Almaty and Astana retained their places in the top 300 largest cities in the world, but dropped in the ranking compared to last year. In the Global Cities Index 2026, prepared by Oxford Economics, Almaty took 265th place and Astana 281st. This was reported by Qazaqyia.kz citing Kursiv Media.
In the 2025 ranking, Almaty was in 258th place and Astana in 276th. Thus, over the year the cities lost seven and five positions respectively. At the same time, they remained leaders among the cities of Central Asia.
Strong results in human capital
The Kazakh megacities showed their highest results in the level of human capital. Almaty ranked 66th on this indicator, Astana 98th. Both cities outperformed Ankara, Warsaw, Prague, Tallinn and Moscow.
A year earlier, Almaty was in 64th place for human capital. This category takes into account the quality and scale of the city's talent pool, education, professional skills, the state of the labor market and the ability to attract and retain qualified specialists.
Economic indicators
In terms of economic indicators, Astana took 264th place and Almaty 288th.
About the Global Cities Index
The Global Cities Index covers the 1000 largest cities in the world. Oxford Economics evaluates them across five dimensions: economy, human capital, quality of life, environment and governance.
The ranking takes into account economic indicators, education and the labor market, household incomes, housing costs, safety, the state of the environment, and the quality of institutions and regulation. The top three places in 2026 were retained by New York, London and Paris.