World Nomad Games Guide: Kyrgyzstan 2026

The 6th World Nomad Games are happening right now in Kyrgyzstan, from 31 August to 6 September 2026 — the event returning to the country that invented it. The opening ceremony is in Bishkek on 31 August, Kyrgyzstan's Independence Day and the 35th anniversary of independence; the competition itself runs from 1 to 6 September around the north shore of Issyk-Köl, split between the Cholpon-Ata hippodrome and sports complexes and the Kyrchyn jailoo up in the hills. If you are on the ground this week, this is where to point yourself. If you have missed it, the last section tells you how to see the same skills any month of the year.

What the World Nomad Games actually are

The World Nomad Games are a competitive festival of ethnosport — the traditional games of the nomadic world, staged with the seriousness of a real championship rather than as a folklore show. Wrestlers, horsemen, archers, hunters and board-game players from dozens of countries compete for medals in disciplines that until recently survived only at weddings, funerals and village holidays. Kyrgyzstan conceived the Games as a cultural-diplomacy project, first proposing them in 2012 and staging the founding edition in 2014.

Why it matters: for a small mountain country whose national identity is built on a nomadic past that the Soviet century tried hard to erase, the Games are a deliberate act of revival. They have given a competition structure — federations, rulebooks, weight classes, televised finals — to practices that were fading, and they have pulled them onto a world stage. UNESCO recognised the project itself in 2021 as a model of good safeguarding practice, which is unusual: the register normally lists traditions, not the events built to protect them.

Expect two very different atmospheres. Down at Cholpon-Ata you get stadium sport — horse racing, wrestling bouts, packed stands. Up at Kyrchyn you get the cultural heart: a temporary city of yurts, eagle hunters on the hillsides, felt-makers, blacksmiths and Manas reciters. Most people who travel for the Games come for Kyrchyn.

The editions, and where they have been held

Kyrgyzstan hosted the first three Games, all at Cholpon-Ata, before the event went on tour. It has now brought it home.

Edition	Year	Host	Note
I	2014	Cholpon-Ata, Kyrgyzstan	The founding edition, small and improvised (~19 countries)
II	2016	Cholpon-Ata, Kyrgyzstan	40 nations; the edition that made the Games internationally famous
III	2018	Cholpon-Ata, Kyrgyzstan	37 sports; presidents of six countries at the opening
IV	2022	Iznik, Turkey	First edition outside Kyrgyzstan; ~102 countries reported
V	2024	Astana, Kazakhstan	~89 countries
VI	2026	Bishkek + Issyk-Köl, Kyrgyzstan	The Games return home; opening on Independence Day

There was no edition in 2020 because of the pandemic. For the 2026 Games, Kyrgyzstan reclaimed exclusive trademark rights to the World Nomad Games name in December 2025, and the mascot is the snow leopard. Note that reported participation figures bounce around — 102 countries in 2022, 89 in 2024, with roughly 89-plus expected in 2026 — so treat the series as popular rather than as a straight line of growth. The host for the edition after 2026 has not been announced.

The signature sports

The programme is large, and counts of "how many sports" range from around 21 to more than 40 depending on whether sub-disciplines are tallied separately. These are the ones worth understanding before you sit down to watch.

Sport	Kyrgyz name	What happens
Kok-boru	kök-börü / ulak-tartysh	Two mounted teams fight over a headless goat carcass (~30–35 kg) and try to drop it into the opponents' raised goal, the tai kazan. The headline event.
Long-distance racing	at-chabysh, baige, kunan chabysh	Cross-country horse races, traditionally 20–30 km; separate races for younger horses. Jorgo salysh judges a horse's smooth ambling gait rather than speed.
Horseback wrestling	er-enish (oodarysh)	Two riders grapple bare-handed and try to drag each other out of the saddle to the ground. Bouts are short.
Eagle hunting	salbuurun / berkutchi	Trained golden eagles and taigan sighthounds worked to a lure or dragged skin; archery from horseback rounds out the hunting programme.
Belt wrestling	alysh	Upright wrestling in jackets and belts, both hands gripping the opponent's belt at all times; scored by how the opponent lands.
Kyrgyz kurosh	kurosh	Jacket wrestling by weight class, one of several grappling styles on the mat.
Toguz korgool	toguz korgool	A mancala-family board game on two rows of nine pits; taken as seriously as chess and taught in schools. UNESCO-listed since 2020.
Ordo	ordo	A ring game with sheep knucklebones representing a khan's camp; players flick a heavy shooting bone to knock pieces out. A tactical team game.

A few things to know before you watch. Kok-boru is a real, physical contact sport played with an actual carcass — do not expect a sanitised "horseback polo". It is bloody, it is loud, and it is the most exciting thing on the schedule. It was inscribed on UNESCO's list of intangible cultural heritage in 2017. You may also see tyiyn enmei, where a rider snatches coins from the ground at a gallop, and kyz kuumai ("chase the girl"), a courtship race that is often wrongly described abroad as bride kidnapping — it is not that, and the two should never be confused.

The Kyrchyn ethno-village

Kyrchyn (also written Kyrchyn Gorge or Kyrchyn Jailoo) is a real summer pasture in the hills inland from Cholpon-Ata, roughly 40–70 km from the lake shore by road. For each Kyrgyzstan-hosted edition it becomes a temporary city of several hundred yurts, and it is the photographic and cultural centre of the Games.

This is not a stage set. Regional delegations each raise a camp, cook their own food, and demonstrate the crafts that fill a real nomad summer: felt-making and shyrdak stitching, yurt-raising, blacksmithing, bone and leather work. There is live music on the komuz and the kyl kyyak, jaw-harp playing, and recitation from the Manas epic by manaschi bards who chant it from memory. The archery, the falconry and eagle-hunting demonstrations, and the hunting-with-dogs displays all happen here; the horse and wrestling events are down at Cholpon-Ata.

Go to Kyrchyn early in the day. It is crowded during Games week, the road up is slow, and the light and the crowds are both better in the morning. Outside Games years it reverts to an ordinary jailoo with grazing families and a few day-trip yurt camps.

How to attend and spectate

The competition is spread across four main venues, and you will want private transport to move between them.

• Cholpon-Ata hippodrome — horse racing and kok-boru.
• Cholpon-Ata sports complex — wrestling and martial arts.
• Rukh Ordo cultural centre — strength contests and board games.
• Kyrchyn ethno-village — archery, falconry and the whole cultural programme.

Tickets for the opening ceremony are handled through the state portal ticket.gov.kg and a passport is required to buy. Many of the Cholpon-Ata and Kyrchyn events have been reported as free to watch, with a few — kok-boru finals in particular — ticketed separately. Ticketing arrangements were still being finalised close to the event, so check the official channel on the day rather than trusting older write-ups.

On logistics: Bishkek to Cholpon-Ata is about 3–4 hours by road, and Kyrchyn is a further slow drive inland from there. Base yourself in Cholpon-Ata or along the Issyk-Köl north shore for the competition days and in Bishkek for the ceremonies. Two warnings for 2026 specifically: the Games coincide with a regional summit in the same window, which means heavy security, road closures and full hotels; and this is the peak of the Issyk-Köl summer season anyway, so book accommodation as far ahead as you can. If you have not locked in a bed and a driver, do that before anything else.

Eagle hunting, up close

The eagle hunters — berkutchi in Kyrgyz — are the image most people carry away from the Games, and they are worth understanding properly. The bird is the golden eagle (berkut); females are used because they are larger, and a working bird weighs roughly 5–7 kg. A hunter and a bird form a partnership that lasts years, and traditionally the eagle is released back to the wild in its prime so it can breed.

The key fact for anyone booking an "eagle hunting" trip: real hunting is a winter activity, roughly November to February, when there is snow to track on. What you see at the Games, or on a summer day trip, is a demonstration — the hunter releases the bird from a hillside and it flies down to a swung lure or a dragged fox skin. That is not fake. The bird, the skill and the family tradition are all real, and the fee keeps the practice alive. But no animal is killed and it is not a hunt. Be wary of a tethered bird posed for photos all day at a roadside; ask whether the bird actually hunts in winter and whether the family will release it. Falconry has been UNESCO-listed since 2010, and Kyrgyzstan joined the multinational listing in 2021.

Seeing the same traditions year-round

Miss the Games and you have not missed the culture. The single best base for eagle hunting is Bokonbaevo, on the quieter south shore of Issyk-Köl, where several berkutchi families give demonstrations — usually a half-day session, roughly $20–40 (about 1,750–3,500 som) per person, bookable a day or two ahead through the local community-tourism office. Nearby Kyzyl-Tuu is the yurt-makers' village, where families build boz-üy commercially and often bundle an eagle demonstration with a yurt-raising. Joining a genuine working hunt is possible but must be arranged in advance, happens only in winter, costs more like $50–80 a day, and frequently ends with no kill at all.

Kok-boru is played across the country in the cooler months, clustering around autumn, Nowruz and family memorial feasts — ask locally rather than expecting a fixed schedule. The Issyk-Köl south shore also runs a summer calendar of ticketed festivals — a birds-of-prey festival near Bokonbaevo in August, horse-game days at lakeside villages — that recur on roughly the same weeks each year; treat published dates as a seasonal pattern and confirm before you travel. And a multi-day horse trek out of Kyzart or Jyrgalan, with nights in a jailoo yurt, gets you closer to the living version of all this than any grandstand can. The wooden churches and Chinese-form mosque of Karakol make a natural cultural pairing at the east end of the lake.

Want to build the culture into a wider trip? Browse our culture tours and lake-and-nature itineraries around Issyk-Köl, and pin the next Kyrgyzstan-hosted edition of the Games in your calendar.