Almaty, Kazakhstan | May 18, 2026 — On May 16, the first-ever Night of Museums in the history of Almaty Museum of Arts (ALMA) took place on an unprecedented scale. In just six hours, from 6:00 PM to midnight, the cultural space welcomed 6,314 visitors.

The extraordinary excitement and the queue stretching hundreds of meters demonstrated the enormous and growing demand among Almaty residents and city guests for contemporary art and large-scale cultural events.

Almaty Museum of Arts expresses its deep gratitude to all visitors for their genuine interest, inspiring energy, and remarkable patience while waiting in line. The visitors’ endurance transformed the unavoidable wait at the entrance into part of a collective festive performance that united thousands of like-minded people.

“Such a phenomenal influx of visitors is the best indicator of how much Almaty needs large-scale cultural events in a new format. The queues we saw at the entrance were not simply evidence of record attendance, they demonstrated people’s sincere and genuine interest in contemporary art. We are endlessly grateful to every visitor for their patience, sensitivity, and the incredible atmosphere they created. This offline sell-out proved that our museum is becoming one of the main points of attraction for residents and guests of Almaty today. It is especially valuable that more than six thousand people chose art on an evening when a major concert featuring world-famous stars was taking place at the Central Stadium,” says Gaukhar Satpayeva, Communications Director at ALMA.

Admission to the museum and the specially designed program for the evening was free of charge. Moreover, all guests attending Night of Museums received special open-date tickets that can be used once again during 2026 for another free museum visit.

The special Night of Museums program at ALMA focused on interdisciplinarity and immersion into contemporary art practices:

• Musical performance by German Popov, renowned multi-instrumentalist, composer, and researcher. German presented a three-hour program (7:30 PM–11:00 PM). His set combined traditional Eastern motifs with experimental sound processing, vinyl tracks, and compositions from his personal albums, including audio materials created in collaboration with artist Almagul Menlibayeva.

• Educational block and video art. The lecture How to Watch Video Art and an exclusive screening of video art from Central Asia gathered a full audience at the Al-Farabi lecture hall. Despite the conceptual complexity and avant-garde nature of the genre, viewers demonstrated a high level of engagement.

• Interactive zones. From 6:00 PM to 9:00 PM, the museum halls hosted the Nobai drawing club organized by the educational program Şeberhana, as well as the Aşyq Şeberhana workshops, where visitors could learn paper weaving techniques.

The sold-out Night of Museums became a vivid prologue to a major international digital event. On May 18, International Museum Day, ALMA became a key participant in the global launch of TikTok’s new Comes Alive program (as part of the Museums Come Alive stage). TikTok is bringing together iconic global institutions to introduce millions of viewers to art through live-streaming formats. ALMA entered the exclusive short list of project participants alongside such giants as the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) (New York), The Metropolitan Museum of Art (The Met) (New York), and the Grand Egyptian Museum (Giza).

The theme of this year’s International Museum Day is Museums Bridging Divided Worlds. ALMA’s participation in an initiative of this scale confirms the status of the first and largest contemporary art museum in Central Asia as a leading player on the global art scene.

The live broadcast took place on May 18 from 12:00 PM to 2:00 PM (Almaty time) on the museum’s account (@almatymuseumofarts) and the account of a well-known Kazakh creator Nurzhan (@nurzhan_cello), who led the virtual tour together with museum staff. Users from around the world explored ALMA’s unique architecture, key spaces, and works by outstanding artists in real time. The livestream focused on Almagul Menlibayeva’s retrospective exhibition I Understand Everything and the exhibition Qonaqtar (guests), which explores themes of migration and hospitality traditions in Central Asia.

Specially for the event, TikTok LIVE and ALMA launched a virtual gift called Artist, inspired by the museum.

The success of ALMA’s first Night of Museums demonstrated that culture and intellectual leisure in Kazakhstan are reaching a completely new level, becoming a conscious alternative to conventional entertainment for thousands of people.

Photos can be downloaded via the link below. Photographer: Alexey Poptsov.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1mUILEFQSnV7hJZHH-UPQedAZMkZbwUiJ?usp=sharing