Jalen Drummond, vice president of corporate affairs at Lockheed Martin said in a statement: “Lockheed Martin is grateful for the opportunity to help bring the President’s vision to reality and make this addition to the People’s House, a powerful symbol of the American ideals we work to defend every day.”
Trump hosted a dinner for ballroom donors at the White House on October 22, 2025.The Wall Street Journal reported that the guest list included more than three dozen organizations and individuals, some of whom have business with the federal government:
Companies that sent representatives to the East Room event included Lockheed Martin, Microsoft, Meta Platforms, Alphabet’s Google, Amazon.com and Palantir Technologies, according to the White House.The guest list also featured wealthy individuals and families, such as oil billionaire Harold Hamm, Blackstone Chief Executive Steve Schwarzman and Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss.
What do donors receive? They may get their name displayed on the building, but that hasn’t been decided yet.CBS News reported :
The pledge form, which was reviewed by CBS News, gives donors the option to pay in a lump sum or spread their contribution over three installments to be completed by 2027.
In return, donors are eligible for “recognition associated with the White House Ballroom.” What form that recognition takes is still being discussed, but several sources said the expectation is that names will be etched in the ballroom’s brick or stone.
They’ll also get a big tax write-off:
Meredith O’Rourke, a top political fundraiser for Mr.
Trump, is leading the effort, paired with the Trust for the National Mall, an organization that supports the National Park Service.The trust’s nonprofit status means donations come with a federal tax write-off.
Doesn’t this raise major ethical issues? Absolutely.Noah Bookbinder, the president of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, or CREW, told the New York Times that the donor-funding plan is “highly unusual.”
“There is certainly a risk that donors to this project, which Donald Trump has made clear is important to him, could see it as a way to curry favor with the administration,” he said.
Ethics watchdogs also noted after Trump hosted donors at the White House that such efforts put pressure on other companies to contribute.
“Every company that is invited to that dinner that either doesn’t show or doesn’t give knows now they will be out of favor with the Trump administration,” said Claire Finkelstein, a University of Pennsylvania law professor and faculty director of the Center for Ethics and the Rule of Law, told the Journal .
What happened to the East Wing offices? They were temporarily relocated, but the ultimate fate of these offices remains unknown.Anita McBride, former chief of staff to First Lady Laura Bush, raised concerns about how the loss of the East Wing would impact the daily functioning of the White House.
“Betty Ford always called the East Wing the ‘heart’ of the White House,” McBride told the Hill.
“All the business and policy gets done in the West Wing, that’s critically important.But the heart of the White House is the East Wing.And so what, what will be the new East Wing?”
What happened to the contents of the East Wing? For two months after the leveling of the East Wing, it was unclear what happened to the building’s contents.But National Park Service records from August 2025, which outlined the preservation process, were eventually made public during the legal battle over the ballroom.
The Washington Post reported :
They detailed how Park Service crews would document, remove and preserve fabrics, furniture, building materials and the Kennedy Garden arbor before demolition began.
The Park Service also said it would take high-resolution digital photographs of the East Wing and use scanning equipment to create a 3D model of the building.
The president has showed off a bust of former President Abraham Lincoln, which he said he salvaged from the East Wing.
In a video Kai Trump, the First Granddaughter, posted to YouTube in December, the president pointed to the bust in the West Wing colonnade and said, “This came out of the East Wing, the famous East Wing.This looks good, doesn’t it, here?”
What do the former First Ladies think about the ballroom? They don’t love it! Hillary Clinton decried the East Wing demolition on social media as it was happening.Former First Daughters, Chelsea Clinton, Patti Davis, and even the usually apolitical Jenna Bush Hager have all lamented the loss of the East Wing as well.
Michelle Obama spoke out against the ballroom repeatedly while on her fall book tour.
“It makes me confused,” she said on The Late Show .“I am confused by what are our norms? What are our standards? What are our traditions? I just feel like what is important to us as a nation anymore, because I’m lost.
There were a whole standard of norms and rules that we followed to a T that we painstakingly tried to uphold, because it was bigger than us … that East Wing … it’s not mine.It is ours.”
View this post on Instagram What is Melania Trump’s ballroom stance? She may not be a fan either.
The Wall Street Journal reported that she “privately raised concerns about tearing down the East Wing and told associates it wasn’t her project, according to administration officials.”
How long has Trump been planning this ballroom? For many years, Trump has publicly claimed that he offered to build a collapsible $100 million White House ballroom and the Obama administration did not take him up on it:
Trump says he offered to build a ballroom in The White House for 100 million but never heard back from The Biden Administration.He then says he will try to make the offer to himself that he suggests he’ll pay for: We’ll see if Trump will approve it pic.twitter.com/EUazuRDm6Y
— Acyn (@Acyn) February 5, 2025 Surprisingly, this is at least partially true.In his book Believer: My Forty Years in Politics , David Axelrod confirmed that while he was working in the Obama White House in 2010, Trump called to pitch him on a ballroom.
(Trump claims he offered to pay for it himself, but Axelrod did not address that detail.)
“‘I build ballrooms.Beautiful ballrooms,’” Trump said, according to Axelrod.“Not being much of a dancer, I didn’t know where he was headed.
‘I see you have these state dinners on the lawn there in these shitty little tents.Let me build you a ballroom you can assemble and take apart.
Trust me.It’ll look great.’”
Axelrod said he handed the pitch off to someone else, and they didn’t follow up.
When will the ballroom be finished? The press release says it’s “expected to be completed long before the end of President Trump’s term” in January 2029.Trump has claimed the project is “ahead of schedule” but we don’t really know what that means.
Will the ballroom be named after Trump? The president denied that the ballroom will be named after him while speaking with reporters in October 2025.
“I don’t have any plan to call it after myself,” Trump said .“That was fake news.
Probably going to call it the ‘presidential ballroom’ or something like that.We haven’t really thought about a name yet.”
However, potential donors received a pledge agreement that refers to “The Donald J.Trump Ballroom at the White House,” according to CBS News.Senior administration officials told ABC News that the name will probably stick.
And that seems even more likely after the attempted renaming of the “Trump-Kennedy Center.”
Is this project really necessary? President Trump and White House officials have repeatedly described the ballroom as a “much-needed” addition to the White House.
Since the East Room, the largest room in White House, can only seat 200 people, state dinners usually take place in a tent on the lawn.
Back in 2011, Trump lamented that the White House is using “an old, rotten tent that frankly they probably rented, pay a guy millions of dollars for it even though it’s worth about $2?” But as Eater noted , it’s actually a pretty swanky tent:
The tent for the 2009 India dinner, which Vanity Fair described as “a massive pavilion, complete with an orchestra platform, theatrical lighting, a professional sound system, full heating, satellite kitchens, and a dozen chandeliers bedecked with sustainably harvested magnolia branches and ivy,” took six days to construct and cost a reported $85,000.
And the symbolism of this new project is “monstrous,” as New York ’s Chris Bonanos pointed out : “That Trump will build a ballroom — the most on-the-nose embodiment of let-them-eat-cake Versailles extravagance — just as he throws old people off Medicare and kids off food stamps is as big a trolling as has ever been trolled.”
So why is Trump really building this ballroom? Is Trump doing this because he’s a magnanimous builder who wants to share his gift with the American people? Or is he just a narcissist looking to leave his mark on the White House by transforming it into Mar-a-Lago North? That’s a matter of interpretation.But it’s pretty clear that he really, really hates partying in a tent.
This post has been updated throughout..
