Lehi is about to get its first temple. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has set Dec. 5 as the groundbreaking date for the Lehi Utah Temple, an 85,000-square-foot building planned for the city's foothills, with Elder John A. McCune presiding over the ceremony.
The date was confirmed in a church announcement reported by Church News, which noted that McCune, who serves as first counselor in the Utah Area Presidency, will preside at the ceremony. The groundbreaking comes roughly two and a half years after Russell M. Nelson announced the temple in April 2024, according to KSL, whose reporting on the project was authored by Emily Ashcraft.
Once complete, the multistory temple will be built alongside a new meetinghouse. Per Church News, the project will be approximately 85,000 square feet and sit on a roughly 22.5-acre site, though the Church's newsroom has described the property as 22.48 acres northwest of the intersection of 3950 North and Center Street — a discrepancy the sources have not reconciled. The Church's newsroom confirms this will be the city's first temple.
Work Already Underway Ahead of the Ceremony
Groundbreaking ceremonies typically mark a formal, ceremonial start, but site work for the Lehi project is already in motion. Preliminary infrastructure work began in August 2025, according to Deseret News, more than a year before the formal groundbreaking takes place.
The Dec. 5 event in Lehi won't be an isolated occasion. The same day, the church is also holding groundbreaking ceremonies for temples in Calabar, Nigeria, and Viña del Mar, Chile, according to the Church News report — tying Lehi's milestone to a broader wave of global temple construction happening simultaneously on different continents.
Part of a Larger Build-Out Across Utah
The Lehi project adds to a long list of temple activity already underway across the state. Utah currently has temples under construction in Ephraim, Heber Valley, Lindon, Smithfield and Syracuse, according to the Church of Jesus Christ Newsroom. The Heber Valley Temple has been under construction since its own groundbreaking in October 2022, while temples planned for West Jordan, Price and Spanish Fork remain in the planning and design phase, per Church News.
Two existing Utah temples are also mid-renovation. The Provo Utah Rock Canyon Temple and the Salt Lake Temple are both currently undergoing renovation work, the Church newsroom notes. The Salt Lake Temple has been closed since December 2019 and is planned to hold a public open house from April through October 2027, according to Church News's earlier reporting on the state's temple count.
Counting Utah's Temples Is Complicated
Exactly how many temples Utah has depends on who's counting and when. Church News reported this week that the state currently has 32 temples operating, under construction, announced or undergoing renovation, while an earlier Church News tally from April put the figure at 31 total temples — 21 in operation, two under renovation or reconstruction, five under construction and three announced and in planning. The Church's own newsroom, in a separate release, cited a figure of 30 houses of the Lord in operation, under construction or announced. Worldwide, the church has 367 temples operating, under construction, under renovation or in planning, with 202 already dedicated, per Church News.
Not far from Lehi, the Smithfield Utah Temple offers a glimpse of what the city might expect down the road. That temple broke ground in June 2022 with Elder Quentin L. Cook presiding, and it's now scheduled for a public open house from Feb. 25 through March 27, 2027, ahead of its dedication on April 18, 2027, also by Cook, according to Church News's almanac entry. The Smithfield building is planned as a three-story structure of approximately 81,000 square feet — a close cousin in scale to what's now planned for Lehi.
