Tashkent's New Malls in 2026: Which Shopping Centres Are Worth Your Time (and Which Are Just Air Conditioning)
· 9 min read · Shopping
Tashkent gained more retail floor space in five years than in the previous fifty. Most of it is identical. Here is the short list that is actually worth an hour, and the tax-free rule most tourists miss.
Mall-building in Tashkent has been relentless. The Tashkent City development, the ring-road complexes and a run of mid-size centres in the residential districts have given the capital a retail landscape that would be unrecognisable to someone who left in 2015. For a visitor, the useful question is not which mall is biggest but which one solves a problem — heat, a rainy afternoon, a forgotten charger, a cinema in a language you understand, or actual souvenir shopping that is not a bazaar.
What you can and cannot buy
International fast-fashion and sportswear are now well represented, along with global cosmetics, electronics chains and a growing set of regional brands from Turkey and Russia. What is still thin: luxury houses, large-format bookshops in English, and specialist outdoor equipment. If you need hiking boots or camping gas for the mountains, plan on a specialist store rather than a mall, and buy anything technical before you fly.
Prices, honestly
Imported clothing and electronics are not cheap here. Duties and logistics mean a mid-range phone or a branded jacket often costs more than in Europe, and the tempting local price is usually a grey-market unit without warranty. Where Tashkent malls genuinely win is food, cinema tickets, haircuts, phone repair and children's entertainment, all of which are a fraction of Western prices.
Tax-free shopping
Uzbekistan operates a VAT refund scheme for foreign visitors on qualifying purchases from participating shops. The mechanics matter: you must ask for the tax-free receipt at the till with your passport at the time of purchase, keep the goods unused and packaged, and present everything at the airport before check-in. Retrofitting it later is impossible. Not every store participates and the minimum spend is enforced, so ask before you queue.
Cinemas
- Most mall cinemas screen in Russian dub; original-language screenings exist but are a minority.
- Look for OV or 'original' in the listing, and check the language tag rather than the poster.
- Tickets are very cheap by international standards, and IMAX-format screens now exist in the capital.
- Weekend evenings sell out for local releases — Uzbek cinema has a strong domestic audience.
Which mall for which trip
For a central, walkable afternoon with a food court and a cinema, the Tashkent City area complexes are the obvious pick and the surrounding park is worth the walk on its own. For a full family day with entertainment floors and a supermarket run, the larger ring-road malls make more sense. For souvenirs, skip malls entirely — Chorsu, the applied arts museum shop and the craft workshops in Rishtan or Margilan will serve you far better than any retail unit.
Hours and payment
Malls typically run 10:00 to 22:00, food courts later. Card acceptance is now near-universal in modern retail, contactless included, and foreign cards work in the large chains — though it remains sensible to carry some soum for small counters and parking. Friday evening and Sunday afternoon are the busiest windows; parking at the popular complexes is a genuine problem at those times.
The bigger picture
The mall boom is not really about shopping. It is about climate — a city with 45°C summers and dusty winters is building indoor public space, and Uzbek families are using it as a promenade. Watching a Saturday evening crowd walk laps of an atrium tells you more about how the capital lives now than any monument does.