The President Of Uzbekistan Has Approved A New Version Of The Latin-based Alphabet

It took the country 33 years to transition to the new alphabet.

The President of Uzbekistan Shavkat Mirziyoyev signed a decree under which the republic will switch to new version of the alphabet, similar to the writing systems used in Turkic-speaking countries. This was announced by the head of the presidential administration, Saida Mirziyoyeva. Until now, the republic had been using two writing systems—Cyrillic and Latin.

“A long-standing historical mistake has finally been corrected. Today, our president signed a law on improving the Uzbek alphabet, based on the Latin script. This issue has been the subject of controversy for many years, and there was no end in sight,” Mirziyoyeva wrote on her Telegram channel.

The Uzbek alphabet now consists of 28 letters and one apostrophe, instead of the previous 26 letters and three letter combinations. It is expected that these changes will help spread the Uzbek language and simplify its use in the digital environment. The transition will be phased: textbooks, signs, and other labels will be replaced as they reach the end of their useful life. There will be no replacement of the national currency or official documents.

The Latin alphabet, which replaced the Arabic script, had been officially used in Uzbekistan since 1929. The transition to the Cyrillic alphabet took place in 1940–1942 in the Uzbek SSR. A few years after gaining independence—on September 2, 1993—the Uzbek parliament passed a law “On the Introduction of the Uzbek Alphabet Based on the Latin Script.” Its final version was not approved by the Senate until September 10, 2026. The transition to the new alphabet took the republic 33 years.

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