Kazakhstan Map

The world's largest landlocked country

Kazakhstan covers 2,724,900 square kilometers. It is the ninth-largest country in the world and the largest with no ocean coast, stretching about 3,000 kilometers from the Caspian Sea in the west to the Altai Mountains in the east. It has about 20.8 million people (UN World Population Prospects, 2025 estimate). The land west of the Ural River is usually counted as part of Europe. Its border with Russia, about 7,600 kilometers long, is one of the longest land borders in the world; China lies to the east, and Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan to the south. Across the Caspian Sea, which is a lake with no outlet to the ocean, lie Azerbaijan and Iran. Since March 2024 the whole country has used a single time zone, UTC+5.

Steppe, desert and mountain

The north is the Kazakh Steppe, a belt of grassland that was ploughed for wheat during the Soviet Virgin Lands campaign of the 1950s and is still the country's grain belt. The center is the rolling Kazakh Uplands (Saryarka), and south of them lie the Betpak-Dala and Moyynkum deserts and part of the Kyzylkum, which Kazakhstan shares with Uzbekistan. In the far west the Caspian Depression drops to the lowest point, the Karagiye Depression on the Mangyshlak Peninsula, at 132 meters below sea level. Mountains rise only along the eastern and southeastern edges: the Altai, the Tarbagatai, the Dzungarian Alatau and the Tian Shan, whose northern wall, the Trans-Ili Alatau, stands directly above Almaty. The highest point is Khan Tengri (about 7,010 meters including its ice cap) on the Kyrgyz border near China.

The Irtysh River flows from China through Lake Zaysan into Russia; the Ili feeds Lake Balkhash, whose western half is fresh and eastern half salty; and the Syr Darya runs into the Aral Sea. The Aral Sea shrank drastically after Soviet irrigation schemes diverted its rivers, but since the Kokaral Dam was finished in 2005 the northern, Kazakh part has partly recovered. See the rivers of Asia for more.

Climate and seasons

The climate is sharply continental. Astana is one of the coldest capital cities, with January averages around -14°C and winds sweeping off the open steppe, while summers in the south around Shymkent regularly pass 35°C. Late spring (May and June) and September are the best months to travel; Almaty's mountains have ski slopes at Shymbulak in winter.

Regions and Major Cities

Kazakhstan has 17 regions (oblys), three of them (Abai, Jetisu and Ulytau) created in 2022, plus three cities of republican significance: Astana, Almaty and Shymkent. Their populations below are Bureau of National Statistics figures for 1 January 2026, rounded:

• Almaty - About 2.35 million, the largest city and capital until 1997, a financial and cultural center in the Tian Shan foothills; its name comes from the Kazakh word for apple, and the wild apple forests around it are the ancestors of the domestic apple
• Astana - About 1.64 million, capital since 1997, on the Ishim (Esil) River in the northern steppe, called Nur-Sultan from 2019 to 2022, with the Bayterek tower and Khan Shatyr
• Shymkent - About 1.29 million, the main city of the densely settled south near the Uzbek border
• Karaganda - The center of Soviet-era coal mining and of the Karlag labour camp system
• Atyrau and Aktau - The oil towns of the Caspian: Atyrau on the Ural River near the giant Tengiz and Kashagan fields, and Aktau, the main Caspian port
• Oskemen (Ust-Kamenogorsk) - The metallurgy center of the east, in the Altai foothills

Oil, uranium and trade routes

Kazakhstan has the largest economy in Central Asia, with GDP per capita of about US$14,700 in 2025 (World Bank). Oil from Tengiz, Kashagan and Karachaganak makes up the bulk of exports, most of it shipped through the Caspian Pipeline Consortium line to Russia's Black Sea port of Novorossiysk. The country is the world's largest uranium producer, with roughly 40 percent of global output, and a major wheat exporter. The Khorgos dry port on the Chinese border and the Caspian ports of Aktau and Kuryk are links in the "Middle Corridor" rail and sea route between China and Europe. Kazakhstan belongs to the Eurasian Economic Union, the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation and the Collective Security Treaty Organization.

History

The Kazakh Khanate formed in the 1460s, and the Russian Empire absorbed the steppe between the 18th and the mid-19th centuries. Under Soviet rule, forced collectivization caused the famine of 1930-1933, in which more than 1.5 million people died; whole peoples were later deported to Kazakhstan, and the Semipalatinsk test site saw 456 nuclear tests between 1949 and 1989. Kazakhstan was the last Soviet republic to declare independence, on 16 December 1991. Kazakh is the state language and Russian is also official; a gradual switch of Kazakh from Cyrillic to the Latin alphabet is under way. Most people are Muslim, with a large Orthodox Christian minority.

Interesting Facts

• Yuri Gagarin's 1961 flight launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome, which Russia leases from Kazakhstan until 2050
• Saiga antelope numbers in Kazakhstan fell to a few tens of thousands in the mid-2000s and recovered to about 2.8 million by a 2024 aerial survey; the IUCN moved the species from Critically Endangered to Near Threatened in 2023
• Golden eagle hunting (berkutchi) is still practised, especially in the east and among Kazakhs in western Mongolia