Uzbekistan's Latin-Script Law and Its Missed Deadlines

Uzbekistan has set at least four deadlines for finishing its switch from Cyrillic to the Latin alphabet, and the reporting can't agree on what the first three were. The only firm one is the most recent: 1 January 2023. It passed, and Cyrillic stayed.

This piece is about the law rather than the letters. If you want to know how to read a sign in either script, our guide to the Uzbek alphabet handles that, with a table of the Cyrillic letters that trip people up.

Three alphabets by decree

Every script change in modern Uzbek history arrived as a legal act, which is part of why this one keeps getting treated as a paperwork problem.

For centuries Uzbek was written in Arabic script; the script itself is still on show in the tilework described in our piece on the Registan's inscriptions. In 1926 the First Turcological Congress in Baku endorsed a Latin alphabet for the Soviet Union's Turkic languages, known as Yanalif, and Uzbekistan began using it from 1929. It didn't last. According to CABAR.asia, the Supreme Soviet of the Uzbek SSR adopted a law on 8 May 1940 moving Uzbek to a Cyrillic alphabet, against a background of Moscow's wariness of pan-Turkism and Turkey's influence.

Two more laws set up the modern argument. In October 1989, before independence, Uzbekistan's Supreme Soviet declared Uzbek the sole state language. Then, on 2 September 1993, two years after independence, came the law "On the introduction of the Uzbek alphabet based on the Latin script". The Diplomat quotes it as drawing on "the positive experience of 1929-1940".

That 1993 alphabet didn't survive intact either. It was revised in May 1995, and spelling rules followed on 24 August 1995. The revision produced the version most people know: 26 letters plus the combinations sh, ch and ng, with o‘ and g‘ written using an apostrophe-like mark. From 1996, according to both Diplomat pieces, all educational institutions taught in the Latin alphabet.

The deadlines, as each source tells it

You'd expect the dates in a law to be easy to pin down. They aren't. Here's what four reputable outlets say, side by side.

Source	Deadlines given
Times of Central Asia (2026)	2000 originally; extended in 1995 to 2005; later to 2010
The Diplomat (August 2026)	2000, then 2005, then 2010; most recent deadline 2023
Interfax (February 2021)	2005 originally; postponed to 2010, then to 2015
CABAR.asia (2021) and The Diplomat (January 2023)	The 1993 law itself aimed for a full transition by 2010

Some of this is probably explained by the law being amended in 1995, so an "original" deadline depends on which version you read. We couldn't open the texts on lex.uz to settle it, so we're leaving the range as it is. What every source agrees on is the pattern: a date was set, it passed with Cyrillic still everywhere, and a new date appeared.

Honestly, a reform whose own missed deadlines can't be counted consistently tells you most of what you need to know about how hard it's been pushed.

The 2020–2023 push

Under President Shavkat Mirziyoyev the issue came back with real machinery behind it. The Diplomat lists a State Language Development Department created in 2019 and an Uzbek Language Development Fund in 2020. A working group at Tashkent State University presented a revised Latin alphabet in 2019, which RFE/RL described as 29 letters and an apostrophe; another draft went out for public comment on 16 March 2021, according to CABAR.

In April 2020 the Justice Ministry published a draft amendment to the Code of Administrative Offences. Fergana News reported that civil servants who didn't use Uzbek in their work would face fines of 2–5 BCV, which at the base calculation value of the time was 446,000 to 1.1 million som (about $44–110). At today's BCV of 440,000 som, in force from 1 September 2026, the same range would be 880,000 to 2.2 million som. Strictly, that bill was about the state language rather than the script, but it landed in the same debate.

It also drew a reaction from Moscow. On 14 May 2020, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said supporters of the draft were "in a clear minority". Uzbekistan's Foreign Ministry replied on 18 May that regulating the state language was a domestic matter, as reported by Kun.uz. We couldn't find evidence that the fines were ever adopted in the form proposed.

Then came the most detailed timetable yet. A presidential decree in autumn 2020 called for the transition to be speeded up, and on 10 February 2021 the government approved a roadmap, which the Justice Ministry announced the next day. Interfax set out its stages:

From January 2022: identification documents in Latin script only.
From December 2022: Latin script for street names, signs and advertising.
From 1 January 2023: every organisation, whatever its legal form, to draft, adopt and publish its paperwork in Uzbek in the Latin script.

The Diplomat reported that Senate members began 2023 with training sessions on the Latin alphabet. That was about as far as the finish line got.

Why Cyrillic won't leave

The August 2026 Diplomat article, "The Cyrillic Stalemate", is the clearest account of what happened after 2023. Its author did field research at Samarkand State University in 2022–23 and found most archives, academic literature and textbooks in his field still in Cyrillic.

He describes a "dual system" in government: public signs in Latin, while files and internal memos go back to Cyrillic. The academics he interviewed pointed to office templates, software and archiving standards built around the old script, and to senior officials educated in it.

There's a generational gap. Roughly 60% of the population is under 30 and was schooled almost entirely in Latin, but the people running institutions trained under the Soviet system.

And there's money. Citing Central Bank of Uzbekistan data, the article puts remittances in 2024 at $14.8 billion, of which $11.5 billion (77%) came from Russia. For millions of families, reading Russian in Cyrillic is a work skill, not nostalgia.

None of this is new. A 2021 CABAR analysis estimated that between 1950 and 1990 Uzbekistan published roughly 80,000 books and brochures, almost all in Cyrillic. The Latin-educated generation, it argued, has lost easy access to that body of work.

September 2026: a new alphabet, and a softer law

Instead of another deadline for the old alphabet, parliament has changed the alphabet itself. The Legislative Chamber passed the bill on 7 July 2026 without a single vote against, Gazeta reported, noting that the draft hadn't been published for public discussion. The Senate approved it on 10 September 2026 at its 19th plenary session and sent it to the president. As of 28 September 2026, we couldn't find a report that he'd signed it.

The new alphabet has 28 letters and one apostrophe, replacing 26 letters and three letter combinations. Sh becomes Ş, ch becomes Ç, o‘ becomes Ö and g‘ becomes Ğ; ng stops being listed as a separate unit but survives in the spelling rules. Senator Odiljon Mamatkarimov's case for it was practical: software doesn't treat words containing the apostrophe letters as single words, which causes serious problems for programs and dictionaries.

The part that interests us most is the transition clause. Documents, currency and securities issued under the old alphabet stay valid. Signs, geographical nameplates and building features can stay up until they wear out or until deadlines set in the implementation programme. The Times of Central Asia reported the school schedule: first-grade textbooks in the new alphabet in 2027, grades 2–4 renewed every three years, grades 5–11 every five, with textbook replacement expected to run to 2031.

Not everyone's convinced. At the July vote, deputy Saidullo Azimov questioned the reasons for the reform, its timing and its cost, and the Times of Central Asia quoted expert Komil Jalilov asking whether enough research had been done on technical alternatives and on how different age groups read. Those are fair questions.

Still, a law that lets signs fade out on their own schedule is the most realistic alphabet legislation Uzbekistan has passed. Thirty-three years of hard dates didn't retire Cyrillic. Letting things wear out might at least stop the new alphabet from joining the list of missed deadlines.

For a visitor, nothing changes this year: Tashkent's signs will carry the current Latin spelling, old Cyrillic and plenty of Russian for a long time yet. A dozen spoken Uzbek phrases will do more for you than either alphabet. Older maps can trip you up for a different reason, which our guide to places that have been renamed explains.

Sources

This article is for general information and is not legal advice.