Beatles Statue on the Arbat, Astana

The Beatles statue in Astana is a row of four life-size standing figures on the Arbat, the pedestrian zone in the old centre that runs toward the Esil embankment. They were in place by 17 February 2019, going by a dated photo. It is a different work from the Beatles monument on Kok-Tobe in Almaty.

Four Beatles on a pedestrian street

The group is simple: John, Paul, George and Ringo stand side by side on the pavement in long coats, at ground level, with no plinth and no fence. A stock photo from August 2022 calls them bronze and describes them as walking. No official source gives the material, the sculptor or who paid for them, so they remain unknown.

They stand on the Arbat, a pedestrian zone laid out in 2017 just before Astana hosted EXPO-2017. It stretches toward the Khan Kenesary monument on the Esil embankment. A Russian-language travel guide calls this stretch the Beatles alley, and in March 2021 Tengrinews listed the Arbat among Kazakhstan's six best pedestrian streets. The article singled out the full-height Beatles figures as the reason for fans to visit.

When did they appear?

Nobody has published an unveiling date. The earliest dated evidence is a photo on Wikimedia Commons taken on 17 February 2019, which shows all four figures standing in the snow. So they were there by then. It is not confirmed whether they went in with the Arbat itself in 2017 or later.

Claims that a Beatles monument "opened in Astana in 2021" do not fit the evidence: the 2019 photo already shows the figures, and Tengrinews described them in March 2021.

Astana or Almaty?

Kazakhstan has two sets of Beatles figures, about 975 km apart in a straight line, and search results often mix them up.

If you are after the bench you can sit on with Lennon, that is the one in Almaty.

Getting to the Arbat

City buses stop near the old square and along the embankment, a few minutes on foot from the pedestrian zone. One travel guide lists routes 1, 7, 9, 10, 12, 17 and 21 among those serving the area. The figures are on an open street, so there is no ticket and no closing time. The same stretch has craft stalls in small yurt-style pavilions, which makes the walk down to the river an easy add-on.