Deputy Prime Minister - Minister of Culture and Information of Kazakhstan Aida Balayeva has shown the current state of the building of the Mukhtar Auezov Kazakh National Drama Theater. She posted a video on Instagram after a working trip to Almaty, reports infohub.kz.
Balayeva inspected the progress of the theater's reconstruction. The footage shows the current condition of the building and ongoing construction work inside. Demolition work at the site has been completed. Specialists are now reinforcing load-bearing structures and the facade, installing engineering systems, and carrying out interior and finishing work.
After reconstruction, the large and small auditoriums will have a total of 832 seats.
As a reminder, renovation of the Mukhtar Auezov Drama Theater has been underway since November 2024. The theater building, constructed in 1981 and a listed architectural monument, needed a major overhaul ahead of the theater troupe's 100th anniversary.
Meanwhile, activists and architects are raising concerns about the building's fate. Earlier, Kursiv LifeStyle reported that marble was chipped off the theater's facade during the work, which, according to experts, stripped it of its historical value.
During the reconstruction, some of the theater's interior artifacts have also been endangered. Some were found in a dumpster, including a portrait of Honored Artist of the Kazakh SSR Torgyn Tasibekova.
In January 2026, journalist Polina Shimanskaya claimed that BI Group, the developer responsible for the renovation, had frozen construction work due to a budget shortfall, citing 45 billion tenge. The Ministry of Culture later stated that reconstruction work had not been suspended.
Earlier, Kursiv LifeStyle reported that the renovation of the Natalia Sats State Academic Russian Theater for Children and Youth in Almaty is nearing completion.