World Nomad Games: Did the experiment work?

Photo by Albert Otkjaer

As the 30th anniversary of the Soviet Union’s collapse came into view, Central Asia found itself still negotiating how to appear before the world.

The early years of freedom required invention: new narratives that would cast the Soviet years as one chapter among many, not the origin of the state itself.

Emphasis fell on pre-Russian statehood, Kazakhstan’s Golden Horde, Uzbekistan’s Timurid Empire, and the nomadic traditions that threaded through the steppe.

These were stories told mainly for domestic audiences, part of the effort to consolidate national identity. But by the 2010s, a new challenge arose: how to communicate that identity beyond national borders.

With that thought in mind, Kyrgyzstan turned to sports. And so, the World Nomad Games were born.

Launched in 2014, the six-day event is the only multi-sport competition devoted to the traditional sports of nomadic peoples.

Held every two years, the games aim to preserve and promote steppe culture.

Many of the disciplines draw directly from survival skills once needed on the plains: folk wrestling, bone-throwing, falconry, archery, and horse racing.

If the 100-metre sprint is the climax of the Olympics, kokpar (or kokboru in Kyrgyzstan), a ferocious horseback struggle to heave a goat carcass into a goal, plays that role at the World Nomad Games.

The World Nomad Games were the brainchild of Askhat Akibayev, the head the World Ethnogames Confederation, a body behind many large-scale ethno-sport and cultural-heritage initiatives.

Akibayev was plain about his hopes for the games.

“For Kyrgyzstan this is a unique chance to show itself in all its richness… and strengthen its position on the world stage,” he told the Kyrgyz newspaper Vecherny Bishkek in 2014.

But this undertaking was as much about politics and diplomacy as it was about sports and culture.

Akibayev imagined the games as a kind of cultural brand, a vehicle to market Central Asia’s nomadic heritage to the world.

Almazbek Atambayev, then president of Kyrgyzstan, saw something larger. For him, the World Nomad Games were a geopolitical opportunity; a way for one of the region’s poorer states to shape the cultural narrative of Central Asia itself.

He first pitched the idea in 2011 at a regional meeting of Central Asian leaders. The following year Kyrgyzstan formally launched the project at the Summit of Turkic States.

Atambayev declared that Kyrgyzstan was a “sacred nomadic land,” and that the games would draw tourists not only to Kyrgyzstan but across the Turkic world, thereby extending a local, national initiative into a broader cultural sphere.

Central Asian states, particularly Kyrgyzstan, have limited hard power but crave relevance. These World Nomad Games were intended to let them project leadership without provoking Russia or China. Hosting athletes, delegations, and media from across the Turkic world allowed Bishkek to perform regional coordination in a context no one could object to: cultural diplomacy as a non-threatening substitute for political alignment.

The competition offered an uplifting spectacle of unity and tradition while the region faced the familiar scourges of inflation, corruption, and political fatigue. (Atambayev had come to power in 2010 off the back of a bloody popular uprising that was followed a few months later by a wave of deadly ethnic unrest in Kyrgyzstan’s south).

Though engineered from above, the World Nomad Games have expanded steadily since their debut.

The first edition in 2014 drew 19 countries, 583 athletes, and 10 ethno-sports.

By 2016, participation had risen to 62 countries, 1,200 athletes, and 26 sports; by 2018, to 74 countries, some 2,000 athletes, and 37 events.

The World Nomad Games have clearly gained global appeal. Nations with deep nomadic traditions, such as Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Mongolia, and Turkey, regularly compete, alongside unlikely entrants such as Argentina, Ecuador, Estonia, the United States, and Ghana.

As a branding exercise, the games may be deemed a success.

By 2016, the second World Nomad Games drew some 60,000 visitors to Kyrgyzstan, proof that the experiment had marketable appeal.

As a state-engineered spectacle, the competition has effectively allowed Central Asian governments to trademark nomadism, turning shared heritage into a recognizable cultural brand.

But is that all? Is this just another top-down, government-funded initiative implemented for its own sake? Or do these games actually mean something to the people, to the athletes? 

She described the contrast between the two experiences:

“Turkey was notable in that it held the games on the shores of a lake, the very place where the Ottoman Empire was founded. There was a kind of reference, so to speak, to the nomadic origins of modern Turks. The significance of that location lay mainly in this symbolic connection. It was meant to highlight its importance for the local population rather than for outsiders. One could say that the games in Turkey took place more in the format of a festival. Everything there was organised primarily for the local community, concerts, stages, performances. Yes, of course, it was a large-scale event, but it seemed aimed less at sports and more at spectacle and performance value.”

Astana 2024 was a completely different story.

“From the outset, the goal was for Kazakhstan to raise the [World] Nomad Games to a new level, comparable to the Olympic Games,” Tlepbergen said. “That meant matching the Olympics in terms of importance for athletes, the scale of competition, the diversity of sports presented, and the way the infrastructure was distributed among various sports facilities. In that sense, it resembled the Olympic Games much more closely.” 

If Tlepbergen’s view reflects how the games have matured, Danir Daukey’s shows where they might go next.

At 51, the founder of Daukey Kokpar Club in Almaty, the first of its kind in the world, believes the project remains unfinished.

“A very good idea, a very good project, but it didn’t reach its potential,” he said.

For the World Nomad Games to become truly international, Daukey argues, they must be made more accessible to foreign teams.

He has even proposed his own version of kokpar: three riders a side, instead of the traditional twelve. The logic is practical: few countries outside Central Asia can afford to send a dozen athletes and as many horses. Reducing team size would lower the barrier to entry.

“The World Nomad Games became very important,” Daukey said. “The last games in Astana made them important. After the Soviet era, Kazakhs were not that good in ethnic things… so everything is new for most of us.”

If Daukey speaks for the region’s rediscovery of its own traditions, others have found meaning from afar.

Bryan Lunt, a 41-year-old American archer, had been practicing Kazakh traditional archery for two years before competing at the fifth World Nomad Games in Astana in 2024.

Already active in the Asian traditional archery community, he had long followed the games online and hoped to take part. In his words, they are “kinda famous on the internet” and “a pretty big deal for the Central Asians I know.”

Lunt recalls with fondness afternoons spent at the Ethno-Aul (Ethno Village): “There were food vendors, regional and city cultural displays. They had artists showing their art, musicians, and museum displays.”

Lunt’s enthusiasm was not unique. As the games grew, they began drawing a wider circle of participants from outside the region, many encountering Central Asia for the first time through sport.

Ayesha Mayat, 30, was part of Team Australia’s traditional archery squad at the Astana edition. She and her teammate won gold in the team Zhamby event, a form of traditional Kazakh archery.

For Mayat, the World Nomad Games felt “bigger than the Olympics, or at least on that level.”

“The moment it hit me was when we landed at the airport and there were volunteers there to welcome us, and signage throughout the entire city,” she said.

Billboards bearing images of the World Nomad Games can be seen in Astana to this day along the road that connects the international airport to the city center.

“It really hit when we were told we were doing an opening ceremony parade,” Mayat said. “They had us in one stadium, a mid-sized one, just to wait in before walking to the main stadium. It [the main stadium] was a proper concert venue, with the works.”

Like Lunt, Mayat also spent time in the Ethno-Aul.

“There were old ladies doing their crafts on their looms… it was a good experience because they put all the cultural aspects of their country into one place where people could explore them,” she said. “I did more research on Kazakhstan after the games and learned that they have eleven regions, all so different. It would probably take me a couple of years to explore just one of them, so it was great to see everything come together in the village.”

Accounts like these suggest that the World Nomad Games have fulfilled one of their founding ambitions: to launch Brand Central Asia, a shared, positive image of the region built not on politics or power, but on culture. Conceived as a unifying showcase of nomadic heritage, the games offered Central Asian states a way to present themselves to the world through a language of pride and continuity rather than rivalry or crisis.

The organisers have struggled to move beyond a folkloristically bounded framework, however. The games still revolve around ethnic sports and symbols rather than broader, civic or regional participation.

And it is sobering that many ordinary Central Asians appear indifferent or unaware of the games.

Tlepbergen recalls her taxi ride to the opening ceremony in Astana.

“I told the taxi driver I was on my way to the opening ceremony,” Tlepbergen recounted. “He said: ‘I’ve never heard of it. I only know about kokpar, that’s it.’ I said: ‘Well, today I’m going to the opening of the Nomad Games.’ He asked: ‘What’s that?’ I said: ‘Look, the banners are hanging.’ He replied: ‘That’s just decoration.’”

There is a risk of overstating the case here. Economic and social concerns typically dominate the public agenda and the policy decision of Central Asia’s government. Cultural heritage is unquestionably important, but nevertheless a secondary concern.

But that is not cause for despair. Many in the region’s sporting community believe the World Nomad Games still have room to grow.

Daukey’s suggestion is practical: make the competition easier for foreigners to join. Reduce the cost and complexity of participation, and the games could become truly international.

Tlepbergen takes a longer view, albeit one contingent on some best-case scenarios.

“Perhaps in the next, say, 15 to 20 years, I think it may reach a level where people follow it on a large scale like the Olympic Games and cheer for their own,” she said. “With the improvement of the economy, people’s quality of life, there will probably be more interest in ethnic sports, culture, opera, and so on. These are, in principle, the activities you pay attention to only when you have already fulfilled your basic needs.”

The spark is there for the World Nomad Games to grow into something larger, an event that speaks not only to heritage, but to the modern life of the region. The games could aid in Central Asian integration, creating a coherent regional identity out five very distinct countries.

Interacting beyond the dry world of politics and the economy may enable countries to build trust and familiarity, and long-term cooperation between states. This kind of shared identity cannot be created by business alone.

Precedents already exist for events that bring nations together through sport and culture on the basis of regional-cultural proximity or, as is also the case in Central Asia, a shared historical heritage.

The Commonwealth Games, for example, are a multi-sport event for countries that were once part of the British Empire. The Francophonie Games are a combined sport and cultural event for countries where French is spoken or institutionally recognized.

Closer to home, there are the Commonwealth of Independent States Games, a regional multi-sport event for countries belonging to the eponymous intergovernmental bloc formed after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The World Nomad Games differ from other regional multi-nation sports events, however, in that they frame participation not around political membership (as in the CIS Games), linguistic affiliation (as in the Francophonie Games), or post-imperial networks (as in the Commonwealth Games), but around a shared civilizational and historical imaginary of nomadic heritage.

Where Commonwealth and Francophonie events implicitly convert old imperial structures into soft-power communities through sport and culture, and the CIS Games ritualize a post-Soviet sphere under a low-politics banner, the World Nomad Games build a coalition around an ancestral cultural repertoire that is neither overtly geopolitical nor legally institutionalized.

Their legitimacy is symbolic rather than based on treaty.

The games have been built. The real challenge is to make them matter, to turn spectacle into substance, and heritage into a shared regional story.

Catherine Nixon is completing a master’s degree in Russian and Slavic Studies at New York University. She interned with CAPS Unlock between July and August 2025 as part of the organization’s ongoing internship program, which supports early-career researchers and writers exploring issues across Central Asia.