On many levels, the sixth World Nomad Games were a success. Large crowds filled venues in Bishkek and around Issyk-Kul, with organizers saying more than 200,000 people had visited Kyrchyn Gorge by September 3. The opening ceremony alone drew swathes of spectators, and the Games brought traditional sports before an international audience on a scale far beyond their first edition in 2014.
However, when the skies opened in the Kyrchyn Gorge, the crowds, journalists and athletes alike found themselves stranded. Long queues waited impatiently for buses that had stopped coming. The mountain setting that made this part of the festival so memorable left visitors dependent on transport that could not reliably get them home.
The scene captured a problem that followed the Games from their opening in Bishkek to the final competitions at Issyk-Kul. Kyrgyzstan had created an event that people wanted to attend in large numbers, but arrangements for those crowds repeatedly fell short.
The sixth Games, held from August 31 to September 6, brought an international sporting festival back to its birthplace. More than 3,000 athletes from 104 countries attended, compared with 583 competitors from 19 countries at the first edition in 2014. That expansion gave the homecoming much of its energy. It also increased the demands on venues and the transport connecting them.
At the new Bishkek Arena, around 29,000 people attended the opening ceremony. The stadium was still under construction, with its formal opening scheduled for October. Inside, eventgoers sang along with local performers, and even some security guards joined in. The enthusiasm was unmistakable.
The arena presented practical problems, however, with spectators having to duck under girders and concrete struts in the concourse to reach their seats. Concession stands quickly ran out of bottled water as the numbers built. A sign reading “All food is gone” offered a blunt assessment of the catering arrangements. Tension grew around the shortages. For those spending hours inside the venue, access to drinking water was a basic requirement that the opening night failed to deliver. The Ministry of Health later said 55 participants and spectators sought medical assistance during the opening, including two injury cases. No serious injuries were recorded, and nobody required hospitalization.
There was also a roughly 90-minute pause during the event while dignitaries arrived for the formal ceremony. The show finally resumed on a grand scale, but the wait extended an already long evening in a venue struggling to supply its audience. By the time headliner Nicole Scherzinger took to the stage, the arena was half-empty, with people walking for hours past roadblocks as police whistled furiously at their attempts to get home.
Transport problems became more prominent once the Games moved to Issyk-Kul. Footage seen by TCA showed people fighting to board shuttle buses. Travel between venues frequently became an ordeal, with visitors unsure whether they would be able to get onto any vehicles.
The organizers responded to the early queues. On September 2, the Games’ media headquarters said 40 additional buses had been sent to Cholpon Ata and another 10 to Kyrchyn. The reinforcement acknowledged the pressure on the service, but the queues persisted.
Kyrchyn presented particular difficulties. The ethno-town occupied a summer pasture in a gorge roughly an hour from Cholpon Ata by shuttle. TCA’s report from the site described passengers packed tightly into marshrutkas on a chaotic journey. Once there, attendees negotiated muddy slopes, and women used the less crowded men’s toilets at some facilities.
As minibuses arrived, people ran toward them to secure places. Eyewitnesses described children crying and fights breaking out in the crush, while some said they waited two hours to leave.
Yet the attraction of the location was easy to understand. Traditional yurts spread across the pasture beneath forested mountain slopes. Visitors could watch craftspeople at work and encounter sports rarely seen outside the region. Australian visitors Karen and Howard Bowland told TCA, “This is what we imagined it would look like.”
Preserving that setting means accounting for its limitations. A remote festival site needs enough return transport when a change in weather sends spectators toward the exits early. The rain at Kyrchyn exposed how quickly an enjoyable day could become a struggle.
Crowd management came under pressure again at the kok boru final in Cholpon Ata, when several men tried to force their way through the a police cordon and were detained, while some people holding tickets could not get in. The incident did not interrupt the match, which Kyrgyzstan won 12–0 against Kazakhstan. The result gave the home crowd a sporting triumph, but raised questions about how admission had been managed.
These failures occurred at an event that many visitors still enjoyed. An American traveler named Mike described “growing pains in event management” to TCA, while saying his overall experience had been very good. His assessment helps explain why enthusiasm for the Games survived the frustration.
Growing pains are nevertheless a reason to improve planning. A crowd surging at a police line creates a safety concern. At Kyrchyn, the immediate need was simpler still: buses continuing to collect people who were waiting in the rain.
Of course, logistical failures are not limited to Kyrgyzstan. Two days after the Games ended, a technical failure in the UK’s air traffic control system disrupted more than 1,000 flights, leaving passengers including TCA staff stranded at some of Europe’s busiest airports. The comparison does not excuse shortcomings at the World Nomad Games, but it puts them in perspective. Large events and transport systems can fail under pressure even in countries with far greater resources.
The Games have built an audience well beyond their original scale. Their future appeal will also depend on the experience of the people who come to watch. Those spectators have already demonstrated their willingness to make the journey. They need to be able to get home afterward.
