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Swimming

Tashkent to Host Uzbekistan’s First Swimming World Cup Event

Tashkent will host a World Aquatics Swimming World Cup event for the first time from October 8 to 10, as Uzbekistan prepares to join the international swimming circuit. The competition will be the second leg of the 2026 Swimming World Cup, which World Aquatics has branded the Silk Road Tour. The series begins in Baku on October 1 before moving to Tashkent and concluding in Astana from October 15 to 17. More than 750 swimmers representing over 50 national federations are expected to compete across the three events. The series has a total prize pool of $1.2 million, with additional bonuses available for world records and swimmers who win the same event at all three stops. The tour will also serve as preparation for the World Aquatics Swimming Championships (25m), which will be held in Beijing from December 1 to 6. Competition in Tashkent will take place at the Aquatic Palace in the capital’s new Olympic City. World Aquatics officials inspected the venue in January as preparations for the event continued. “Taking the Swimming World Cup to Uzbekistan for the first time ever is a very exciting milestone for World Aquatics,” World Aquatics President Husain Al Musallam said. Tashkent has previously hosted international competitions in other aquatic disciplines, including World Aquatics artistic swimming events in 2017 and 2018. The October competition will mark Uzbekistan’s first appearance as a host on the Swimming World Cup circuit.

AI Content Creation

Kazakhstani AI Creator Alissa Kamorskaya on the Rise of AI Animation

Kazakhstani model and AI content creator Alissa Kamorskaya runs Chudno, a school and agency specializing in AI-generated content. Kamorskaya began publishing AI cartoons in February 2026, and one of her videos has since received more than 30 million views on Instagram. The Times of Central Asia spoke with her about the rise of AI animation and the role of social media algorithms in driving views. TCA: You began creating AI cartoons before the format became widespread in Kazakhstan. Why do you think your most-viewed video attracted such a large audience? Alissa: I think several factors played a role. One was that when I made my most-viewed cartoons, almost no one in the post-Soviet space was using this format. I posted my first one on February 3 this year. I wanted to tell my followers how I met my husband, but I simply didn’t have any video footage to illustrate it, so I decided to turn it into a cartoon. The views quickly took off, my social media audience started growing, and I realized it was a very promising niche. AI cartoons have now become hugely popular. You can see animated videos recommended on social media getting as many as 100 million views. They have spread across social media so quickly that it feels as though AI cartoons have been around for a long time. In reality, broadly speaking, they have only been this widespread for about six months. TCA: Why does animation work so well with a mass audience? Alissa: I think it’s because animation is almost universal. Very often it doesn’t need words at all. A cartoon can be understood by someone of any age, from any country, speaking any language. Someone could be sitting somewhere in Cambodia, see the video, and still understand what is happening. So the potential audience for this kind of content is enormous. TCA: Do you see that in the geographic breakdown of your audience? Alissa: I analyzed the statistics for several videos and noticed that a lot of viewers come from Turkey and Iran. I think that is partly connected to how my characters look. They have dark hair and darker skin, so viewers in those countries may find them more familiar-looking. I often see comments in Turkish under the videos, and I can tell that people recognize themselves in these characters. Visual identification is very important here. It works much like it does in movies, or when we were children and picked a favorite character and said, “I’ll be this one.” We want to recognize ourselves in characters and identify with them. TCA: Before AI animation, you ran a conventional blog for about five years. Why did cartoons change things so dramatically? Alissa: I had been blogging for about five years, constantly filming myself, and my audience barely grew. For several years, my follower count stayed at around 3,000. Everything changed only when I switched from making what I personally liked to what interested a much wider range of people. I used...

Women's History

Opinion: A Century Apart, Two Official Visions of Uzbek Womanhood

A century ago, in 1926, the Russian-language Uzbek newspaper Pravda Vostoka published an appeal to the “working women of the Soviet East” written by Clara Zetkin – a Marxist and a women’s rights advocate from Germany. In its appeal for women’s unveiling, it asked where the mullahs had been while women suffered through the “dark past” and promised that Soviet law now shone “bright rays” over a liberated and free Soviet present. It closed not with a tribute to women, but with a slogan: “Forward to socialism! Always ready to fight for world revolution!” There was a significant problem with this text. Literacy among Uzbek women was extremely low, particularly in rural areas, and those who could read generally read Uzbek rather than Russian. Historian Marianne Kamp documents this gap in her book The New Woman in Uzbekistan. The article calling women to political consciousness was, therefore, not directly accessible to the overwhelming majority of its stated audience. That gap is not just a flaw in the propaganda or evidence of its exaggerated reach. Rather, it explains how the propaganda worked. A Russian newspaper speaking to Uzbek women who largely could not read it depended on party cadres, activists, public readings, meetings, and other literate intermediaries who could disseminate the message in Uzbek. It did not address an existing constituency so much as construct one – handing local organisers a model of the politically awakened Soviet woman they were expected to promote in villages where practically no woman could have read the article herself. [caption id="attachment_54189" align="aligncenter" width="1774"] Uzbek women in the old city of Tashkent before going out into the street on International Women’s Day, March 8, 1924. Photo: Public domain.[/caption] The “working women of the Soviet East” were therefore both an audience and an emerging political category. That category served a larger claim the Soviet state was making about Central Asia: that the region was “backward” and required revolutionary socialist transformation. In Soviet rhetoric, as in some earlier Russian imperial writing, the condition of women became one of the principal measures by which a society’s level of development was judged. A society’s position on the imagined path from feudalism to modernity could be read from whether its women were veiled or unveiled, secluded or employed, illiterate or educated. Transforming women’s appearance and public role offered the state an especially visible means of demonstrating that Central Asia was leaving its supposedly backward past behind. This does not mean that Soviet female emancipation was merely an empty disguise for imperial domination. Many contemporary works by historians such as Adrienne Edgar, Marianne Kamp, and Shoshana Keller showcase the genuine changes produced by Soviet literacy campaigns, education, employment, family law, and women’s political participation. Soviet gender policy did not simply reproduce the restrained paternalism of the tsarist administration. It attempted, and in many ways succeeded, at a much more radical transformation in the realm of gender politics. What it does complicate is who was doing the defining. It is tempting to read...

Birth Trends

Births Decline in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan as Central Asian Trends Diverge

Central Asia is commonly seen as a region with a young and rapidly growing population. The region’s population is still expanding, but birth trends are beginning to diverge. In the first half of 2026, births fell noticeably in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, while Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan recorded modest increases. Excluding Turkmenistan, about 711,300 children were born in the four other Central Asian countries during the six-month period, 5.5% fewer than a year earlier. Uzbek economist Mirkomil Kholboev highlighted the differences between the countries after comparing national statistics. “Births are declining in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, while they are increasing in Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan,” Kholboev noted. Uzbekistan recorded the largest decline, with the number of births falling 7.9% to 373,389. Of those, about 192,900 were boys and 180,500 were girls. The decline is not new. In 2025, about 879,600 children were born in Uzbekistan, 5.1% fewer than a year earlier. That has not prevented the country’s population from continuing to grow rapidly, reaching 38.2 million at the beginning of 2026. The Times of Central Asia previously examined why Uzbekistan’s population continues to expand even as the number of births declines. A similar picture is emerging in Kazakhstan. A total of 149,774 births were registered from January through June, down 7.1% from the same period last year. Kazakhstan’s population nevertheless continues to grow and reached 20.59 million by July 1. Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan are moving in the opposite direction for now. Kyrgyzstan recorded about 66,300 births in the first half of the year, up 2% from a year earlier. In Tajikistan, 121,810 children were born, an increase of 0.9%. The divergence is also notable in the wider post-Soviet context. Births have declined in Armenia and Azerbaijan as well. In Ukraine, 73,292 children were born in the first half of 2026, 16% fewer than during the same period a year earlier. Russia has sharply restricted the publication of demographic statistics since 2025, making current comparisons more difficult, although the last available figures also showed births continuing to decline. For Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, the current figures do not mean their populations are shrinking. Births still substantially outnumber deaths, leaving both countries with strong natural population growth despite the decline in births. If these differences persist, their effects will extend well beyond demographic statistics. For a region with rapidly growing cities and large young populations, they could eventually mean different levels of demand for schools and universities. They could also affect labor markets and the number of new workers entering the economies of the four countries.

Informatics Olympiad

Uzbekistan Wins Four Medals as Tashkent Hosts Informatics Olympiad

Uzbekistan won one silver and three bronze medals as Tashkent hosted the International Olympiad in Informatics for the first time. The 38th edition of the annual competition ran from August 9 to 16. Official IOI statistics recorded 375 contestants from 92 member delegations. Students compete individually, tackling algorithmic programming problems over two five-hour days in the contest. Jahonali Khaydaraliev, a ninth-grade student at the Muhammad al-Khwarizmi Specialized School in Tashkent, won Uzbekistan’s silver medal, while Timur Kadirbergenov of the Presidential School in Nukus took bronze. Ulugbek Rakhmatullaev and Jahongirshoh Avazkhonov, both from the Presidential School in Namangan, also won bronze. It was the first time all four members of Uzbekistan’s main team had won medals at the same IOI. Sardor Salimov, who competed for a second Uzbek host team, received an honorable mention. The result improved on Uzbekistan’s previous best showing; at the 2025 Olympiad in Sucre, Bolivia, the country won one silver and one bronze medal. Uzbekistan was selected to host the 2026 competition in 2023, and received the IOI flag at the closing ceremony in Bolivia last year. Digital Technologies Minister Sherzod Shermatov linked the event to the country’s effort to expand technology education. “Hosting the IOI in Uzbekistan for the first time is more than a milestone; it is a homecoming,” Shermatov said. He referred to Uzbekistan’s association with the ninth-century mathematician Muhammad al-Khwarizmi. The word “algorithm” derives from the Latinized form of al-Khwarizmi’s name. Uzbekistan has expanded specialist technology education in recent years through Presidential Schools and dedicated IT schools. Several members of the 2026 team came through that system, while the national squad had trained since November 2025 and attended camps in Romania and Kazakhstan before the competition. The government has also put programming and digital skills into national education programs. For Tashkent, hosting the IOI gave those efforts an unusually visible international stage without changing the basic character of the event: a demanding school competition decided by how well students solve problems under time pressure. Elsewhere in Central Asia, Kazakhstan also had a strong competition, winning one gold and three silver medals. Maksim Tsoi finished fifth in the individual standings, according to Uzbekistan’s national news agency. Uzbekistan first competed at the IOI in 2015. Four medals from its four main team contestants therefore marked a new high for the country on home ground. Germany is due to host the next International Olympiad in Informatics in 2027.

TCA Interviews

Interview: Ayana Nurdinova on Mugalim, Balkhash and San Sebastián

Kazakh director Ayana Nurdinova will screen her debut feature, Mugalim (The Teacher), in the New Directors section of the San Sebastián International Film Festival, which runs September 18–26. The selection comes almost ten years after Nurdinova graduated from the Zhurgenov Academy of Arts. Shot in Balkhash, the film follows a music teacher who dreams of leaving the small city for somewhere bigger, while questioning what he wants from his work and his life. The Times of Central Asia spoke with Nurdinova about her long road to a first feature, her love of small towns and Japanese cinema, the influence of Takeshi Kitano, and her forthcoming trip to San Sebastián. Times of Central Asia: Ayana, congratulations on being selected for San Sebastián. Getting into a festival like this with a debut feature is a major achievement. What was your reaction? Ayana Nurdinova: When the news came, the film’s producer, Aruzhan Dosymkozha, called me. It was already around midnight and I was asleep, so at first I didn’t really understand what was happening. She was in this kind of joyful shock and told me the wonderful news. To be honest, at first I couldn’t believe it had actually happened. When we submitted the film to festivals, of course I hoped it would be appreciated, but I tried not to expect too much so I wouldn’t be disappointed later. So I really didn’t expect that we would actually be selected. TCA: Did you submit the film to other major festivals as well? Ayana: Yes, we submitted it everywhere, from Cannes and Venice to Karlovy Vary. We sent it to Cannes a month before the festival. We knew it was late, but we decided to try anyway. We didn’t get in, and then three months later the news came from San Sebastián. When I found out we had been selected, I started reading about the festival and the city and looking at photographs. At some point, I even noticed an unexpected visual similarity with our film: the city there also sits on the water, only it is surrounded by the Bay of Biscay, and there is even something similar about the landscape. I thought it was funny that a film shot in Balkhash would make its first trip precisely there. TCA: You graduated from the Zhurgenov Academy as a feature film director almost ten years ago, but after graduating, you spent quite a long time working in other film professions. How did that happen? Ayana: Yes, I graduated from the academy when I was 22, and looking back now, I realize that at the time I had very little life or professional experience. So I decided to immerse myself in the profession. While I was still a student, I got my first job on a major film set, working as a clapper loader [a junior camera role] on The Kazakh Khanate. After graduating, I wanted to gain real practical experience and understand how a film set actually works. For a while, I worked in casting,...