New Uzbek Alphabet
On July 7, 2026, the Legislative Chamber of the Oliy Majlis passed a law amending the Latin-based Uzbek alphabet and sent it to the Senate. Four two-character combinations are being replaced with single diacritic letters.
What's changing
Instead of the current 26 letters and three letter combinations, the alphabet will consist of 28 letters and one apostrophe. Only four combinations change — the rest of the letters stay the same.
- Sh shŞ şshakar → şakar
- Ch chÇ çchoy → çoy
- Oʻ oʻÖ öOʻzbekiston → Özbekiston
- Gʻ gʻĞ ğgʻoya → ğoya
The fate of the NG combination is a separate question: the 2021 draft kept it as its own letter, but the passed version refers to ‘28 letters and one apostrophe’ — experts suggest this may mean NG is dropped as a distinct unit.
How we got here
The reform has been discussed since 2018. In 2020 the president signed a decree on developing the Uzbek language and improving language policy, and in 2021 the government adopted a resolution on a phased transition to the Latin script. A working group was set up to develop the alphabet: in September 2023 it presented an earlier version of the reform, proposing ‘Õ’ instead of ‘Oʻ’ and ‘C’ instead of ‘Ch’. The version passed by the Legislative Chamber in 2026 uses different characters: Ö, Ğ, Ş and Ç.
The main argument for the reform is simpler typing: ‘oʻ’ and ‘gʻ’ each require two keystrokes (a letter plus an apostrophe), and different apostrophe glyphs across fonts and keyboard layouts mean the same word ends up spelled differently. The letters Ş and Ğ were already used in earlier versions of the Uzbek Latin script.
Current status and transition
The law was passed by the Legislative Chamber in three readings and sent to the Senate for review — it has not yet fully entered into force. The bill was not published for public discussion. A phased transition is planned: previously issued documents, the national currency and securities keep their legal force, and official signage of state bodies may keep the old spelling until a set deadline — meant to spare the budget from having to replace documents and signage all at once.