Uzbekistan Reform Era: What Changed for Travellers
Uzbekistan's reforms since 2016, dated: the 2017 currency float, visa-free entry, reopened borders, and what hasn't changed, from registration to press.
For years the most important piece of paper on an Uzbekistan trip wasn't your visa. It was the customs declaration you filled in at the airport, in duplicate, listing every dollar, euro and camera you'd brought in. The officer stamped one copy and handed it back, and you guarded it for the whole trip, because on the way out you couldn't leave with more foreign cash than that slip said you'd arrived with. Lose it and the exit could turn into an argument about where your money had gone.
That slip has mostly disappeared. Since 1 January 2018 Uzbekistan's international airports have run a green and red corridor system, and a passenger with nothing to declare walks through green without writing anything down. The old $2,000 cash threshold ended in 2020: a written declaration is now needed only above the equivalent of 100 million som, roughly $8,000–8,500 depending on the rate. A move to a flat $10,000 threshold has been announced, so check customs.uz before you travel (last checked: September 2026).
That one document is a decent summary of Uzbekistan's reform era, which began when Shavkat Mirziyoyev became president after Islam Karimov's death in 2016. A lot of the friction a traveller felt has been removed, quickly and on specific dates. Some of it hasn't moved at all. This page sorts the two, as neutrally as we can, with dates you can check.
Money: the change you'll never notice, because it worked
Before September 2017 Uzbekistan had an official exchange rate that almost nobody used and a street rate that almost everybody did. Travellers changed dollars with bazaar money-changers, or with their guesthouse owner, at close to double the bank rate. Paying for anything at the official rate meant paying nearly twice as much. It also meant carrying bricks of notes, because the largest one in common use was 5,000 som.
On 5 September 2017 the Central Bank let the rate go. It jumped overnight from about 4,210 som to 8,100 to the dollar, which was actually weaker than the black-market rate of roughly 7,700 that week, according to Eurasianet's report on the float. The street trade lost its reason to exist almost immediately. On 26 September 2026 the official rate was 11,825.40 som (last checked: September 2026).
For a visitor this is the single biggest practical change of the whole era, and it's invisible now. You change money at a bank or an exchange machine, you get a receipt, and the rate is the rate. The 100,000 and 200,000 som notes mean a week's spending fits in a wallet. What's left of the old habits (which notes get refused, where to reconvert your leftover som) is in our walk-through of changing money at the counter.
One old instinct worth dropping: don't change money in the street. There's no premium any more, only risk.
Visas: a letter of invitation, then nothing
Under the previous system most Western visitors needed a letter of invitation arranged through a travel agency before they could even apply for a visa at an embassy. It took weeks and cost money twice. The unwinding happened in stages, and the dates matter because older blog posts froze at different points.
| Date | What changed |
|---|---|
| February 2018 | 30-day visa-free entry for 7 countries: Israel, Indonesia, South Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, Turkey, Japan (Tajikistan, France and Germany followed) |
| 15 July 2018 | E-visa launched at e-visa.gov.uz for citizens of 51 countries, $20, two working days; 5-day visa-free airport transit for 101 countries |
| 1 January 2019 | Exit visa for Uzbek citizens abolished (a domestic change, but a telling one) |
| 1 February 2019 | 30-day visa-free entry extended to 45 more countries, including the UK, Canada, Australia and most of the EU |
| 1 January 2020 | Visa-free list reaches 86 countries |
| 1 January 2026 | US citizens added to the 30-day visa-free list |
Today citizens of about 90 countries can arrive with just a passport, and most of the rest can get the $20 e-visa online (last checked: September 2026). Rules for a few nationalities still move around, so check your own passport against our country-by-country visa rules before booking rather than trusting a forum post from 2019.
The exit visa entry in that table isn't a traveller issue, strictly. Uzbeks needed an OVIR sticker to leave for most countries outside the former USSR until the end of 2018, and it was one of the last such systems anywhere. If you're curious how it worked and who it was used against, we've written up the story of the exit sticker separately.
Borders with the neighbours
This one is easy to forget if you're flying in and out of Tashkent. In the Karimov years Uzbekistan's relations with Tajikistan were so bad that there were no scheduled flights between Tashkent and Dushanbe for about 25 years, and most land crossings were shut, with stretches of the frontier mined. Flights resumed on 11 April 2017, when Uzbekistan Airways flew the route for the first time since 1992. On 1 March 2018 the two countries opened ten new crossing points, and the Penjikent to Samarkand route became a normal day's travel for tourists heading to or from the Pamirs.
It hasn't been a straight line, though. Gishtkuprik, the busiest crossing between Tashkent and Shymkent in Kazakhstan, closed for rebuilding in February 2025 and was still closed on 28 September 2026, with reopening dates repeatedly pushed back. Other Kazakh crossings are open. The point is that "borders are open now" is broadly true and locally wrong, so check the specific post you plan to use within a week of travelling.
Small things that used to trip people up
Some changes never made headlines abroad but altered what a day on the ground feels like.
- Metro photography. Taking pictures in the Tashkent metro was banned from its opening in 1977 because the system doubles as a civil-defence shelter. The ban was lifted on 1 June 2018. These days people film the Kosmonavtlar ceilings while station staff walk past.
- Cards. Visa and Mastercard work at hotels, chain restaurants and a growing number of shops in the big four cities. Outside them, carry som.
- Residence lists. Tashkent's propiska, the Soviet-era permission to live in the capital, was scrapped in October 2025. It never applied to tourists, but it's part of the same dismantling.
- Cotton. The ILO declared systemic forced and child labour in the cotton harvest over in January 2021, and the Cotton Campaign ended its boycott call on 10 March 2022. If you're buying textiles, our note on what the forced-labour reforms did and didn't fix is worth five minutes.
What hasn't changed
Here's where some coverage of Uzbekistan gets carried away. The travel reforms are real; the political ones are much narrower, and independent monitors say so plainly.
You still have to be registered
The hotel registration slip, the customs declaration's sibling, survived. Foreigners staying more than three days must be registered at their place of stay, hotels do it automatically, and private hosts use the online e-mehmon system (last checked: September 2026). The paper is smaller now, often a QR-coded receipt, and border officers ask for it less often than they used to. But fines for gaps still happen. Our registration rules for tourists cover the overnight-train and homestay gaps that catch people out.
Press freedom is still near the bottom
Reporters Without Borders ranked Uzbekistan 147th of 180 countries in its 2026 World Press Freedom Index, up one place on 2025, while its score slipped from 35.24 to 34.95, as Gazeta.uz reported in April 2026. RSF classes the situation as "very serious". That's better than the Karimov era, when many foreign outlets were forced out after the 2005 Andijan events, but it isn't a free press.
Human Rights Watch's World Report 2026 chapter on Uzbekistan says people are still prosecuted for "insulting the president online", despite a 2020 pledge to decriminalise it, and that at least two bloggers remained in forced psychiatric detention. Defamation and insult are still criminal offences.
Parts of the internet are still filtered
TikTok has been blocked since 2021 under data-localisation rules, and it was still inaccessible in September 2026 even though the law itself was loosened in March 2026. Many residents reach it through a VPN. The background is in our piece on why TikTok stays blocked.
What does any of this mean for a visitor? Mostly, very little day to day. Tourists aren't the target of these laws. It's still sensible to keep political opinions about the president out of public posts while you're in the country, not to photograph police or military sites, and to know that same-sex relations between men remain criminalised under Article 120 of the Criminal Code.
Our take: why the travel reforms happened first
It's tempting to read the visa-free list and the currency float as proof of a political thaw. We'd frame it more narrowly. Tourism and foreign investment needed a convertible currency, easy entry and open borders, and those are exactly the areas that moved fastest, between 2017 and 2020. Areas that don't bring in foreign money, like independent media and the right to criticise the head of state, moved much less. The courts are only now getting a jury trial pilot, limited to Tashkent city and region from November 2026. Both things are true at once, and a traveller who holds both in mind will read the country more accurately than one who holds only the first.
You'll feel the difference in the queues. Arrival at Tashkent takes minutes for most passports, a street-food lunch costs the same whoever you are, and nobody asks where your dollars went.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I still need to fill in a customs declaration when entering Uzbekistan?
Only if you're carrying cash above the equivalent of 100 million som (roughly $8,000–8,500) or goods that must be declared. Below that you use the green corridor and write nothing. If you do declare, keep the stamped copy until you leave, since it shows where the money came from. A flat $10,000 threshold has been announced, so check customs.uz for the current rule before you fly (last checked: September 2026).
When did Uzbekistan become visa-free?
Gradually. Seven countries got 30-day visa-free entry in February 2018, 45 more (including the UK and most of the EU) on 1 February 2019, and the list reached 86 countries on 1 January 2020. US citizens were added on 1 January 2026. Everyone else can usually apply for a $20 e-visa, introduced on 15 July 2018.
Is there still a black market for dollars in Uzbekistan?
Not in any useful sense. Since the 5 September 2017 float, the bank rate has tracked the market, so street changers can't offer a better deal. Anyone who approaches you at a bazaar is offering risk, not value: counterfeit or withdrawn notes, or a short count. Use banks, hotel desks or exchange machines and keep the receipt.
Do tourists still need hotel registration slips?
Yes. Registration is required for stays over three days and it wasn't abolished in the reforms. Hotels and licensed guesthouses register you electronically for free and give you a slip. For homestays or stays with friends, your host or you can register through e-mehmon. Keep slips until you've left the country; border checks are rarer than before but still happen.
Is it safe to talk about politics in Uzbekistan as a tourist?
Private conversation is fine, and many Uzbeks will talk openly about prices, jobs and the reforms. The legal risk sits with public statements, especially online posts insulting the president, which are still prosecuted according to Human Rights Watch. Visitors are rarely the focus, but posting criticism of the head of state from inside the country isn't wise.
If you've got an older guidebook, the fastest way to date it is the money section. If it tells you to bring crisp dollars for the bazaar and a bag for the notes, it was written before September 2017, and everything else in it deserves a second check too.