On a chilly Wednesday evening in London, Kairat Almaty’s debut season in the UEFA Champions League ended with a 3-2 loss to English league leaders Arsenal.

It completed a drawn-out baptism of fire in European football for the Kazakh champions, who finished bottom of the 36-team league, earning just one point from eight games. That point came from a 0-0 draw at home to Cypriot club Pafos, also debutants in the competition, and who played almost that entire game with ten men after their striker Joao Correia was sent off in the fourth minute.

“We clearly see the difference in speed, decision-making, pace, and level between top European clubs and those in our league,” the club’s owner, Kairat Boranbaev, told The Times of Central Asia in the build-up to the Arsenal match. “It became clear that European success isn’t a one-season undertaking.”

The club’s fans were also sober in their analysis. “The main lesson is that even small mistakes are costly in European competitions,” Kairat fan Rauan Mutair told TCA.

Kairat in the second qualifying round of the Champions League; image: Joe Luc Barnes

Silver Linings Playbook

Nevertheless, Boranbaev was determined to take positives from the experience. He described the campaign as “a crucial moment in Kairat’s growth as a club,” and declared that his team “not only participated but were competitive.”

He saw the campaign as a vindication of the Kairat model, which focuses on developing youth players. Now, he believes, that model needs “acceleration and scaling.”

Despite the defeats, the competition has also served to raise the profile of Kazakh football. Kairat were just the second Kazakh side to compete in the competition after FC Astana in 2015, and they produced creditable displays in their highest profile away games, losing by just one goal to Arsenal and Milan’s Internazionale.

Back home, even the least likely bars and restaurants screened Kairat’s games, creating a wave of excitement amongst a new cohort of fans.

Kairat has seen packed attendances for both its league and Champions League games this season; image: Joe Luc Barnes

New Signings

Kairat’s campaign is not the only tailwind for Kazakh football. The domestic season will start in March, and the Kazakh league’s profile has been given a further boost after two high-profile signings this week.

The first of these was Luis Nani, the former Manchester United winger, who has joined FK Aktobe. The following day, Kaysar Kyzylorda made an even more unlikely splash by signing Victor Moses, once of Chelsea.

Earlier in their careers, the pair gained fame as regulars in the English Premier League. While neither was a superstar, both were part of the furniture of the competition, the type of player known as a “Barclaysman” to nostalgic fans.

Nani initially struggled to stand out in a Manchester United side that included Cristiano Ronaldo, Wayne Rooney, Carlos Tevez, and a silvery Ryan Giggs, but he nevertheless became a key part of title-winning sides in 2011 and 2013.

He retired from football over a year ago, saying that he wished to focus on setting up his own academy, but the 39-year-old appears to have had a change of heart.

He arrived in Aktobe on Monday morning on a private jet and was given the traditional Kazakh greeting of baursak (fried bread) upon disembarking.

“I was very impressed with the club’s vision for the future and will work hard to take us to new heights,” he said in a statement on his Instagram page.

Meanwhile, 1,000 kilometers away, Moses was presented to the Kyzylorda public. In the subsequent press conference, his agent claimed that there was interest from other clubs in Kazakhstan, although Kaysar’s “ambition” led him to choose them.

The moves came as a major surprise to the football world, with neither player known to have links to Kazakhstan, although both have spent time in Russia. Moses spent four years at Russian side Spartak Moscow from 2021 to 2024, while Nani came to Moscow to participate in two separate friendly competitions last year, in May and September.

The main square in Kyzylorda; image: Joe Luc Barnes

The New Order

Whatever the players’ motivations, their arrivals have come at an interesting time for Kazakh football. The league will increase in size this season, from fourteen to sixteen teams. Clubs from Aktau, Pavlodar, and Ust-Kamenogorsk have all been added to the competition in the hope of increasing both the number of games and its visibility across the country.

Meanwhile, half a dozen clubs, including Kaysar and Aktobe, have come under new ownership in the off-season as part of President Tokayev’s plans to privatize the sport and remove dirty money from the game.

Islamgali Kozbakov acquired Kaysar in October, whereas Aktobe was bought earlier this month by Nurlan Artykbayev. They are respectively the owners of TAU Group and Qazaq Story, both major construction firms.

Other clubs purchased by Kazakhstan’s oligarchs include Shakhter Karaganda by Timur Turlov, the Russian-born owner of Freedom Bank, and Zhenis Astana, purchased by his rival Mikheil Lomtadze of Kaspi.

Whether this will remove dirty money from the game is up for debate, but it will at least mean that taxpayers will have washed their hands of a sport often known for corruption. Local governments will also no longer be funding the purchase of expensive foreign players – something that Tokayev has now explicitly banned by law.

However, the prospect of oligarchs bringing foreign stars into the country is quite different, and it has even led fans of other clubs to be excited by the prospect.

“Such players will undoubtedly draw attention to the league,” said Kairat fan Mutair. “The number of fans will increase, and the image of the championship will improve.” That said, he warned that players should be purchased for their quality, rather than simply for marketing purposes.

Relatively successful examples of superstar signings in Central Asia include Rivaldo, who signed a €10 million contract for Tashkent club Budyonkor in 2008, while in Kazakhstan, former Arsenal forward Andrei Arshavin played for three seasons at Kairat in the twilight of his career.

While Nani, at 39 and having spent a year out of the game, is unlikely to be lighting up any stadiums, the relatively youthful Moses could well prove a key asset for Kaysar.

At Kairat, fresh from their European humbling, there are no plans to turn to the superstars of yesteryear. Boranbaev will continue to do things his way. “Sustainable growth of a team and a league is not built solely on stars. Rather, investment in academies and youth, the quality of club management, work, and sporting culture,” he said.

At a moment when Kazakhstan is building new cultural institutions and asking bigger questions about what contemporary art should do, one curator has been quietly learning how power, taste, and narrative are shaped inside major museums. Akmaral Kulbatyrova, the first representative of Kazakhstan to receive the U.S.-based ArtTable Fellowship, spent 2025 working in the Exhibitions and Curatorial Projects Department at The Bass Museum of Art in Miami Beach, gaining rare inside access to how global exhibitions are conceived and positioned. Her work sits at the intersection of institutional practice and cultural repair, focused on reframing nomadic culture, Central Asian heritage, and Kazakh craft not as static tradition but as a current language.

Akmaral’s experience links ambition and execution, showing how local histories can enter international spaces without being flattened. In this interview with The Times of Central Asia, we asked her what comes next.

TCA: Nomadic imagery has become central to Kazakhstan’s national identity since independence. How are contemporary artists reshaping these symbols, and why does that matter for how the country sees itself today?

AK: Kazakh contemporary artists briefly challenged Kazakh art in early avant-garde experiments in the 1960s. However, it stopped because of the huge presence of Socialist Realism, which was one of the movements where symbols like horses and yurts prevailed. Most of the contemporary artists reshape not the symbols; they reimagine nomadic culture, contextualizing pre-Soviet culture through researching how it changed over time. Many artists look back to pre-Soviet nomadic practices to explore how these traditions were disrupted by colonial and Soviet policies, yet continue to influence Kazakh identity today. By using installation, performance, and video, they move beyond decoration and folklore to show nomadism as a living culture rather than a museum image or symbols. This matters because it helps Kazakhstan see itself not through simplified national symbols, but as a society shaped by change, cultural mixing, and an ongoing negotiation between past and present.

Qyz Zhibek, designed by Nikolai Vladimirovich Tsivchinsky and Moldakhmet Syzdykovich Kenbaev, 1971; image: TCA

TCA: Nomadism now circulates widely in pop culture, often detached from its historical meaning. Why does contemporary art provide a more critical way to examine what nomadic identity represents?

AK: It’s typical that symbolic images prevail in pop culture, especially for countries that have not experienced a long artistic tradition. It is one of the ways to be acknowledged by the privileged cultures through the symbols that are easy to recognize and quickly signal national identity. In Kazakhstan, these images became important after independence, as they cover the main question of cultural uniqueness after colonial influence. Contemporary art takes slower and more contextual approaches rather than easy recognition. That’s why most modern scholars criticize symbolic language and would like to see art that explores unresolved histories and how nations were challenged or used their experience to construct their identity.

Anvar Musrepov, IKEA KZ; image courtesy of the Aspan Gallery

TCA: Many artists use nomadic motifs with irony rather than nostalgia. Why is irony such a powerful tool for rethinking Kazakhstan’s past and present?

AK: When I started thinking about why artists use irony in relation to nomadic imagery, I realized it has a lot to do with distance. Nomadism no longer exists as a lived social reality in Kazakhstan. Kazakhstan is not just a society of nomadic tribes; it is a prosperous and modern country. By using irony, artists begin to question the symbols themselves that should carry a more contextual mode rather than something sacred. It creates a space to separate real historical experience from the images we use to represent it. Irony in nomadism should be a language to understand our past and rethink it, rather than trying to return to or re-enact a way of life that no longer exists.

Dilyara Kaipova, Pushkin; image courtesy of the Aspan Gallery

TCA: Women’s roles in nomadic history are often romanticized or overlooked. How are female artists and curators reclaiming nomadic narratives, and why is this perspective essential to understanding Kazakh identity today?

AK: The presence of women in nomadic history is definitely rare. In most cases, contemporary artists try to show them as passive figures in history. For example, last year in the exhibition named “Beneath the Earth and Above the Clouds” by Sapar Art Gallery, the artworks of Aya Shalkar raise the question of feminism, gender roles, and women’s identity in Kazakh society. Kazakh identity is multi-layered, and these narratives help us to understand that we built our identity not only through conquests and wars, but also through intergenerational knowledge, living practice, and domestic work. These perspectives are essential for understanding the full complexity of the nation’s past and present.

Gulnur Mukazhanova,
Gulnur Mukazhanova “Memory of Hope”; image courtesy of the Aspan Gallery

TCA: As Kazakh contemporary art gains international visibility, why does it matter how works rooted in nomadic culture are interpreted by global audiences?

AK: Context is important in contemporary art. Kazakh contemporary art is now considered exotic in Western institutions, which leads to some risks of it being represented as stereotypical or decorative. That’s why it is important to include a context that opens a conversation about the complex histories, modernization, and fluid identity of Kazakhs. Most contemporary artists are concerned about being framed properly and clearly, which I think is important to understand Kazakh art not as cultural branding, but as an active participant in contemporary discourse.

TCA: Which modern Kazakh artists have you worked with that are inspiring, and why?

AK: There are contemporary artists in Kazakhstan whom I engage through curatorial research or international exhibitions, and I find them particularly interesting and inspiring. I would like to mention artists in new media arts like Anvar Musrepov and Almagul Menlibayeva, who stand out for their critical exploration of digital space and contemporary forms of nomadism. In textiles, I admire the work of Gulnur Mukazhanova, whose use of traditional materials fuses craft and contemporary conceptual art, and Dilyara Kaipova (Uzbekistan), whose bold textile works critically reframe Uzbek traditions with modern pop culture. These artists are the ones who bridge tradition, history, and innovation, using different mediums to simultaneously speak of local histories and engage in global conversations.

Anvar Musrepov, Jigitovka; image courtesy of the Aspan Gallery

In Kulbatyrova’s telling, nomadism is not a costume to be worn for worldwide consumption, but a critical framework for thinking about history, gender, power, and modernity. What emerges is a vision of Kazakh contemporary art that resists both nostalgia and easy cultural branding. As Kazakhstan steps onto a larger institutional stage, the question is no longer whether its art will be seen, but how it will be read. This conversation makes clear that the stakes are high and that the framework, care, and intellectual rigor will determine whether Kazakh art enters the international discussion as an equal voice or a decorative footnote.