The first ever Bukhara Biennial will take place in September 2025 in the city of Bukhara, a UNESCO World Heritage Site and UNESCO Creative City of Craft & Folk Art. The theme is Recipes for Broken Hearts, a concept taken from an Uzbek legend, and it will explore the healing power of art and culture. The biennial has been developed by the Uzbekistan Art and Culture Development Foundation (ACDF) and Gayane Umerova and is curated by Artistic Director Diana Campbell, with Wael Al Awar as Creative Director of Architecture. Confirmed international artists participating in the event include Antony Gormley (UK), Subodh Gupta (India), Liu Chuang (China), and Laila Gohar (Egypt).
The 43rd session of the UNESCO General Assembly will be held in Samarkand in November 2025. This is the first time in more than 40 years that the conference has taken place outside Paris. It will bring together representatives of all of UNESCO’s member states, plus consultants, curators, artists, and others engaged in the heritage and culture sectors. The General Assembly of States Parties to the World Heritage Convention will take place at the same time, during which the newest additions to the list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites will be announced.
The Islamic World Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (ICESCO) hase selected Samarkand as the 2025 Culture Capital in the Islamic World. The city will hold a programme of events throughout the year to highlight Uzbekistan’s Islamic cultural heritage, including the official re-opening of the Imam al-Bukhari shrine complex after extensive renovation, and the inauguration of the Centre for Islamic Civilisation (see below).
MUSEUMS AND ATTRACTIONS
The Centre for Islamic Civilisation will open in Tashkent in summer 2025. This seven-hectare site in the capital is a combined space for exhibitions, events, and education. It is intended to demonstrate Uzbekistan’s central role in Islamic cultural heritage and to highlight the contributions of the Islamic world to global civilisations. In addition to a library and national archives, the centre has eight galleries, designed by Wilmotte & Associés and arranged thematically: Pre-Islam, Islam, Education, Science, Architecture & Urbanism, Arts, Tradition, and Reinvention. The highlight will be the display of the Samarkand Codex, also known as the Usman Quran, which dates from the 7-8th centuries and is one of the world’s oldest surviving Qurans.
In autumn 2024, the Savitsky Museum in Nukus opened a stunning new gallery of avant garde art, and the renovation of a second gallery will be complete by the end of this year. These two new exhibition spaces were commissioned by ACDF, who worked with Italian curators Silvia Burini and Giuseppe Barbieri to conceive and develop a fitting showcase for the museum’s world-class collection of Russian and Turkestan avant-garde. The work is part of a long-term commitment to improve the museum’s facilities, raise international awareness of its artworks, and to attract more tourists to Karakalpakstan, an autonomous republic within Uzbekistan.
The Qatar Fund for Development has agreed a $4.18 million grant for the renovation of the Bibi Khanym Mosque in Samarkand. Built by Emperor Timur (Tamerlane) in the early 1400s, it is one of the key monuments in the city’s UNESCO World Heritage Site. Work will be led by the Aga Khan Trust for Culture (AKTC), who have previously renovated other high-profile timurid monuments including Humayun’s Tomb in Delhi and Babur’s Gardens in Kabul. Plans include strengthening the mosque’s fragile structure, and restoring its turquoise domes, portal and minarets, returning Bibi Khanym to its original splendor.
PLANES, TRAINS, AND AUTOMOBILES…
The 2025 season of Michael Portillo’s popular television series Great Continental Railway Journeys will air on BBC2 in April. The new series includes five episodes filmed in Uzbekistan, with Michael traveling on the Afrosiyob high speed train, visiting the subterranean art gallery that is the Tashkent Metro, and learning about the country’s history and culture, from the Silk Roads to the present day.
The long-awaited extension of Uzbekistan’s high speed train service to Khiva will be operational from September 2025. The city’s new train station is already open and Uzbekistan Railways completed successful tests on the recently electrified line in autumn 2024. Passengers will therefore be able to travel from Tashkent via Samarkand and Bukhara to Khiva in under seven hours, significantly reducing travel time between the three most popular UNESCO World Heritage Sites.
The inaugural journey of the Jipek Joly tourist train took place in November 2024 on a five-day journey from Almaty (Kazakhstan) to Tashkent and will have scheduled departures throughout the 2025 tourist season. This comfortable sleeper train has a capacity of 115 passengers, plus a restaurant car. The train is operated by Kazakhstan Temir Zholy (KTZ), Kazakhstan’s national railway operator, and can be booked through local travel agents.
Uzbekistan Airways has increased the number of flights in its winter 2024/25 schedule to improve international and domestic connectivity. Passengers from the UK can now fly direct from London to Tahskent three times a week all year round; and the national carrier has launched new routes from Tashkent to Goa (India) and Lahore (Pakistan), both of which commenced in autumn 2024. The airline will start direct flights from Madrid to Tashkent in summer 2025, and plans to operate twice weekly flights from Tokyo Narita for the full summer season.
The 10th season of Top Gear France, produced by BBC Studio France, includes an episode shot in Uzbekistan. It will be broadcast early in 2025 on RMC Découverte. Presenters Akram, FranckMyLife, and POG toured the country this autumn. It is part of Uzbekistan’s wider efforts to promote itself to French visitors and encourage Air France to open a direct route to Tashkent.
ALSO GOOD TO KNOW
Uzbekistan received the Gold Award in the Most Desirable Emerging Destination category at the 2024 Wanderlust Reader Travel Awards.
Bradt Travel Guides will publish the 4th, fully-updated edition of their Uzbekistan guidebook in April 2025.
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