Nusantara, Future Capital of Indonesia

Nusantara is a new city being built on the Indonesian side of Borneo island, and it is slated to replace Jakarta as Indonesia's capital. The true-color reflectance image above was acquired by from the MultiSpectral Instrument (MSI) aboard the Sentinel-2B platform, and provided through the Harmonized Landsat-Sentinel 2 project. It shows the extent of land clearing and construction as of August 29, 2026. Construction is happening in several phases that are expected to be completed by 2045.

Swipe the center bar left and right to view the difference between May 19, 2022—when the project was just getting underway—and August 29, 2026.

To further highlight the changes since the beginning of construction, these images from the annual OPERA vegetation disturbance status layer show how the landscape was altered between 2023 and 2025. Press the play button in the lower left corner to watch an annual animation of areas that have been disturbed, shown in red and white. In 2023, it is evident that many of the roads were cleared, with subsequent years showing other changes around the road network. 

The OPERA vegetation disturbance status tracks changes in land cover from one Landsat or Sentinel 2 scene to the next or across a specific time period. The DIST-ANN product shown tracks changes at the annual scale, aggregating changes identified in the DIST-ALERT product. Only confirmed disturbances from the associated year are reported, together with the date of initial disturbance.

Learn more about Nusantara in Earth Observatory's article, Nusantara: A New Capital City in the Forest.

Visit Worldview to visualize near real-time imagery and historical imagery from NASA's Earth Science Data and Information System (ESDIS); find more imagery in the Worldview weekly image archive.