Independent Uzbekistan has never conducted a general census. That could finally change, with Uzbek authorities planning to conduct both a population and an agricultural census in January-February 2026.
Last week, Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev was briefed on proposals for the census. According to the current proposal, the census will take place form January 15 to February 28, 2026 and be conducted using a combination of online and in-person information gathering.
Uzbekistan adopted a law on the census in 2020, which mandated that a census be conducted once every 10 years, and an agricultural census every five years. But to date, only a trial population census has been conducted in four regions in 2021.
The present proposal for a full general census has shrunk the number of questions to be asked from 328 to 71. According to officials, “The census will create a unified database on the composition of our country’s 38 million population, migration, marital status, types of employment, and sources of income, in accordance with the recommendations of the 2020 Conference of European Statisticians.”
Mahalla representatives, who will take part in gathering information during the door-to-door phase of the census, will reportedly undergo special training.
This is not the first time Uzbek authorities have announced a plan for a census. A February 2019 presidential decree set 2022 as the date for the census. The 2020 census law set out the parameters, but the pandemic forestalled progress. In November 2020, the State Statistics Committee postponed the census from 2022 to 2023. But 2023 passed and no census took place. In March 2024, Uzbek authorities tried again to schedule the census, eyeing 2025-2026 to conduct it. Later in 2024, a draft presidential decree published for public comment suggested July 15 to August 21, 2026 for the census.
Uzbekistan’s last census was taken in 1989, in the twilight years of the Soviet Union. At that time, Soviet Uzbekistan’s population numbered just shy of 20 million – of which 71 percent were reported as Uzbek, with the remainder including Russians (6 percent), Tajiks (5 percent), Kazakhs (4 percent), Karakalpaks (2 percent), and others.
Uzbek authorities estimate the country’s population as 38 million at present, rising by a million each year. But the true population of Uzbekistan is unknown, as is its actual ethnic makeup.
Official census figures reflect the circumstances of the time as much as they do the population. In a 1996 paper for Central Asian Survey, Richard Foltz wrote, “Minority populations are generally the principal victims of national identity movements, and the Tajiks of Uzbekistan are no exception.”
He went on to write:
Official census figures for Uzbekistan put the Tajik population at around 5 percent, a figure repeated uncritically by most Western scholars, journalists, and travel-writers alike. Tajiks around the country, meanwhile, insist that the figure is more like 25-30 percent, with Tajiks accounting for perhaps 70 percent of the population of Samarkand, Uzbekistan’s second largest city and former capital, and as much as 90 percent in Bukhara.
Another facet of Uzbekistan’s population that the census will illuminate is the scale of labor migration. Ostensibly, the online aspect of the census will enable the state to capture information about its citizens working abroad. Uzbekistan’s first president, Islam Karimov, cared notoriously little for Uzbeks pushed by economic circumstances into labor migration. In 2013 he referred to labor migrants as “lazy.”
“I describe as lazy those who go to Moscow and sweep its streets and squares,” he said. “One feels disgusted with Uzbeks going there for a slice of bread.”
Mirziyoyev has taken a different approach, acknowledging the existence and hard work of labor migrants. The Uzbek state has also sought to pioneer new markets for Uzbek labor migrants, attract back to Uzbekistan highly-skilled Uzbek workers, and in general deal with the reality of the Uzbek economy’s challenges in the face of the country’s booming population.
The results of the census now planned for early 2026 would presumably be available in 2027.