A caisson permit has been issued for the first phase of O'Hare International Airport's New Concourse E, with groundbreaking scheduled for later in 2026. The project will eventually add 24 gates to the airport. The first phase alone is set to deliver 14 new gates by 2030, giving United Airlines, American Airlines and other carriers room to breathe as the airport grinds through one of the most congested stretches in its history.
The permit was confirmed by Urbanize Chicago, which reported that Skidmore, Owings & Merrill designed the first phase of the new concourse. The building will rise just west of the new Concourse D, another gate expansion already under construction and expected to wrap up in late 2028, according to the Daily Herald.
Concourse E is designed for regional and narrow-bodied aircraft, handling both domestic flights and pre-cleared international arrivals, the Daily Herald reports. Once both phases are finished, the concourse will total roughly 460,000 square feet and will connect directly to Concourse D and the O'Hare Global Terminal through an underground passenger tunnel, with airline lounges, new dining and retail options woven throughout.
Why the Timeline Got Moved Up
The first phase of Concourse E wasn't always scheduled to come this early. The report notes that it was originally positioned behind the Global Terminal in the project sequence before being pulled forward, a shift Simple Flying attributes to the rapid expansion of United and American Airlines, which has piled pressure onto the airport's existing gates.
That pressure shows up in the numbers. The Chicago Department of Aviation reported 100 more daily departures at O'Hare this past summer compared to 2025, per the same Daily Herald account. Airlines had asked the FAA for more than 3,080 daily operations on peak days, but the agency capped the airport at 2,708 because of congestion, gate constraints and ongoing construction, Simple Flying reports. According to Simple Flying, those restrictions were extended through October 30, 2027, while the Daily Herald separately describes the FAA order as flight caps running through fall 2027.
A Bigger Build, Piece by Piece
The second phase of Concourse E will tack on 10 more gates, bringing the finished structure to 24 gates total by 2034, the Daily Herald reports. City officials describe the phased approach as a way to align spending with the airport's actual capacity needs while preserving the approved budget for the broader ORDNext modernization program, an $8.8 billion effort that also includes Concourse D, the Global Terminal, and the tunnels linking them all together.
Construction on the O'Hare Global Terminal itself is scheduled to begin in 2029 and finish in 2033, according to the Daily Herald's reporting. City officials say the Concourse E buildout is meant to create the gate capacity needed to help accelerate that larger terminal project once it breaks ground.
Tunneling Without Shutting Down the Airport
Connecting all these new structures requires an underground passenger tunnel system, a piece of infrastructure that engineering firm HNTB says is being built in careful phases specifically so that airport operations can continue uninterrupted throughout construction. That matters at a facility already operating under federal flight restrictions and dealing with a surge in scheduled departures.
For context on scale, Simple Flying notes that today's Terminal 2 already contains its own 16-gate Concourse E, which will ultimately be phased out as part of the broader redevelopment. The Urbanize Chicago report on Concourse D adds that the broader ORDNext program is expected to deliver 14 percent more overall gate capacity, along with greater scheduling flexibility for O'Hare's hub carriers and more lounges and amenities for travelers passing through.
