Tashkent honors children's literature competition winners: 23 works selected out of 198

Award ceremony in Tashkent

On October 23, 2026, an award ceremony was held at the Alisher Navo'i Tashkent State University of Uzbek Language and Literature for the winners of a competition aimed at developing children's literature. The competition was organized in cooperation between the Republican Scientific and Methodological Center for the Development of Education, the Ministry of Education and Science, and the university, Kun.uz reports.

The position of the organizers and experts

Shahzodbek Qurboniyozov, director of the Republican Scientific and Methodological Center for the Development of Education, emphasized the importance of creating works that match children's age and interests. According to him, attracting children to reading requires new themes, engaging plots, and characters close to them, since the interests of today's children are changing. The university rector, academician Shuhrat Sirojiddinov, noted that books read in childhood stay in a person's memory for life. He said that, as a result of the competition, separate collections are being compiled for each age category — three collections have been published in total. According to the minister's adviser on spirituality and the state language, Isajon Sulton, a good work should not be limited to a ready-made conclusion: it should raise questions, encourage reflection on the characters' actions, and allow a child to relate events to their own experience.

Selection results

Experts selected 23 works out of 198 creative submissions and, based on them, published three literary collections for children and teenagers. The competition winners are distributed across age categories and directions. The publication notes that works presented to children should match the child's age, interests, inner world, and worldview, and be artistically well-crafted. The significance of the event for readers is that, as a result of the competition, three new children's literature collections aimed at different age groups will appear — this directly expands the supply of books for children and teenagers in the country. However, the publication does not provide a full list of winners or the titles of the collections, so these details remain unknown.