High-rise buildings consume more energy and have greater environmental impacts, emphasising the need to adopt best practices during the design stage concerning BIM employment. However, despite strong support from the literature, little is known about the applications of BIM in high-rise buildings at the early design stage. Therefore, this paper aims to provide a holistic understanding of the current applications of BIM in high-rise buildings by analysing 60 studies. The findings identified seven research themes, including studies that used BIM for i) optimising building energy efficiency design; ii) collaborative design and planning; iii) life-cycle assessment; iv) designing net-zero energy buildings; v) integrating BIM with smart technologies for designing high-rise buildings; vi) cost analysis, and vii) structural design of high-rise buildings. Furthermore, this study highlights a number of challenges hindering the widespread application of BIM, alongside providing potential directions for the future development of BIM employment in high-rise buildings.