Outdoor advertising in Samarkand City

Advertising faces in the catalogue: 156. Addresses under them: 119. Owners: 2. Every face carries an exact address, plus a photo and a rate-card price where the owner has published them, and we check availability with the owner of the structure.

Formats in the catalogue: 6, and "Billboards" holds the most faces — 129. The carriers themselves are named in article 23 of the advertising act No. ZRU-776:

• pylons, prismatrons, billboards;
• video screens and electronic displays;
• portable structures — columns and posters;
• roofs, facades and walls of buildings, bridges and overpasses;
• transport stops and street furniture — columns, car parks, payphones.

A "typical set of outdoor advertising objects" may narrow the permitted types and sizes further, and the body entitled to draw one up for this territory is the hokimiyat of Samarkand Region, not the city.

No structure may stand within 50 metres of the boundary of an advertising-free zone, and cultural heritage and religious sites are declared such zones outright — annex 6 to Cabinet of Ministers decree No. 104. In Samarkand that is the binding limit: the monuments sit inside residential mahallas, which is exactly where the footfall is.

The list of those zones for the region is drawn up by the hokimiyat of Samarkand Region and agreed with the Cultural Heritage Agency; the regional council of deputies may shorten or extend the radius. The Agency issues a copy of a monument's protected-perimeter project free of charge within three working days, so the boundaries can be read before booking.

Digital surfaces in the catalogue: 76 of 156. Take a screen when the creative and the schedule have to change mid-campaign — for events and seasonal demand; a printed board carries one creative for the whole term. The law draws the line itself: video screens and electronic displays are listed in article 23 of act No. ZRU-776 as carrier types of their own.

Through the region, not through the city. The hokimiyat of Samarkand Region draws up the placement scheme, approves it by decision of the hokim, publishes it on its own site and issues the advertising site passport; on state land and in state buildings the site itself is sold at an open electronic auction — annexes 6 and 7 to Cabinet of Ministers decree No. 104.

A site in the scheme is cleared through an electronic system with the regional construction department, the road safety unit, whoever manages the plot and the utility owners: they answer within 10 working days, and silence counts as approval. The passport is annulled if nothing is erected within six months of its issue.

In the state language: article 6 of the advertising act No. ZRU-776 requires advertising to be distributed in the state language, which in Uzbekistan is Uzbek. A translation is a right rather than a duty, but on an outdoor surface it must sit horizontally below the Uzbek text, take up no more than forty per cent of the advertising area and be set in a smaller size. Trademarks, service marks and logos stay in their original language.

Neither the city nor the region has a language rule of its own, and being a tourist city buys no exemption. The forty-per-cent rule changes the composition of the board itself, which is why we look at the artwork before it goes to print.

Trams and buses. The tram lines are being built under presidential decree No. PP-2748 of 1 February 2017: 34.8 km in the project, 11.4 km in stage one; how many routes and kilometres are in service today is not published by any official source. That the tram still runs is clear from the 2026 decision to move tram services onto a gross-cost contract.

Buses are run by the state institution Samarqandyolovchitrans, and a new bus terminal is going up at 23 Gagarin Street. Journeys carried within the city in 2025 came to 64,733.1 thousand — journeys, not individual passengers.