The alphabet changes — the sign stays · Ipak

> Every Ipak font already has the 1995 Latin alphabet, the Ö Ğ Ş Ç letters of the 2026 law, and Cyrillic. When the alphabet changes, only the changed letters will need to be reset.

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[Articles] · [Stage 6 · The library and the alphabet change]

# The alphabet changes — the sign stays

Every Ipak font already has the 1995 Latin alphabet, the Ö Ğ Ş Ç letters of the 2026 law, and Cyrillic. When the alphabet changes, only the changed letters will need to be reset.

The Uzbek Latin alphabet is changing again. Parliament has approved a law under which four spellings will be replaced with new letters. For everyone who orders or makes signs, this is a practical question: what will have to be redone, and when. The Ipak fonts are built with this change in mind. In this article — what exactly changes, how it looks on a sign, and what is worth planning in advance.

## What the 2026 law changes

The bill changes four spellings:

| Now (1995) | Under the 2026 law | Example |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Oʻ | Ö | OʻZBEKISTON → ÖZBEKISTON |
| Gʻ | Ğ | GʻAFUR GʻULOM → ĞAFUR ĞULOM |
| Sh | Ş | TOSHKENT → TOŞKENT |
| Ch | Ç | CHORSU → ÇORSU |

The ʼ sign — the tutuq sign (tutuq belgisi), as in maʼno and taʼlim — remains. An alphabet of 26 letters and three letter combinations will become an alphabet of 28 letters and one apostrophe (Spot.uz, Gazeta.uz).

Timeline. The Legislative Chamber passed the law on 7 July 2026 (Kun.uz). The Senate approved it on 10 September 2026 and sent it to the president (Spot.uz, Gazeta.uz, Kun.uz). The law takes effect after signing and publication. As of 19 October 2026, we found no reports of the signing in open sources. So we say it precisely: the law has been approved by parliament but is not yet signed and not in force.

For signs, the law has a transition rule. When it takes effect, the plates, signs, and wayfinding of government bodies may be used until they wear out or until the deadline set by the law's implementation program (Gazeta.uz, Spot.uz). Documents issued earlier remain valid. There is no need to change everything urgently. But changes will have to be made.

**Note.** Under the 1995 rules, the ʻ sign in Oʻ and Gʻ is a separate character, U+02BB in Unicode. It is hard to type on an ordinary keyboard, so in practice an apostrophe, a backtick, or ‘ is put in its place. The new letters have no such problem: Ö, Ğ, Ş, and Ç are each a single Unicode character, with no separate sign alongside.

## How it went last time

Uzbekistan has already changed scripts on its signs. The move from Cyrillic to Latin began with the 1993 law (Lex.uz). It was originally planned to finish by 2000. In 1995 the alphabet was refined and the deadline moved to 2005, then to 2010 (The Times of Central Asia). According to Interfax, the deadline was also pushed to 2015; the sources disagree here. In 2021 the government set a new goal: paperwork in Latin by 1 January 2023, and from December 2022 Latin in street names, on signs, and in advertising (Interfax).

The outcome: the schools switched to Latin, while Cyrillic remained customary in government offices and publishing houses (The Times of Central Asia). On the streets, signs in both scripts still hang — sometimes in a mixture.

So the new transition is unlikely to happen in a single year either. For several years, three spellings will live side by side on the streets: Cyrillic, the 1995 Latin, and the 2026 Latin. A font that can do all three is not a luxury but a condition for the city not to look patchwork.

## What is already in the Ipak fonts

All five library fonts — the workhorse Ipak Davlat and the accent Bannai, Ganch, Metro, Kalam — have three sets of letters:

**the 1995 Latin alphabet**: Oʻ Gʻ with the correct ʻ sign (U+02BB), the ʼ sign (U+02BC), the letter combinations Sh Ch Ng;

**the letters of the 2026 law**: Ö Ğ Ş Ç;

**Cyrillic** — Uzbek with Ў Қ Ғ Ҳ, and Russian.

We checked this against the font files themselves: every one of these characters is there. All the letters are drawn in one system. The new letters are built on the same O, G, S, C as the old ones. In Ipak Davlat, Ş and Ç share the same cedilla, and the breve of Ğ rises to the same height as the one on the Cyrillic Ў.

![Ipak Davlat Bold: left the current spelling, right the one under the 2026 law. In red — the letters that change](https://ipak.xronocode.com/images/p/alphabet-changes/davlat-only-changed-letters.png)

*Ipak Davlat Bold: left the current spelling, right the one under the 2026 law. In red — the letters that change Ipak; rendered with HarfBuzz from IpakDavlat-Bold.ttf v0.1; font — SIL OFL 1.1 · CC BY 4.0 · Ipak*

Hence the main point. When the law takes effect, a sign will not need to be redrawn in another font. The letters T, O, K, E, N, T in TOŞKENT are the same as in TOSHKENT. Only Sh → Ş changes. The look, the rhythm, and the recognizability of the sign survive.

![The same names in three alphabets in Ipak Davlat Bold](https://ipak.xronocode.com/images/p/alphabet-changes/davlat-three-alphabets.png)

*The same names in three alphabets in Ipak Davlat Bold Ipak; rendered with HarfBuzz from IpakDavlat-Bold.ttf v0.1; font — SIL OFL 1.1 · CC BY 4.0 · Ipak*

The same works in the accent fonts. The thin, wide Metro and the broad-pen Kalam keep their character in all three alphabets.

![The same in the accent font Ipak Metro](https://ipak.xronocode.com/images/p/alphabet-changes/metro-three-alphabets.png)

*The same in the accent font Ipak Metro Ipak; rendered with HarfBuzz from IpakMetro-Regular.ttf; font — SIL OFL 1.1 · CC BY 4.0 · Ipak*

![The same in the accent font Ipak Kalam](https://ipak.xronocode.com/images/p/alphabet-changes/kalam-three-alphabets.png)

*The same in the accent font Ipak Kalam Ipak; rendered with HarfBuzz from IpakKalam-Regular.ttf; font — SIL OFL 1.1 · CC BY 4.0 · Ipak*

## What changes in size

The new letters make words shorter. We measured word widths in Ipak Davlat Bold (without letterspacing, by the character widths in the font):

| Was | Becomes | Shorter by |
| --- | --- | --- |
| OʻZBEKISTON | ÖZBEKISTON | 4% |
| GʻAFUR GʻULOM | ĞAFUR ĞULOM | 5% |
| TOSHKENT | TOŞKENT | 14% |
| CHORSU | ÇORSU | 18% |
| UCHIB KETISH | UÇIB KETIŞ | 21% |

And one more thing. The ʻ sign took horizontal space, next to the letter. The new marks sit above and below the letter. In Ipak Davlat, the breve of Ğ and the dots of Ö rise above the capitals by about a third of their height — like the Cyrillic Ў, which is already on signs. The cedilla of Ş and Ç drops below the line, also by about a third of the capital height. On a flat display this is imperceptible. On three-dimensional letters mounted on a façade or a canopy, there may turn out to be no room below the line.

**Note.** A cedilla is a small hook below a letter: Ş, Ç. Letters with a cedilla exist in the Turkish, Azerbaijani, and Turkmen alphabets. The first Latin alphabet of independent Uzbekistan, from 1993, already contained Ç, Ğ, Ñ, Ö, Ş; in 1995 they were replaced with Ch, Gʻ, Ng, Oʻ, Sh (Wikipedia, “Uzbek alphabet”). The 2026 law brings back four of them.

## What a sign maker and an institution should plan

**1. An inventory.** Make a list of the signs and wayfinding that contain Oʻ, Gʻ, Sh, and Ch. Those are exactly what will have to change. Names without these letters — METRO or MUZEY, for example — will stay as they are.

**2. A reset, not a new layout.** If a sign is set in an Ipak font, the layout is not redrawn. The changed letters are replaced, and the word is centered or aligned anew. Since the word becomes shorter, decide in advance: do you keep the old line width through letterspacing, or keep the same size and let the word shrink.

**3. Three-dimensional letters.** For metal and illuminated letters, the whole word does not have to be made anew. The letters that do not change can stay. You need to manufacture Ö, Ğ, Ş, Ç in the same font and at the same size, and shift the remaining letters to the new layout. Check the room above the line (for Ö and Ğ) and below it (for Ş and Ç), and the mounting: the cedilla and the breve have their own fixing points.

**4. Both scripts for the transition period.** Some wayfinding already duplicates Latin with Cyrillic. If both lines are set in one font, the sign looks like one system. In the transition period, the 1995 and 2026 Latin alphabets can be joined the same way, if an institution decides to show both spellings for a while.

![A display mockup: Latin and Cyrillic in one font, in one system](https://ipak.xronocode.com/images/p/alphabet-changes/mockup-davlat-wayfinding.png)

*A display mockup: Latin and Cyrillic in one font, in one system Ipak; font — SIL OFL 1.1 · CC BY 4.0 · Ipak*

**5. Digital media.** Websites, displays, and print use the same font files. The new letters are already in them, so what will need changing is the text, not the font.

**6. Deadlines — per the implementation program.** As long as the law is not signed and the program is not published, there are no deadlines. It is sensible to put up new signs with a font that already has both Latin alphabets, and to replace the old ones as they wear out, as the bill provides.

## The result

A change of alphabet is not a reason to change the face of a city. If a sign is made with a font that has all three spellings, the transition comes down to replacing a few letters. The Ipak fonts are open and free; they already contain the 1995 Latin alphabet, the Ö Ğ Ş Ç letters, and Cyrillic. You can start using them now: today's sign will be set in the same font as tomorrow's.

## Sources

Kun.uz (7 July and 10 September 2026), Spot.uz and Gazeta.uz (10 September 2026) — on the law; Lex.uz — the 1993 law; The Times of Central Asia (20 August 2026), Interfax (12 February 2021) — on the transition of the 1990s–2020s; Wikipedia — on the 1993 Latin alphabet. Word widths and character coverage were checked against the Ipak font files.

Links:

Kun.uz: the lower house passed the law changing the alphabet (7 July 2026). [https://kun.uz/en/news/2026/07/07/parliaments-lower-house-passes-bill-to-revise-uzbek-alphabet-848eb2](https://kun.uz/en/news/2026/07/07/parliaments-lower-house-passes-bill-to-revise-uzbek-alphabet-848eb2)

Kun.uz: O‘zbekistonda alifbo islohoti bo‘yicha qonun qabul qilindi (7 July 2026). [https://kun.uz/news/2026/07/07/ozbekistonda-alifbo-islohoti-boyicha-qonun-qabul-qilindi-4cf07b](https://kun.uz/news/2026/07/07/ozbekistonda-alifbo-islohoti-boyicha-qonun-qabul-qilindi-4cf07b)

Spot.uz: the Senate approved the new version of the Uzbek alphabet (10 September 2026). [https://www.spot.uz/ru/2026/09/10/new-alphabet-senate](https://www.spot.uz/ru/2026/09/10/new-alphabet-senate)

Gazeta.uz: the Senate approved the alphabet change (10 September 2026). [https://www.gazeta.uz/oz/2026/09/10/uzb-alphabet/](https://www.gazeta.uz/oz/2026/09/10/uzb-alphabet/)

Kun.uz: Senat alifboda to‘rtta harfni o‘zgartirishni ma’qulladi (10 September 2026). [https://kun.uz/news/2026/09/10/senat-alifboda-tortta-harfni-ozgartirishni-maqulladi](https://kun.uz/news/2026/09/10/senat-alifboda-tortta-harfni-ozgartirishni-maqulladi)

Lex.uz: Закон «О введении узбекского алфавита, основанного на латинской графике» (2 September 1993, No. 931-XII, as amended), Russian text. [https://lex.uz/docs/112283](https://lex.uz/docs/112283)

The Times of Central Asia: Uzbekistan alphabet reform (20 August 2026). [https://timesca.com/uzbekistan-alphabet-reform-latin-cyrillic/](https://timesca.com/uzbekistan-alphabet-reform-latin-cyrillic/)

Interfax: Uzbekistan to switch official paperwork to Latin script by 2023 (12 February 2021). [https://interfax.com/newsroom/top-stories/71082/](https://interfax.com/newsroom/top-stories/71082/)

Wikipedia: Uzbek alphabet. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uzbek_alphabet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uzbek_alphabet)

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