Features | Politics | Central Asia

From Nomad Festival to National Showcase: Kyrgyzstan Takes Center Stage

In early September, Kyrgyzstan hosted both the World Nomad Games and the SCO summit in a carefully choreographed spectacle of national power and pride. 

The ethno-village of yurts in Kyrchyn gorge during the games. Sept. 3, 2026

In early September, the World Nomad Games returned to Kyrgyzstan for the first time in eight years. That same week, a Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit was hosted in Bishkek. The capital went quiet.

Main roads were sealed off for motorcades. Shopping centers along the official routes closed. Residents were told, early and in public: if you can get out of town, get out. By September 1, traffic maps showed more than eighty restrictions. The streets were almost empty.

A few hours east, Kyrchyn gorge came alive. Yurts covered the meadow. Clay forts — built to recall the ancient Silk Road era — rose over the grass. Organizers said 150,000 people came through on day one. Visitors argued over bus seats. Private cars were turned away. 

Bishkek was told to clear out and shut down. The summer pasture was told to put on a show.

Bishkek Arena, the 51,000-seat stadium built for the World Nomad Games opening. Aug. 31, 2026. Photo by Aigerim Turgunbaeva.

The Making of the Picture

Eight years ago, when the games were last held beside Issyk-kul, the barricades and the spectacle were centered there. This time the games opened in the new Bishkek Arena, a 51,000-seat stadium, on the same weekend as the SCO summit. In the stands: Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chinese leader Xi Jinping, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and Türkiye’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

At the opening, Kyrgyz President Sadyr Japarov said: “Our foundation is independence, and our roots are in nomadic civilization. Our course is international friendship and partnership, and our future lies in building a developed, strong new Kyrgyzstan.”

He also announced that Kazan, in Russia’s Tatarstan, would host the next games in 2028. Moscow had sent a formal request, he said, and he thanked Putin.

Security around the opening ceremony was tight. Snipers stood on the arena roof. A three-kilometer radius was closed for the day. Japarov walked onstage as more than the host of a festival; he was a leader confident in the power he’s consolidated around himself. 

In February 2026, Japarov dismissed his longtime ally, then-head of the State Committee for National Security Kamchybek Tashiev, breaking a tandem that had ruled Kyrgyzstan since 2020. In January 2027, he’ll run for president again. 

Residents wait at a Bishkek crossing they were not allowed to use. Aug. 31, 2026. Photo by Aigerim Turgunbaeva.

The games were still about horses, yurts, and Kok Boru. The narrative frame around them is not. This was no longer a carnival by the lake, it was a state showcase.

Closer to the SCO summit, the main roads from the airport and through the center of the capital were shut down. Public transport was rerouted. Big malls and markets closed. On September 1, Bishkek really did empty out. Traffic cameras showed almost nothing moving.

A Bishkek street closed for the SCO summit, blocked with trucks. Sept. 1, 2026. Photo by Aigerim Turgunbaeva.

Anyone still on the main streets when the motorcades passed by was taken out of the shot. Pedestrians were told to duck onto side streets. If they were already in the roadway, they were sent down into the underpasses. Tourists who had come for the games stood underground alongside locals and tried to work out what was happening.

“I don’t understand why they treat their own people like this,” a tourist from Germany said. “Why are they hiding them?” She sounded more confused than angry.

Who Gets to Be in the Frame

Kyrchyn was very far from the silenced capital. Yurts covered the meadow. Fortress walls and towers rose above them — not two props at the gate, but the whole outline of a town. Each of Kyrgyzstan’s seven regions, alongside Bishkek and Osh, had its own camp: its yurts, its food, its dancers. It rained. People danced anyway.

Getting to the gorge was a daunting challenge, one many took on. You could not drive in. There were not enough free buses. People waited more than an hour and argued over seats. Those who made it arrived at a crowded, wet, very loud festival. Foreign visitors filmed what they had come to film, and they looked just as happy as the locals. A Brazilian creator with some 300,000 followers said her Issyk-kul videos were “blowing up” at home. An Australian couple looked at the yurts in the mountain meadow and said, “This is exactly how we pictured it.” Social media — and not only in Kyrgyzstan — was filled with dancing in the rain and the opening-night spectacle. The opening ceremony’s dance caught on far beyond Kyrgyzstan. Users in neighboring countries filmed themselves repeating the choreography.

Since 2016, the World Nomad Games sporting program has almost doubled, from 23 sports to 43. Women have entered several of them. In Kyrgyz-style horseback archery this year, 45 women from 32 countries competed. On paper, that looks like a tradition opening up. On the ground, the archery field became one of the most crowded spots for journalists. Women in national dress, galloping, trying to hit a mark against not-so-distant snowy peaks, photographed beautifully. 

It was less beautiful up close. Kyrgyzstan’s women’s team was put together in two weeks. One coach ran both the men’s and women’s squads, but the focus stayed on the men. Equestrian sport is still treated as male territory in Kyrgyzstan. A woman, in the old traditions, is decoration — as are the girls in kyz kuumai, the bride-chase game.

Aidana Usenbekova after her last horseback archery run. Kyrchyn gorge, Sept. 3, 2026. Photo by Aigerim Turgunbaeva.

“We ride no worse. We shoot no worse. Sometimes better,” said Aidana Usenbekova, 28, one of three Kyrgyz women on the horseback archery team. “All the horse sports are still seen as men’s sports. For the few girls who even get seen and make the national team, it’s twice as hard. We’re still fighting the stereotypes here. We didn’t even have........

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