Outdoor advertising in Shymkent

Advertising faces in the catalogue: 36. Addresses under them: 36. Owners of the structures: 1. Every face comes with an exact address, plus a photo and a rate-card price where the owner has published them, and we confirm availability with the owners before an estimate goes out.

Formats in the catalogue: 2, and Media facades holds the most faces — 26 of them. Kazakh rules sort media by area and type rather than by format name, and the state fee is charged by those same bands:

• units under 2 m² and city-format lightboxes;
• boards by area: 2–5, 5–10, 10–20 m² and on up to "over 70 m²";
• illuminated rooftop installations;
• video screens under and over 20 m², running-text displays;
• street furniture, flags and awnings, portable mobile units.

Street furniture works differently from every other medium here: advertising goes on it only where the furniture itself was installed by the akimat, or by an investor under a contract with the akimat awarded through an open tender (clause 9 of the city rules).

Digital surfaces in the catalogue: 36 of 36. Take a screen when the creative and the schedule have to change mid-campaign — for events and sales; a printed board carries one creative for the whole paid term.

A screen carries its own line in the Tax Code fee table: video up to 20 m² costs the same as a printed face of the same band, above 20 m² it is 30 MCI a month, and a running-text display 3 MCI.

No installation permit is issued — placement runs on notice. The notice goes to the local executive body at least five working days before the intended placement date, and if no answer comes within four working days the structure may go up on the dates declared; written comments, where they are given, have to be resolved first. Three things are attached to the notice:

• details of the period and the place of placement;
• proof of payment for the first month;
• a free-form description of the advertising in Kazakh and Russian, with sketches.

The procedure is set by rules approved by city maslikhat decision No. 51/429-6s of 27 June 2019: the act is adopted by the maslikhat, the elected assembly, and not by the akimat.

A Kazakh version is mandatory: the advertising law requires advertising in the state language, while Russian and any other language stay at the advertiser's discretion. The language law fixes the layout too — state language left or above, Russian right or below, in letters of the same size.

In Shymkent it also sits inside the procedure: the description filed with the notice is submitted in both languages, so the bilingual set is ready before the placement. There is no double charge for it: the fee is per face whatever the number of images and running lines in either language. The fine under the administrative code reaches 400 MCI, and 650 MCI on a repeat within a year.

Clause 12 of the city rules lists where outdoor advertising cannot go, repeating the ban in the advertising law:

• monuments of history and culture and their protection zones;
• religious buildings, their grounds and their fences;
• specially protected natural areas;
• pavements and cycle lanes — no land for a structure is granted there;
• the surface of the roadway, boarding areas and stops, where advertising may not be applied at all.

A structure must also not resemble a road sign, obscure one or dazzle drivers. The city amenity rules (maslikhat decision No. 60/521-6s of 31 January 2020) add their own: newspapers, posters, playbills and notices may be pasted up only on boards and columns installed for the purpose, while an advertising banner is named outright as a way to screen a stalled construction site.

Yes, and under a rule of its own: advertising on vehicles is placed with no notice filed and no placement fee charged (clause 20 of the city rules). Liveries that merely identify the vehicle are not counted as outdoor advertising at all — nor are shop signs, opening hours, event posters in designated places, fuel prices at a filling station or exchange rates beside a currency booth.

Shymkent has no urban rail and no electric street transport: in the Bureau of National Statistics transport table for 2025 the row for the city carries a dash in the trolleybus, tram and underground columns, and LRT and BRT exist only as design proposals for 2030 and 2040. Reach here is built with street formats.