Almaty Superski: Kazakhstan’s 200 km Mega-Resort, Explained

Last updated: July 2026, shortly after construction officially began.

Almaty Superski is the largest mountain-tourism project ever attempted in Central Asia: a plan to join the ski areas above Almaty – Shymbulak, Oi-Qaragai, Pioneer, Kimasar and Butakovka – with an entirely new resort core on the Kok-Zhailau plateau into a single connected ski domain of more than 200 kilometres. Construction officially began on 10 July 2026. If it opens as planned in December 2028, Almaty will jump from a city with three separate mid-sized resorts to one of the largest linked ski areas outside the Alps – twenty minutes from a city of two million and an international airport.

The project in numbers

Every figure above is an official target. Projects of this size move their dates – treat the timeline as direction of travel, not a promise. We update this page as milestones actually happen.

What is being built, and where

The project has two stages. Stage one, now under way, builds the new core: the access road up from the city, utilities, eleven cable cars, and the first resort infrastructure on Kok-Zhailau – the broad, grassy plateau between the Small and Big Almaty gorges that Almaty residents have hiked for generations. Stage two, planned from 2027, modernises and expands Pioneer and Oi-Qaragai and connects them to the network by cable car, so that in the final vision you could ride lifts from the Shymbulak side across to Oi-Qaragai without touching a road.

The existing resorts keep operating throughout. At Shymbulak, seven new lift lines began construction in May 2026 with the first two due to open by the end of the year – the first visible piece of Superski most visitors will actually ride.

What it means for your trip

• Skiing this winter (2026/27): nothing fundamental changes – see our comparison of Almaty’s current resorts. Expect construction activity around Shymbulak and two new lifts there if the schedule holds.
• 2027: roadworks and lift construction across the mountain front; Pioneer and Oi-Qaragai works begin.
• From December 2028: if the target holds, the first phase of the new Kok-Zhailau core opens, and Almaty starts competing for destination ski trips rather than day visits.
• Hiking: the classic Kok-Zhailau trail remains open – construction is under way on the plateau, and our Kok-Zhailau page tracks what that means for the route.

The controversy – why this took fifteen years

Superski is being built where a previous mega-resort was stopped. Kok-Zhailau sits inside Ile-Alatau National Park, and when a resort was first proposed there in the 2010s, the “Save Kok-Zhailau” campaign gathered nearly 29,000 signatures; President Tokayev halted the project in 2019, and a 2023 Supreme Court ruling established buffer-zone protections. The new plan revives development on the same plateau at a larger scale, and it remains genuinely contested – public hearings drew opposition from ecologists concerned about the park, water sources and wildlife corridors, while supporters point to jobs, tourism revenue and regulated access replacing informal use.

We are a hiking company that has walked Kok-Zhailau for years, so we do not pretend to be neutral about losing wild ground – and we also live in a city whose economy will feel the upside. Both things are true. What we can promise is accurate reporting of what is actually happening on the mountain, season by season.

Quick answers

When does Almaty Superski open?

The first phase is targeted for December 2028. Infrastructure (roads, utilities) is due by September 2027. These are official targets as of mid-2026.

Can I ski any of it now?

The existing resorts – Shymbulak, Oi-Qaragai, Ak-Bulak – operate normally, and Shymbulak’s first Superski-funded lifts should open for the 2026/27 season. The new Kok-Zhailau core does not exist yet.

How big will it be?

The stated vision is a connected domain of over 200 km of pistes and 58 lifts. For scale: Les 3 Vallées in France, the largest linked ski area in the world, is around 600 km; today’s Almaty resorts total roughly 60 km, unconnected.

Is it good or bad for Almaty?

Both cases are serious: a transformed winter economy on one side; construction inside a national park, on a plateau a city loves, on the other. See the controversy section above – we keep both sides on this page deliberately.

Planning a winter trip while the mountains still look like this? We run winter hikes and freeride days all season.