Ultima Guide 2026: Astana and Almaty’s Best Restaurants — Plus the First-Ever Bar Selection

Ultima Guide returns with a wider brief: to spotlight the restaurants and, for the first time, the bars defining Astana and Almaty. More than 3,900 venues have already been reviewed by the guide’s neural model, producing this year’s longlist. Public voting is open in Yandex Go until the end of May, with expert scores running alongside it. The results will be announced at a ceremony in August 2026.

14 мая 2026

This year marks the release of the second Ultima Guide for Astana and Almaty. The first edition — a tech-led dining guide featuring 30 restaurants — was unveiled on 21 August 2025, which we covered in detail here. The selection process once again unfolds in several stages.

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First, a neural network reviewed more than 3,900 restaurants, bars and other dining venues across Astana and Almaty against over 100 criteria. The model considered, among other things, popularity based on visits and taxi rides, high ratings and the quality of reviews. Whether a venue worked with Yandex services was not a factor.

Projects open for less than three months were then removed from consideration, along with coffee shops, food halls and chain restaurants — formats that call for a different lens and a separate set of criteria. The result is two longlists: 396 restaurants in Almaty and 225 in Astana. Bars have also been reviewed separately this year, with their own category introduced for the first time: 14 in the capital and 57 in Almaty. Users and experts will now evaluate the following criteria:

Food: menu concept, freshness of ingredients, flavour and presentation.
Comfort and atmosphere: noise level and seating density.
Service: courtesy and attentiveness of staff, quality of waiter recommendations and speed of service.
Interior: from design to tableware.
Bar list: concept and taste profile of the drinks.

Until the end of May, Yandex Go users can make their selection in the app, voting for the restaurants and bars they have used through the brand’s services over the past year. In parallel, the expert vote remains in place, bringing in local restaurateurs, chefs, bartenders and food influencers.

The results will be calculated using Ultima Guide’s own scoring model, reviewed by the international consultancy Yakov and Partners. The final selection of Astana and Almaty’s leading restaurants and bars will be revealed at a ceremony in August 2026.