Navoi Opera and Ballet Theatre, Tashkent: Visitor Guide
Tashkent's Navoi Opera Theatre: the Japanese POW plaque, Shchusev's six regional foyers, 2026 ticket prices, dress rules and the metro stop to avoid.
On an outside wall of the Alisher Navoi Opera and Ballet Theatre there's a plaque, put up in 1996 on the order of President Islam Karimov, crediting "hundreds of Japanese citizens deported from the Far East" with taking an active part in building the theatre in 1945 and 1946. Read it twice. It never uses the word prisoners.
They were prisoners. Between 24,000 and 25,000 Japanese soldiers and civilians, mostly from the defeated Kwantung Army, were shipped to Soviet Uzbekistan after 1945 for forced labour (Global Voices gives about 25,000, a 2006 Moscow Times report "almost 24,000"), and hundreds of them worked on the final stages of the theatre. The plaque's wording is generous to Japan and quiet about the Soviet Union, and it's the first thing we'd point you towards before you go in, because it tells you what kind of building this is: a Stalin-era showpiece finished partly with forced labour (Global Voices on the Japanese internment, last checked: September 2026).
Shchusev's building, and how long it took
Alexey Shchusev, the Moscow architect who also designed Lenin's Mausoleum, won the job in 1934 after a competition announced the year before. Construction started around 1940; sources differ on the exact date, and one local history gives 1 September 1940. The war stopped it: one local history puts the halt in July 1941 and a restart in 1942, while Kun.uz gives a 1942 halt and a 1943 restart. We'd call it a one-to-two-year pause and leave it there.
The theatre opened on 7 November 1947, timed to the 30th anniversary of the October Revolution, and took Navoi's name in March 1948 for the poet's 500th birthday. That same year Shchusev and seven of the craftsmen shared a first-degree Stalin Prize for it.
Then came April 1966. The earthquake that flattened much of central Tashkent left the theatre standing, which Global Voices notes a Japanese company later cited as proof of Japanese building skill. Our piece on what the 1966 quake actually destroyed covers the rest of the city.
Six foyers, six regions
This is the reason to buy a ticket. Shchusev dropped the figurative sculpture in his original plan and handed the interior to master carvers from across the republic, each foyer decorated in the style of one region. According to Kun.uz, the halls and their lead masters are:
- Ground floor: the Tashkent hall (Tashpulat Aslankulov) and the Fergana hall (Said Makhmud Narkuziev)
- First floor: the Bukhara hall (Usto Shirin Muradov, who led the decorative work overall) and the Samarkand hall (Kuli Dzhanilov)
- Second floor: the Khiva hall (Abdulla Baltayev) and the Termez hall (a master recorded only as Nigmatov)
The differences are real, not a naming gimmick. The Khiva hall leans on plain girih geometry and rosettes broken up by twisting vine shoots, and elsewhere the carved ganch (fine decorative plaster, the same craft you'll see in old Bukharan houses) shifts pattern and density from room to room. If you've already spent time in the regional cities, you'll recognise the accents. If you haven't, the collection at the Museum of Applied Arts, a short taxi ride away, shows the same schools in their domestic setting.
You get the foyers during the interval, and it's rarely long enough for all three floors. Our take, which regulars may dispute: for a first visit, buy a cheap balcony seat for an opera rather than a stalls seat for a ballet, and spend the interval walking the upper halls instead of queueing at the buffet. The singing will be decent. The ganch will be better than you expected.
It's smaller than every guide says
Travel sites still give the capacity as 1,400 or 1,440. The theatre's own seating plan, archived from gabt.uz in early 2026, lists 258 stalls seats, 222 amphitheatre seats, two boxes of 15, and balcony tiers of 96 and 84: that's 690 seats. The drop is usually put down to the 2012–2015 renovation, whose reopening Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe attended in 2015. Half the seats means popular nights, especially visiting ballet companies, sell out.
Navoi Theatre tickets in 2026: the official site is down
Every guide sends you to gabt.uz. As of 27 September 2026 that address shows a hosting company's "site coming soon" placeholder, and web-archive snapshots show the same page since at least 31 August 2026 (last checked: September 2026). Until it does, you've got three options:
- The box office in the building at 28 Zarafshon Street, phone +998 71 232-19-48. Bring cash in case the card terminal is having a bad day.
- gtickets.uz, a Tashkent ticketing site that currently lists the theatre's programme. Its terms say tickets aren't refundable or exchangeable.
- The theatre's Telegram channel, @gabtuzb, which it listed as official on the old site.
The last official price list we could find (archived January–February 2026, season 96) set these fixed prices:
| Seat | Opera | Ballet and concerts |
|---|---|---|
| Stalls, rows 1–5 | 150,000 som | 200,000 som |
| Stalls, rows 6–10 | 150,000 som | 170,000 som |
| Amphitheatre | 100,000 som | 150,000 som |
| Balcony, 1st tier | 70,000 som | 100,000 som |
| Balcony, 2nd tier | 40,000 som | 70,000 som |
At the Central Bank's rate of about 11,825 som to the dollar on 26 September 2026, that's roughly $3.40 to $17. Children's shows ran 30,000–70,000 som. Treat the table as a floor: on gtickets.uz, a Carmen on 27 September 2026 was listed from 110,000 som, and Handel's Tamerlano on 2–4 November from 100,000 som (last checked: September 2026). We can't tell whether that's a price rise or just the cheapest seats left.
When's the season? It clearly runs through autumn, with evening shows at 18:00 or 19:00. We couldn't confirm summer dates, so phone the box office before planning a July or August visit around a performance.
Dress, photos and children
The theatre's etiquette page is blunter than most. Jeans, sportswear and trainers are listed as unacceptable. Children need a ticket from age five, and under-fives aren't admitted to evening shows. No photos or video during the performance, no food or drink in the hall, coats off, hats off.
Will they actually turn you away in jeans? We haven't found a reliable report either way, and it isn't worth finding out with a 150,000-som ticket in your hand. Smart trousers and closed shoes cover it; our packing advice on clothes for Uzbekistan is written with evenings like this in mind.
Late? The doors close at the third bell. Ushers can let you into the first or second balcony, and you take your own seat at the interval. Photos of the foyers before the show and in the interval are a different matter from filming the stage, and people take them.
Getting there, and the metro trap
Don't get off at Alisher Navoiy station. Despite the name, it's about 1.8 km from the theatre in a straight line, per OpenStreetMap. The two closest stations are Mustaqillik Maydoni, around 600–650 m north, and Kosmonavtlar, around 650–700 m south-west, so budget a ten-minute walk from either. Kosmonavtlar is the UNESCO-listed one with the cosmonaut medallions; our station-by-station metro guide explains how the lines connect.
A note on the World Heritage question, since it comes up: the theatre isn't among the ten Tashkent modernist buildings inscribed by UNESCO in July 2026. That listing starts in the 1960s. This is a 1940s building from a different style altogether.
If the plaque makes you want the other half of the story, go to Yakkasaray cemetery. Its Japanese section holds 79 graves of internees, looked after for four decades by a local caretaker, Mirokil Fozilov, who has been publicly honoured for it (Uzbekistan's national tourism site). It's a short taxi ride from the theatre, open in daylight, and it says plainly what the wall on Zarafshon Street doesn't.