The State Agency for Physical Culture and Sports of Kyrgyzstan has officially announced that no official medal and team standings are kept at the 6th World Nomad Games. This was reported by Qazaqyia.kz citing Kursiv Media.
In a statement published on its official Instagram account, the agency said that the concept of the Games does not involve ranking countries by the number of medals won.
"In accordance with the concept of the World Nomad Games, no official medal and team standings among countries are kept. The concept of the Games is based not on competition between states for a place in the overall ranking, but on uniting countries around a common historical and cultural heritage and developing ethnosport," the statement said.
Thus, the Kyrgyz agency effectively refused to determine an official winner of the overall standings after conflicting results from Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan emerged.
After the competitions ended, the Ministry of Tourism and Sports of Kazakhstan reported that the national team took first place. According to the Kazakh ministry, athletes won 74 medals, including 32 gold, 20 silver, and 22 bronze. The ministry stressed that the results were re-checked across all disciplines. After verification, the final number of gold medals for the Kazakh team remained the same — 32.
It was this number of top awards that was supposed to secure the team first place in the unofficial overall standings.
The organizers of the World Nomad Games had previously posted a different version of the final table. According to this data, Kyrgyzstan took first place with 30 gold medals. Kazakhstan was in second place with 29 gold awards. Third place was given to Russia, whose athletes received seven gold medals.
The discrepancies between the organizers' data and the Kazakh ministry's data sparked debates on social media. Users discussed which results should be considered final and which team ultimately became the winner of the Games.
As reported by Sportarena.kz, the table published by the organizers was deleted and restored several times on the official pages of the competitions. Later, it disappeared from both social media and the website of the World Nomad Games.
After that, a note appeared on the Games' website stating that final information should come from the competition secretariat. At the same time, results of individual disciplines and information about athletes' medals remained available.
Later, the Kyrgyz sports agency stated that the official distribution of countries by places is not provided for by the concept of the competitions at all.
As a result, Kazakhstan continues to consider its team the winner with 32 gold medals. The Kyrgyz side, in turn, insists that there is no official medal and team standings at the World Nomad Games.
The 6th World Nomad Games took place in Kyrgyzstan from August 31 to September 6, 2026. About three thousand athletes participated in the competitions. The program included national wrestling, horse racing, intellectual games, and other traditional sports disciplines.