Ashgabat was declared the City of New Sports Opportunities of the Commonwealth. This decision was made at the meeting of the CIS Council of Heads of Governments held in the Turkmen capital on May 24, 2024.

As it was noted at the meeting, today Turkmenistan has significant experience in organizing and hosting international competitions. In recent years our country has repeatedly hosted major sporting competitions. Among them are the stage of the windsurfing World Cup in 2014, the 5th Asian Indoor and Martial Arts Games in 2017, the World Weightlifting Championship and the Amul-Khazar International Rally in 2018, the World Kurash Championship and the Central Asian Team Tennis Championship among young athletes under 12 years old in 2023. And in April of this year Ashgabat successfully hosted the International Hockey Tournament which was attended by teams from the CIS and other countries.

As you know, at the Summit of the Commonwealth of Independent States in Astana in October 2022 President Serdar Berdimuhamedov proposed to give the sports cooperation of the CIS a broad and systematic character, establishing the Coordinating Committee for holding international sports games under the auspices of the CIS Council for Physical Culture and Sports and also put forward the initiative to organize regular Games of Friendship. According to the idea of the head of the Turkmen state, these Games should be open for participation of athletes not only from the CIS, but also from other countries. At the same time Turkmenistan confirmed its readiness to host the first Games of Friendship.

Based on this at the initiative of our country the issue of declaring Ashgabat the City of New Sports Opportunities of the Commonwealth was included in the agenda of the current meeting of the CIS Council of Heads of Governments. This proposal received unanimous support from all participants of the meeting.