The children's science museum being built on the site of the underground shopping center "Almaly" in Almaty will open its doors to visitors in October 2026. Initially, the museum was planned to start operating in June 2026, but the timeline has been adjusted, according to infohub.kz.
According to the Almaty city administration, construction work is expected to be completed in August of this year. In August-September, installation of exhibits will take place, and in September specialists will begin installing and configuring multimedia equipment. After that, commissioning works will start. The official opening of the museum to visitors is scheduled for October 2026.
It is worth recalling that the museum is being created on the site of a long-term construction project owned by businessman Kairat Boranbayev. His underground shopping center "Almaly" operated for only five years, from 2012 to 2017. Then it was closed for reconstruction, with plans to reopen in May 2022. However, in January of that year, the dome of the shopping center was damaged by bullets during the January events.
In the autumn of 2023, it became known that Kairat Boranbayev, as part of cooperation with the investigation, transferred the shopping center to the Almaty city administration. In December 2024, former Almaty mayor Erbolat Dossaev announced that starting from 2025, the first children's science museum in the CIS would be created on the basis of the "Almaly" shopping center. The project was planned to allocate 12.2 billion tenge from the city budget.
In mid-2025, the authorities presented a visualization of the future museum. Its exhibition is being developed in partnership with the Science Museum Singapore.
Earlier, Kursiv LifeStyle showed how Republic Square in front of the city administration building was landscaped.