Subsoil Use in Kazakhstan in 2026: Exploration and Production Licences for Solid Minerals

A subsoil use licence in Kazakhstan is a document issued by a state body on application, granting the holder the right to use a specific subsoil plot. Two licences matter for solid minerals: the exploration licence for solid minerals, issued for six years and extendable once by up to five, and the production licence for solid minerals, issued for up to twenty-five years with an unlimited number of extensions. Both are issued by the Ministry of Industry and Construction of the Republic of Kazakhstan and, since 2026, only through the Unified Subsoil Use Platform.

The governing act is Code of the Republic of Kazakhstan No. 125-VI of 27 December 2017 “On Subsoil and Subsoil Use”. The Code split subsoil use into two regimes. The licence regime covers geological study of the subsoil, exploration and production of solid minerals, production of commonly occurring minerals, use of subsoil space and artisanal mining. The contract regime survives only for hydrocarbons and uranium.

Important: the regime changed three times in the first nine months of 2026. Law No. 243-VIII of 26 December 2025 (in force from 26 February 2026) rewrote the hydrocarbons and uranium rules. Law No. 249-VIII of 30 December 2025 (in force from 2 March 2026) introduced the Unified Subsoil Use Platform and the auction for a newly free block, and raised the minimum in-country value share in works and services from fifty to seventy per cent. Law No. 337-VIII of 7 July 2026 came into force on 7 September 2026 — four days before this article was published — and added Chapter 28-2 on the priority allocation of plots to the national company in the field of solid minerals. Anything describing Kazakh subsoil use as it stood in 2025 is out of date by September 2026.

Nine facts to know before filing

Applications are filed electronically only. The sole channel is the Unified Subsoil Use Platform “Minerals” (minerals.e-qazyna.kz); the Ministry of Industry and Construction migrated to it from the former minerals.gov.kz portal between 23 October and 1 November 2024. There is no paper filing and no filing through the Government for Citizens service centres.

Priority is decided by the minute of filing. Applications for the same block are considered in the order received; the moment of filing is recorded by date and time to the minute, and each application receives a unique registration number.

The state service itself is free; access to the platform is not. The service standard for “Issue of an exploration licence for solid minerals” states the fee as “free of charge”. Access to the platform for subsoil users and applicants, however, is provided on a paid basis by the operator — Information and Accounting Centre JSC — under its price list, against a request to accede to the user agreement signed with an electronic digital signature.

An exploration licence area is measured in blocks. A block is a cell one minute by one minute in the geographic coordinate system. A single exploration application may cover no more than two hundred blocks.

A subsoil use licence is not a permit under Law No. 202-V. Article 29(1) of the Code expressly takes it outside the legislation on permits and notifications. It is a separate legal instrument with its own procedure, its own time limits and its own grounds of revocation.

The signature bonus is 100 monthly calculation indices for an exploration licence and 200 for a production licence.At the 2026 index of 4,325 tenge that is 432,500 tenge and 865,000 tenge. The bonus is payable within ten working days of the licence being issued.

The real money is not the bonus but the mandatory spend. Minimum exploration spend starts at 1,200 monthly calculation indices a year for a single block (5,190,000 tenge in 2026) and rises with the year of the licence and the number of blocks. The payment for the use of land plots, which for a production licence is levied on the subsoil plot itself, is 450 monthly calculation indices per square kilometre a year — 1,946,250 tenge per square kilometre.

A royalty on solid minerals arrives on 1 January 2027. New Chapter 90 of the Tax Code sets rates of 13%, 10% and 7% of the value of what is sold — the deeper the processing, the lower the rate. The royalty replaces the mineral extraction tax for licences issued after 31 December 2026 over ground not previously held under a subsoil right.

As at 11 September 2026 Kazakhstan has issued 3,236 exploration licences and 191 production licences for solid minerals. There are 4,370 registered subsoil users and 1,627 concluded contracts, and the territory open to subsoil use is 1,615,000 square kilometres of the country’s 2,725,000. These are the Unified Subsoil Use Platform’s own figures.

Licence or Contract: How the Right of Subsoil Use Is Structured

The right of subsoil use arises in Kazakhstan on two grounds only — a subsoil use licence or a subsoil use contract (article 20(1) of the Code). There is no third route: an akimat decision, a land lease and an environmental permit create no right to use the subsoil.

The Code recognises five types of subsoil operation (article 22): geological study of the subsoil, exploration of minerals, production of minerals, use of subsoil space and artisanal mining. Each type has its own licence — six in all (article 30).

A subsoil use contract is concluded for hydrocarbons and uranium only. Article 35(3), as amended by Law No. 337-VIII of 7 July 2026, provides that a contract is concluded for the exploration and production or production of hydrocarbons and for the exploration or production of uranium. Until 7 September 2026 only a uranium production contract existed; there is now a separate uranium exploration contract with its own exploration period (article 170-1) and its own exploration works project (article 182-2).

The difference between the regimes is structural, and it is worth understanding before the investment target is chosen.

A subsoil use licence does not belong to the permits governed by the legislation on permits and notifications. That is the express rule in the second part of article 29(1), and it matters more than it looks. It means that the “silence is consent” principle, the general fifteen-working-day rule of article 30 of Law of the Republic of Kazakhstan No. 202-V of 16 May 2014 “On Permits and Notifications”, and its rules on re-issue and suspension simply do not apply. All of that lives in the Subsoil Code itself. We set out how Kazakhstan’s general permit system works, and how it differs from subsoil licensing, in Permits and Notifications in Kazakhstan in 2026.

Four practical rules follow from the licence regime standing on its own. One licence covers one subsoil plot only (article 29(2)). The number of licences one person may hold is unlimited except where the Code says otherwise (article 29(3)) — an artisanal miner, for instance, may hold only one. A licence once issued is published on the Unified Subsoil Use Platform on the day of issue (article 29(5), as amended by Law No. 249-VIII). Finally, a licence is drawn up in Kazakh and Russian (article 31(5)).

The stability clause in article 31(7) deserves separate attention. Where legislation later sets different licence conditions, they do not apply to a licence already issued. But the clause carries seven exceptions, and they cover almost everything an investor cares about: national security, defence, environmental safety, health care, taxation, customs regulation and protection of competition. A licence gives no tax stability — which is precisely why the royalty arriving on 1 January 2027 will reach holders who obtained their licences earlier, to the extent the law so provides.

The Legal Framework: What Is in Force in September 2026

The legal framework for subsoil use in Kazakhstan consists of one codified act, three laws of 2025–2026 that amended it, the tax legislation and some forty subordinate acts. What follows is only what an exploration or production licence for solid minerals actually requires. The date of adoption and the date of entry into force are shown separately: in Kazakh drafting technique these are different dates, and it is the second that decides which version applies.

At the subordinate level, solid minerals sit almost entirely with the Ministry of Industry and Construction.

What must not be cited, and one useful exception. Law of the Republic of Kazakhstan No. 291-IV of 24 June 2010 “On Subsoil and Subsoil Use” and Law of the Republic of Kazakhstan No. 2828 of 27 January 1996 “On Subsoil and Subsoil Use” no longer create new rights: since 29 June 2018 a subsoil use right arises only under Code No. 125-VI. Licences issued and contracts concluded earlier remain in force under article 278(1). The single exception is practically useful: articles 121 and 122 of Law No. 291-IV continue to apply in the cases set out in article 278(10) of the Code. Under that paragraph, since 1 January 2024 holders of production contracts and of production licences for solid minerals issued before 31 December 2023 may calculate reserves under article 121 of Law No. 291-IV, and an applicant for a production licence may submit a reserves calculation report under article 121 of Law No. 291-IV instead of a competent person’s report under the KAZRC Code.

On tax, Code of the Republic of Kazakhstan No. 120-VI of 25 December 2017 “On Taxes and Other Obligatory Payments to the Budget” was replaced by Code No. 214-VIII on 1 January 2026. References to articles 554 or 726–746 of the old Tax Code in subsoil material mean the material predates 2026.

Author’s assessment: the pace of change is itself a risk factor. Between 26 February and 7 September 2026 the Subsoil Code was amended three times, the last of them taking effect on 7 September 2026. Consolidated texts in commercial databases lag, and the list of subordinate acts required by Law No. 249-VIII ran to 37 items all marked “February 2026” — several of which were in fact adopted later. The practical conclusion: before filing, check not only the Code but the date of the version of the specific Rules, and read the conditions of a licence already held together with article 31(7), the stability clause from which tax is carved out.

Who Issues Licences: the Competent Authority, the Specialised Authorities and the Unified Subsoil Use Platform

The competent authority is the central state body designated by the Government to represent the State’s interests in subsoil use (article 60 of the Code; Law No. 337-VIII replaced “executive” with “state” from 7 September 2026 and, from the same date, extended the authority’s remit expressly to uranium). For solid minerals that body is the Ministry of Industry and Construction of the Republic of Kazakhstan. The Regulation on the Ministry, approved by Government Resolution No. 864 of 4 October 2023, confirms it: the Ministry develops and approves the State Subsoil Fund Management Programme in agreement with the authority for hydrocarbons, approves the rules on filing and consideration of applications for exploration and production licences for solid minerals, approves the form of the subsoil use licence, and issues permissions for the transfer of subsoil use rights.

The Code distributes powers across five types of body, and confusing them is a common way to lose time.

The State Subsoil Fund Management Programme is the decisive document for production. A production licence for solid minerals is issued only over territories defined by that Programme, except for plots granted under the exclusive right (article 203(1)). The Programme itself was approved by Order No. 478 of the Minister for Investment and Development of 28 June 2018, and it changes several times a year. In 2026 alone it was amended three times, by Orders No. 283 of 4 June, No. 313 of 17 June and No. 367 of 17 July 2026 of the Acting Minister of Industry and Construction. The last of those is the version in force on 11 September 2026. The rules for forming it were approved by Order No. 236 of the Minister of Industry and Construction of 15 May 2026, adopted under article 70(3-1) of the Code, a paragraph that appeared only in 2026.

For an exploration licence the Code imposes no Programme constraint: under article 186(1) an exploration area may include a block anywhere in the Republic of Kazakhstan unless the Code provides otherwise. That asymmetry is central to the regime: under the Code exploration may be claimed almost anywhere that is free, production only where the State has provided for it.

Author’s assessment: the Code and the Rules diverge here, and the divergence is practical. Paragraph 4 of the Rules on filing and consideration of applications for exploration licences for solid minerals, in the version now in force, reads: “An exploration licence for solid minerals is issued over territories determined by the State Subsoil Fund Management Programme.” Article 186(1) of the Code contains no such limit. A subordinate act cannot narrow a right granted by the Code, but the service provider works to the Rules and the platform map is built from the Programme. The practical conclusion: before filing over a block that is not in the Programme, obtain the competent authority’s position in writing rather than relying on a literal reading of article 186.

The Unified Subsoil Use Platform: the only channel

The Unified Subsoil Use Platform is a state information system whose status is established by article 68-1 of the Code, added by Law No. 249-VIII. It operates at minerals.e-qazyna.kz; the Ministry of Industry and Construction migrated to it from the former minerals.gov.kz portal between 23 October and 1 November 2024, and it acquired a legal status of its own only on 2 March 2026. The platform is in state ownership and may not be privatised or handed to organisations that are not subordinate to state bodies (article 68-1(5)).

The platform holds information on licences and contracts, the coordinates of granted plots, state geological study areas, areas where liquidation of the consequences of subsoil use is under way, the location of blocks, and the restriction layers: specially protected natural areas, health-resort, recreational and historic-cultural land, forest fund land, defence and national security land, settlement territories, water fund land and water protection zones, and the contours of potable groundwater deposits. State bodies must keep those layers up to date (article 68-1(4)).

The exploration filing Rules, as amended by Order No. 105 of the Minister of Industry and Construction of 16 March 2026, made the platform the only filing route: the application is submitted through the platform, the moment of filing is the date and time it reaches the service provider, applications are registered with a unique number and the date and time in hours and minutes, details of the application are published on the platform within two days, and the applicant reads the authority’s notices in its personal account on the platform.

The state service is free; platform access is not. The service standard for “Issue of an exploration licence for solid minerals” records the fee as “free of charge”, the form of the service as electronic and partly automated, and the platform’s working hours as round the clock. The platform itself, however, distinguishes between users: individuals get reference and statistical information free and without authorisation, state officials get access under contracts, and subsoil users and applicants — any legal entity or individual entrepreneur — get access on a paid basis under the operator’s price list. The operator is Information and Accounting Centre JSC, the single operator for state property accounting under Government Resolution No. 802 of 15 July 2011. Access requires payment for the operator’s services and a request to accede to the user agreement signed with an electronic digital signature issued by Kazakhstan’s National Certification Authority for legal entities.

Twelve services run through the platform, including exploration and production licences for solid minerals, licences for commonly occurring minerals, subsoil space, geological study and artisanal mining, as well as transformation of a plot, transition to the licence regime, processing agreements and supplementary agreements amending a contract. A company entering the Kazakh market that has not yet chosen its form of presence should start not with the platform but with the entity: the financial and professional capacity requirements are addressed to a specific person holding a business identification number. We compared the limited liability partnership with the Astana International Financial Centre route in LLP (TOO) in Kazakhstan for Foreigners 2026.

Author’s assessment: digitalisation moved the risk from the office to the clock. Before 2025 the queue of applications formed on physical filing, and disputes about priority were disputes about a registration log. Priority is now fixed by the system to the minute, and details of a filed application are published within two days — so a competitor sees that a block has been claimed almost at once. That turns document preparation from routine into a race: an application filed with an incomplete set of documents will be refused, and the next in line takes the block. The cost of a mistake here is not a fine; it is the asset itself.

Blocks, Plots and Restricted Areas: the Geography of a Licence

A block is the notional unit into which Kazakhstan’s territory is divided, each side equal to one minute in the geographic coordinate system (article 19(2) of the Code). Twenty-five blocks form a sub-section with a side of five minutes; one hundred blocks form a section with a side of ten minutes. Every block, sub-section and section has identifying coordinates and an individual code assigned by the authority for the study of the subsoil.

An exploration area and a geological study area are built from blocks, and each block must share a side with at least one other block of the same area. A production plot, an artisanal mining plot and a subsoil space plot are built differently: the external boundaries must form a rectangle or, where natural features or a neighbouring plot make that impossible, a quadrilateral with at least two parallel opposite sides; in the cases the Code allows, a polygon with the fewest possible corners (article 19(3), article 209(1)).

Areas restricted for subsoil use are listed in article 25(1), and they are the first thing to check against the platform map. The prohibition in article 25(2) is selective: a plot may not be granted only where its external boundaries lie entirely within those areas. The list comprises: defence and national security land; settlement land and a strip one thousand metres wide around it; land occupied by an operating hydraulic structure and a four-hundred-metre strip around it; water fund land; the contours of deposits and areas of groundwater used or usable for drinking water supply; one hundred metres from burial grounds, graves and cemeteries; third-party land with buildings, structures and perennial plantings and one hundred metres around it, without those persons’ consent; land occupied by motor roads and railways, airports, aerodromes, air navigation and aviation technical centre facilities, railway transport facilities, bridges, metros, tunnels, power systems and transmission lines, communication lines, facilities supporting space activity and trunk pipelines; subsoil plots allocated to state legal entities for state needs; and any other areas where subsoil operations are prohibited by other laws of the Republic of Kazakhstan — the tenth, open-ended item on the list.

The ban on works inside settlements and the one-thousand-metre strip has three exceptions (article 25(3)). The first and most practical: exploration of solid minerals, underground production, and open-pit production at sites where man-made mineral formations are stored, are permitted where a socio-economic support agreement with the local executive and representative bodies is concluded — and that agreement is a condition of issuing the licence. The second is the territory of the former Semipalatinsk nuclear test site. The third is prospecting and evaluation works for groundwater.

An exploration licence is also refused in seven further cases (article 186(2)): where the plot falls entirely under article 25(2); where a block lies wholly within another person’s hydrocarbon production plot, without that person’s consent; where a block lies wholly within a subsoil space plot; where a block relates wholly or partly to an exploration plot under another exploration licence; where a block lies wholly within a production plot for solid minerals, or within an area for which a production application has already been filed; where a block lies wholly in an area where liquidation of the consequences of exploration or production is being or must be carried out; and where a block relates wholly or partly to a uranium production plot.

A special case is the partial block. The Code allows part of a block to be included where its sides fully enclose someone else’s area, where it shares a side with an adjoining block of the claimed area outside such an area, or where it partly falls within the areas in article 25(1). For counting blocks and calculating minimum spend, however, a partial block counts as a full one (article 188(5), article 192(5)) — a detail that goes straight to the project budget.

According to the Unified Subsoil Use Platform on 11 September 2026, the territory open to subsoil use is 1,615,000 square kilometres against a national area of 2,725,000 square kilometres. Roughly 41% of Kazakhstan is therefore closed to subsoil use or already taken.

The scale of the 2026 offering. According to the Ministry of Industry and Construction, as reported by the BAQ.KZ agency on 12 August 2026, the ministry’s order of 4 June 2026 added more than 138,000 blocks for the exploration of solid minerals to the State Subsoil Fund Management Programme, and applications for them were accepted through the Unified Subsoil Use Platform from 12 August to 11 September 2026; where several applicants compete for one block, the right is decided by auction. That is ministry information relayed by a news agency rather than the text of a legal act, and it should be checked against the Programme itself.

The Exploration Licence for Solid Minerals: Who Can Obtain It and on What Terms

An exploration licence for solid minerals gives its holder the exclusive right to use a subsoil plot for exploration operations, comprising the search for deposits and the evaluation of their resources and reserves for subsequent production (article 185). The applicant may be any person — an individual or a legal entity, Kazakh or foreign; the Code sets no nationality restriction. There is one exception: over areas with uranium mineralisation and uranium deposits designated in the State Subsoil Fund Management Programme for uranium exploration, only the national company in the field of uranium may apply (article 187(1), second part).

What is filed with the application

The application is submitted through the Unified Subsoil Use Platform on the competent authority’s form and sets out details of the applicant, including the persons, states and international organisations that directly or indirectly control it, and the blocks claimed. Seven groups of documents are attached (article 187(4)):

1.        copies of documents confirming the applicant’s details (for a foreign legal entity, an extract from the commercial register or another legalised document);

2.        proof of the signatory’s authority;

3.        a written description of the types, methods, approximate annual timing and volumes of exploration works;

4.        the consent of a subsoil user producing hydrocarbons on the claimed plot;

5.        documents evidencing financial and professional capacity;

6.        a socio-economic support agreement for the local population, where the plot relates wholly or partly to settlement land and the one-thousand-metre strip;

7.        a tax authority certificate confirming there is no tax debt exceeding six monthly calculation indices (25,950 tenge in 2026), issued no earlier than ten calendar days before filing.

Financial capacity is evidenced by one of four documents (article 187(5)): a statement showing a balance continuously held for thirty days on an account with a Kazakh second-tier bank or the National Postal Operator at any point in the three months before filing; a loan or financing agreement earmarked for that purpose; audited financial statements for six consecutive months or the previous year in which net assets exceed liabilities by the first-year minimum spend; or a letter from a rating agency recognised by a Kazakh stock exchange confirming a rating no lower than the minimum set by the competent authority. In every case the amount must cover the minimum exploration spend for the first year of the licence. Where the lender is not a financial institution, the lender’s own financial capacity must be evidenced as well. We set out how to open the Kazakh bank account this pack relies on in Opening a Bank Account in Kazakhstan for a Foreign Company.

Professional capacity for exploration is easier to show than for production: a certificate that a specialist in geology or geophysics is on the payroll, or a services contract with such a specialist, or a contract with a contractor or operator that employs one (article 187(6)).

Time limits

Priority runs by order of filing. Applications for the same block are considered in the order received, and the next application is taken up only after the previous one has been refused, and then only after ten working days from notice of that refusal; if the refusal is challenged in court, the queue waits for the judgment (article 189). The exception is a newly free block: where two or more applications are filed within fifteen working days of details of the newly free block being published on the platform, priority is decided by auction (article 189-1, introduced by Law No. 249-VIII).

Ten grounds of refusal are listed in article 190(1) — sub-paragraphs 1) to 8), 8-1) and 9). Beyond the formal ones (a non-compliant application, missing documents, an oversized area, a missed security deadline) four are substantive: revocation of a licence from the applicant or a person controlling it within the year before filing; the applicant’s or a related person’s relinquishment of the same plot within the calendar year before filing; failure to discharge liquidation obligations in the five years before filing; and failure to pay an auction signature bonus in the five years before filing (sub-paragraph 8-1, introduced by Law No. 249-VIII). A separate ground is a threat to national security or a concentration of subsoil use rights; such a refusal is issued without reasons. A refusal may be challenged within ten working days and does not bar a fresh application.

The term is six consecutive years, extendable once by up to five, so eleven years at most (article 193). The extension application is filed during the sixth year and considered within fifteen working days; if the term expires while it is under consideration, the licence continues in force. Where the licence covers ten or more blocks, extension is possible only if the holder relinquishes at least forty per cent of the blocks, counted from the number included when the licence was issued, less any blocks already claimed for a production licence.

Exploration Obligations: Minimum Spend, the Exploration Plan and Liquidation

Annual minimum exploration spend is the principal financial obligation under the licence and the usual reason licences are revoked. The amount depends on the year of the licence and the number of blocks and is expressed in monthly calculation indices (MCI) in force on 1 January of the reporting year (article 192). The table shows the rates and their conversion at the 2026 index of 4,325 tenge.

A licence over fifty blocks in its first year, for example, requires 2,300 MCI for the first ten blocks plus 120 MCI for each of the remaining forty — 2,300 + 4,800 = 7,100 MCI, or 30,707,500 tenge for the year. Where the final year is incomplete, and where the plot is relinquished, the spend is prorated by complete months.

What counts as spend. Article 192(7) lists the qualifying works: geological exploration works (mapping, sampling, drilling, core logging, interpretation of geological data, petrology, programme planning, reporting), geochemical works, geophysical works including airborne geophysics, remote sensing, survey works, core and non-core drilling and others. Spend counts only if incurred on the exploration plot and under that particular licence — an overspend on one licence cannot be carried across to another.

What counts only in part, and what does not count at all. Management and administrative needs, accounting, research, staff training and similar costs do count, but for no more than twenty per cent of the total spend declared in the periodic report (article 192(8)). Excluded altogether are boundary and survey marking of the plot, including land management works; acquisition of the subsoil use right and the costs incidental to it; research not directly connected with the exploration plot under the licence held; and compensation of losses to owners and users of land plots (article 192(9)). Where the spend falls short, the holder must make it good and report to the competent authority no later than four months after the reporting year, and those amounts are not counted in the current year’s spend (article 192(10)). For production the equivalent period is three months.

The exploration plan is the only project document at this stage (article 196). It is drawn up and approved by the subsoil user itself, and a copy is filed with the authority for solid minerals. The plan is not subject to state review, but where environmental legislation requires an environmental permit or a positive state environmental expert review conclusion, the copy is filed only after they are obtained. Carrying out works not provided for in the filed plan is prohibited, and the plan must look forward at least three consecutive years.

Limits on the works themselves (article 194). Extracting rock mass and moving soil up to one thousand cubic metres is permitted solely for sampling, and only where those works are stated in the exploration plan. Above one thousand cubic metres a permission from the authority for solid minerals is required, and it is granted only where there is no previously developed or industrially tested ore processing scheme, confirmed by a competent person’s opinion. No capital structures may be erected on an exploration plot and no man-made mineral formations from processing operations may be placed there. Hydrogeological studies are compulsory.

Liquidation security is provided before the licence is issued (article 198). The total is calculated from the number of blocks and the monthly calculation index under a methodology approved by the authority for solid minerals; where part of the plot is relinquished and liquidation there completed, the amount is reduced proportionately and the guarantor is notified within five working days. The permitted forms — a guarantee, a pledge of a bank deposit or insurance (articles 56–58) — may be combined.

Reporting falls due on 30 April. An exploration licence carries four periodic reports: performance of licence obligations; goods, works and services acquired and their in-country value share; the composition of persons and organisations directly or indirectly controlling the subsoil user; and geological reports. All are filed annually for the previous calendar year no later than 30 April (article 195). One detail matters: spend figures on the exploration plot must be confirmed by an auditor under the Law “On Auditing Activity”, or separately disclosed in audited financial statements. For many foreign applicants this is a first encounter with Kazakh statutory audit, which we mapped in Mandatory Audit and Financial Reporting in Kazakhstan in 2026. Once the licence ends, the former holder must file a final report on the results of exploration works within three months.

Relinquishment is available at any time before the licence expires, in whole or in part, by whole blocks, with the pledgee’s consent and the liquidation act or inspection act attached (article 199). Relinquishing part of the plot triggers re-issue of the licence.

Author’s assessment: minimum spend is not a tax but a test of seriousness. Article 192 is built so that holding a large area gets dearer every year: in year eleven a licence over six to ten blocks costs 11,500 monthly calculation indices a year against 2,300 in year one. Add the duty to give up forty per cent of the blocks on extension. This is a deliberate mechanism against dormant licences, and it is also the principal risk for a slowly funded project: the money must not merely be spent but spent on qualifying works, confirmed by an auditor and reported by 30 April.

The Exclusive Right: How Exploration Turns into Production

The exclusive right is the Code’s guaranteed bridge from exploration to production, without a tender and without an auction. The holder of one or more exploration licences for solid minerals whose plots share boundaries has the exclusive right to a production licence for solid minerals over a plot inside its exploration area — provided a deposit has been discovered whose resources and reserves are confirmed by a resource and reserve evaluation report (article 201(1)(1)).

The right covers three scenarios: a production licence for solid minerals; a production licence for commonly occurring minerals, where such a deposit is discovered; and a subsoil space licence, where there is no deposit or its resources are insignificant and that is confirmed by a report on the results of exploration works.

Four rules govern how the right is used.

First, it may be exercised at any time during the exploration licence (article 201(2)) and is lost when that licence terminates (article 201(3)). The application goes to the competent authority, the authority for the study of the subsoil or the local executive body, depending on the licence sought.

Second, filing the production application extends the life of the exploration licence. If the exploration term expires after the application is filed, the licence continues in force over the claimed plot until the production licence is issued or refused. During that period the holder bears no minimum exploration spend obligation but must continue paying for the use of land plots and may go on exploring there (article 201(5)).

Third, an application made under the exclusive right is very hard to refuse. Under article 207(5) refusal is available only where breaches of the exploration licence conditions remain unremedied, or under article 207(1)(9) — failure to file the agreed draft mining plan in time. Where the application or the document set is merely defective, the competent authority must accept the application and notify the applicant of what to fix; the review period is then extended by thirty calendar days for the defects to be cured and the application refiled.

Fourth, the exclusive right cannot be assigned (article 201(6)). It cannot be transferred separately from the licence: either the exploration licence itself is sold under the transfer rules, or nothing is.

Uranium is the exception. Where a uranium deposit is discovered on an exploration plot, the holder of an exploration licence for solid minerals has no exclusive right to the production plot: the plot goes to the national company in the field of uranium under article 70(3) and article 160(2). Moreover, on extension of the exploration licence the holder must relinquish blocks containing uranium mineralisation or uranium deposits — except where the ores are complexly mineralised with other solid minerals and uranium is an associated component, and except where the national company in the field of uranium is itself carrying out the exploration (article 193(3), as amended by Law No. 243-VIII).

The resource and reserve report: two acceptable formats

The pivotal document is the report confirming resources and reserves. As a rule this is a competent person’s report prepared under the Kazakhstan Code for Public Reporting of Exploration Results, Mineral Resources and Mineral Reserves (the KAZRC Code). The authority for the study of the subsoil has thirty calendar days to consider it and either accept it and enter the resources in the state register of minerals or return it with reasoned objections, which may be appealed (article 72(9)). Where resources, after production and losses, have fallen by more than twenty-five per cent against previously approved industrial-category reserves, the authority holds a hearing of the subsoil user and of the competent persons who prepared and checked the report.

The second format is the legacy one. Under article 278(10) of the Code, an applicant for a production licence for solid minerals may submit a reserves calculation report drawn up under article 121 of Law of the Republic of Kazakhstan No. 291-IV of 24 June 2010 “On Subsoil and Subsoil Use”, which continues in force for that purpose. This matters for projects that inherited data from the earlier state reserves review system.

The Production Licence for Solid Minerals: Procedure, Term and Extension

A production licence for solid minerals confers the exclusive right to carry out three groups of operation on the plot: production, meaning extraction of solid minerals; use of subsoil space for mining works and for siting mining and processing facilities and man-made mineral formations; and exploration of the production plot, that is operational exploration (article 202). The Code’s definition of production takes in underground gasification and smelting, chemical and bacterial leaching, dredging and hydraulic working of placers, and the collection, temporary storage, crushing and sorting of what has been extracted within the plot.

The document set

Twelve items are attached to the application (article 204(3)), five of them specific to production:

•          the draft mining plan under article 216;

•          the draft liquidation plan under article 217;

•          the resource and reserve evaluation report for the plot claimed;

•          documents on the area: a location cartogram, a general situation scheme and a surface topographic map;

•          where filed under the exclusive right, the report on performance of licence obligations for the exploration plot and proof of payment for the use of land plots for the current period.

Financial capacity is evidenced as for exploration, except that the bank statement must show a balance continuously held for thirty days within the six months before filing (three for exploration). Professional capacity requires three disciplines rather than one: geology or geophysics; mining engineering; and geodesy or mine surveying (article 204(5)). Technical capacity is evidenced separately. The certificate that there is no tax debt above six monthly calculation indices is required here too.

How the review runs

The production procedure is an order of magnitude longer than the exploration one, and its bottleneck is not the state body but the applicant.

The same periods are repeated in the Rules on filing and consideration of applications for production licences for solid minerals, which add two details the Code does not contain: the sole filing channel is the Unified Subsoil Use Platform, and where the application is made under the exclusive right the first ten-working-day stage is replaced by thirty calendar days for completing the file. The notice requiring the environmental permit is published on the platform within two working days of being sent to the applicant.

The notice under article 205(3) is the basis on which the local executive body reserves land for subsoil use, and the licence itself is the basis on which land use rights are granted under the Land Code (article 205(6) and (7)). A separate rule protects neighbours: without the owner’s or land user’s consent, no operations may be carried out within thirty metres of the lowest point of the surface of that land plot (article 205(5)).

Priority again runs by order of filing (article 206): applications for the same area are considered in the order received, the licence goes to the applicant whose application is the first to comply with the Code, and later applications are refused. There are ten grounds of refusal (article 207(1)), mirroring those for exploration, with the addition of sub-paragraph 4-1 on an unpaid auction signature bonus in the preceding five years.

The term of a production licence may not exceed twenty-five consecutive years (article 211). It is extended on the holder’s application for a period not exceeding the original term, and the number of extensions is unlimited. The application is filed no earlier than four years before expiry; if the term expires while it is under consideration, the licence continues in force. Extension is refused where the term sought does not comply with article 211(2), where the filing deadline was missed, or where breaches relating to the payment for the use of land plots and to minimum production spend remain unremedied.

Author’s assessment: the year for environmental clearance is the real timeline. Of the seven stages, about forty working days belong to state bodies and up to two years to the applicant, for the environmental permit, the industrial safety expert review and the state environmental expert review of the liquidation plan. A project should be planned around that period, not around the “ten working days” in the service description. There is a reverse side: while that year runs, the exploration licence over the claimed plot stays alive with no minimum spend obligation — a lawful and underused way of holding ground without funding further exploration.

Production Obligations and Retention Status

The conditions of a production licence are set out in article 208 and there are six: the obligation to pay the signature bonus and the payment for the use of land plots; the annual minimum production spend; the minimum share of in-country value in works and services; the obligation to fund the training of Kazakh personnel; the obligation to fund research, scientific-technical and experimental design works; and the grounds of revocation.

Minimum production spend

Qualifying works include development driving and stripping, ventilation, drilling and blasting, support and maintenance of workings, rock pressure control, haulage of ore and rock, dumping and stockpiling, crushing, heap and in-situ leaching, and all construction of the mine, the processing plant and ancillary production infrastructure on the plot (article 210(7)). Management and administrative costs, accounting, research and staff training do count, but for no more than twenty per cent of the total spend declared (article 210(8)). Excluded altogether are boundary and survey marking and land management works; acquisition of subsoil use rights, land use rights or land ownership; research unconnected with the plot; and compensation for land buy-outs (article 210(9)). Where the spend falls short, the holder must make it good and report within three months of the end of the reporting year, and those amounts are not counted in the current year’s spend (article 210(10)).

In-country value, training and science

The share of in-country value in works and services acquired for subsoil operations has been no less than seventy per cent of the calendar-year volume since 2 March 2026 (article 28(2), as amended by Law No. 249-VIII; it was fifty). Procurement runs through an open tender, a single source, an open downward tender (electronic bidding), purchase outside these rules, or commodity exchanges, with compulsory use of the register of goods, works and services; Kazakh producers of works and services receive a notional twenty per cent reduction of their tender price. A Kazakh producer is an individual entrepreneur or a legal entity incorporated under Kazakh law and located in Kazakhstan that employs at least ninety-five per cent citizens of the Republic of Kazakhstan, excluding intra-corporate transferees (article 213). The number of foreign executives, managers and specialists on intra-corporate transfer may not exceed fifty per cent of the total in each category (article 28(1)). We examined how foreign labour is engaged in Kazakhstan in Employer Permits to Attract Foreign Labour in Kazakhstan.

From the second year of the production licence the holder must spend one per cent of the previous year’s production costs on training Kazakh personnel and a further one per cent on research, scientific-technical and experimental design works (article 212). Any excess is credited against the following year.

The sanction for non-performance: the penalty

Breach of the obligations under a production licence attracts a penalty or revocation (article 221). The penalty covers three obligations, and paying it discharges the underlying obligation for that calendar year:

Reporting and retention status

A production licence carries six reports (article 215): performance of licence obligations; goods, works and services acquired and their in-country value share — quarterly, no later than the twenty-fifth day of the month following the reporting period; the composition of controlling persons; geological reports where exploration is carried out on the production plot; solid minerals produced; and performance of the works programme where retention status has been granted. The rest are annual, due by 30 April. Spend figures must be confirmed by an auditor.

Retention status (Chapter 29, articles 222–230) is a special regime allowing the holder not to start or to suspend production. It removes the minimum production spend obligation and the related reporting and, where granted over part of a plot, proportionately reduces the obligations under article 208. It is granted for up to five years, extendable by up to a further five, but for no more than ten years in total, and is confirmed by a re-issued licence. The grounds are: production is unprofitable because of adverse market conditions, with reasonable grounds to believe it will become profitable within five years; no technology exists that meets environmental safety requirements; force majeure; or a court ruling applying a rehabilitation procedure. During the retention period the production period is extended, and exploration on the plot is permitted where the works programme provides for it.

Auctions, the National Company and the Industrial-Innovation Project: Three Exceptions to the Queue

“First in time, first in right” stopped being the only rule in 2026. The Code now contains three mechanisms that bypass the queue, and all three appeared or changed within nine months.

The Chapter 28-1 auction

Chapter 28-1 (articles 221-1 to 221-5, introduced by Law No. 249-VIII) provides that three categories of plot are granted by auction: production plots with reserves or resources entered in the state register of minerals and free of operations; exploration plots with prospects identified by state geological study of the subsoil; and the territories of exploration or combined exploration-and-production contracts that were invalidated, not extended or terminated early. An auctioned exploration area may not exceed two hundred blocks.

The auction is held on a decision of a tender commission whose composition the competent authority approves. The commission may add obligations beyond those in articles 191 and 208, and add grounds of revocation and of penalty. The announcement is published no earlier than two months before the date. The conditions set a starting signature bonus, the winner is the highest bidder, and the results may be challenged within ten working days. Non-payment of the signature bonus by the winner leads to refusal of the licence to it and to persons controlling it, exclusion from auctions for five years, and a ban on transfer permissions for them during that period (article 221-2(4)). Technically the bidding runs on the state property register portal www.e-qazyna.kz, the link to which the applicant receives in its account on the platform.

The auction for a newly free block

Article 189-1 is a separate, faster mechanism. Where two or more applications for the same newly free block are filed within fifteen working days of details of that block being published on the Unified Subsoil Use Platform, priority is decided by an auction held no later than fifteen working days after the review period ends. Payment of the auction signature bonus and provision of liquidation security are conditions of issue. If no applicant takes part, the auction fails and the ordinary queue under article 189 returns.

Chapter 28-2: the national company in the field of solid minerals

This is the newest change: Chapter 28-2 (articles 221-6 to 221-9) was introduced by Law No. 337-VIII and has applied since 7 September 2026. The national company in the field of solid minerals is a joint-stock company established by decision of the Government whose controlling stake belongs to the State or to the national managing holding.

The mechanism works like this: on the recommendation of a consultative and advisory body under the Government, a territory that would have been granted by auction under article 221-1 is transferred by the competent authority into the category reserved for priority allocation to the national company. The recommendation must be made before applications from third parties open. Territories for coal exploration and production are not transferable in this way, and uranium falls outside the Chapter altogether. If the national company is refused a licence, the competent authority sets a new date for the opening of auction applications, no more than two months from the amendment of the State Subsoil Fund Management Programme.

In exchange for the priority the Chapter imposes hard obligations. Development of the deposit must begin no later than two years from issue of the production licence, and breach of that requirement, causing a delay of more than two years from the day the production licence was issued, became a new ground of revocation (article 221(3)(3)). Transfer of the subsoil use right is prohibited, except to a joint venture in which the national company holds at least thirty per cent and whose strategic partner has undertaken obligations on investment, technology transfer and production financing. A share may be sold to a third party only through a competitive sale run under rules set by the national managing holding; the national company’s remaining share must be at least thirty per cent with control over the subsoil user’s decisions retained; and the whole exercise must involve independent advisers.

The industrial-innovation project: an auction plot without an auction

Article 278(7-2), introduced by Law No. 249-VIII, opens a fourth door. A subject of industrial-innovation activity carrying out a project worth more than 14,500,000 monthly calculation indices (62,712,500,000 tenge at the 2026 index), included in the single industrialisation map under the Law “On Industrial Policy”, whose production process is connected with subsoil use, may obtain a plot inside an auction territory without an auction. The application may be filed at any time before the auction is announced, and then no auction is held. The right is available for five years from the date the paragraph took effect.

The price of that priority is eight additional licence conditions: the parameters of the new project, with output at no less than the average level of processing; additional annual minimum spend totalling more than 14,500,000 monthly calculation indices; interim and final deadlines for delivery; wages above the regional average; supply of the project’s output to the domestic manufacturing market; processing of everything extracted within the project; a minimum share of in-country value in goods; and an extra ground of revocation. It also requires a decision of the interdepartmental commission on industrial policy agreed with the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan, and evidence of funding — a guarantee from a foreign bank, a Kazakh second-tier bank, a national development institution or an entity rated no lower than “BB-” on the Standard and Poor’s scale or its equivalent, a loan agreement with such an entity, or a bank account statement. Production may not begin before the project’s production facility starts operating.

What It Costs: Signature Bonus, Payment for the Subsoil Plot and Historical Costs

A subsoil user’s financial obligations for solid minerals fall into two groups: payments for the right itself (the signature bonus, the payment for the use of land plots, and the payment reimbursing historical costs) and taxes on the result (the mineral extraction tax and, from 2027, the royalty). The first group arises whether or not anything is ever produced.

The signature bonus

The signature bonus is a one-off fixed payment for acquiring a subsoil use right over a plot, and for enlarging that plot (article 759 of the Tax Code). For licences not issued at auction the amount is calculated at a rate expressed in monthly calculation indices in force on the date of payment (article 762).

The deadline for licences is no later than ten working days from the day the licence is issued (article 764(2)). Where the right is won at auction, the bonus is payable within twenty working days of the applicant being declared the winner. The tax period is the calendar quarter in which the payment fell due (article 763).

A separate topic is the starting bonus for contracts (article 761): 2,800 MCI for a hydrocarbon exploration contract, 280 MCI for solid minerals (other than exploration licences for solid minerals, artisanal mining and contracts for working man-made mineral formations), 40 MCI for commonly occurring minerals, groundwater and therapeutic muds; for a hydrocarbon production contract without approved reserves 3,000 MCI, and with approved reserves the formula (C × 0.04%) + (Cp × 0.01%), subject to a floor of 10,000 MCI.

Author’s assessment: there is a textual gap in article 760 of the Tax Code. The list of signature bonus payers in article 760(3) names exploration, production and combined exploration-and-production contracts and, among licences, only the geological study licence, the subsoil space licence and the artisanal mining licence. Exploration and production licences for solid minerals are not expressly named, even though article 762 sets rates for them, article 764(2) sets the deadline, and the obligation to pay the bonus is a mandatory condition of the licence itself under articles 191 and 208 of the Subsoil Code. In practice the bonus is paid and non-payment is a ground of revocation; but in a formal dispute the argument should rest on the licence condition and article 762, not on article 760.

The payment for the use of land plots

This payment is levied not only for leased land but for the subsoil plot itself granted under an exploration or production licence for solid minerals (article 617(1) of the Tax Code). The rates are set by article 621(1) in monthly calculation indices in force on the first day of the tax period.

The annual amount is due no later than 25 February of the reporting tax period where the licence was in force on 1 January or was obtained by 1 February inclusive (article 623(1)). Where a licence is obtained or terminates after 1 February, the payment is prorated to the actual period and is due no later than the twenty-fifth day of the second month of the quarter following the quarter of expiry. The calculation of current payments is filed by 20 February and, for licences obtained after that date, no later than the twentieth day of the month following the month of issue (article 624). The payment is made at the location of the subsoil plot.

The payment reimbursing historical costs

The payment reimbursing historical costs reimburses the State for what it spent on geological study of the area and exploration of deposits before the right was granted (article 766). The decisive rule for new projects is article 767(2): the holder of an exploration or production licence for solid minerals is not a payer where two conditions are met together — the licence was issued after 31 December 2017, and the area was not held under a subsoil contract before 1 January 2018.

Where the payment does arise, the amount is set by a confidentiality agreement with the authority for the study of the subsoil, net of the payment for acquiring state-owned geological information (article 768(1)). The obligation arises on the date of that agreement, and payment begins with production and the earliest of: declaration of a commercial discovery, transition to the production period, issue of a production licence, or conclusion of a production contract. Where the total is 10,000 MCI or less it is paid by 10 April of the year following the year production began; above 10,000 MCI it is paid quarterly, by the twenty-fifth day of the second month, in equal instalments over up to ten years, each instalment no less than 2,500 MCI (10,812,500 tenge at the 2026 index) apart from the last.

Taxes on Production: the Mineral Extraction Tax Today, Royalty from 1 January 2027

The mineral extraction tax is paid separately for each type of mineral raw material extracted (article 771 of the Tax Code). The object is the physical volume extracted in the tax period, including actual losses in the subsoil above the normed losses set by the approved technical development project (article 779). The base is the value of the taxable volume (article 780): for minerals with official quotations it is the average exchange price on the London Metal Exchange or the quotations of the London Bullion Market Association; for the rest it is the weighted average selling price or, where the output is transferred for processing or used for own needs, the actual production cost of extraction and primary processing increased by twenty per cent.

Gold and silver are taxed on a sliding scale. The gold rate rises from 7.5% at an average exchange price of up to and including US$2,800 per troy ounce to 11% above US$3,800, with steps of 8% up to US$3,000, 8.5% up to US$3,200, 9% up to US$3,400, 9.5% up to US$3,600 and 10% up to US$3,800. Silver follows the same shape: 7.5% up to US$28 per ounce, then 8%, 8.5%, 9%, 9.5%, 10% and 11% above US$38. Uranium is taxed on annual output: 4% up to 500 tonnes, 6% up to 1,000, 9% up to 2,000, 12% up to 3,000, 15% up to 4,000 and 18% above 4,000 tonnes, with an uplift of 0.5 to 2.5 percentage points where the weighted average price of natural uranium concentrate exceeds US$70, US$80, US$90, US$100 and US$110 per pound.

The tax period for the mineral extraction tax is the calendar quarter, and payment is due no later than the twenty-fifth day of the second month following the quarter (articles 787 and 788).

Royalty: new Chapter 90 from 1 January 2027

On 1 January 2027 Chapter 90 of the Tax Code, “Royalty on solid minerals other than commonly occurring minerals”, takes effect. It is not an additional charge but a substitution: from the same date article 773 excludes royalty payers from the mineral extraction tax.

Royalty payers are subsoil users holding an exploration or production licence for solid minerals where two conditions are met together (article 791(1)): the licence was issued after 31 December 2026 and the area was not held under a subsoil use right before 31 December 2026. Holders of artisanal mining licences and subsoil users under uranium production contracts may not apply royalty.

The structural difference from the extraction tax is that the object is the physical volume of mineral raw material and solid minerals sold, including after processing, and of man-made mineral formations sold (articles 790 and 792). The base is the value of what is sold, not below production cost increased by twenty per cent, or the average exchange price for quoted metals (article 793). Volumes and grades are confirmed by accredited laboratories located in the Republic of Kazakhstan, lot by lot, and the authority for solid minerals approves the list of such laboratories.

Author’s assessment: the royalty is tax policy written in three numbers. The gap between 13% and 7% says the State is willing to give up six percentage points of revenue for the product to leave Kazakhstan as metal rather than ore. For a project choosing between selling ore and building a concentrator, that belongs directly in the financial model. But article 791(1) also draws a line by date: two identical licences obtained on 30 December 2026 and 4 January 2027 will be taxed differently — the first under the mineral extraction tax at up to 21.06% of the value of what is extracted, the second under royalty at 13%, 10% or 7% of the value of what is sold. The requirement to confirm volumes only through accredited Kazakh laboratories adds an operational dependency worth checking in advance. The architecture of the new Tax Code is set out in Kazakhstan’s Tax System 2026, and the rules on pricing between related parties in Transfer Pricing in Kazakhstan in 2026.

The Foreign Investor: Access, Transfers and Strategic Plots

The Code sets no nationality restriction on holding a solid minerals licence. Individuals and legal entities may hold subsoil use rights (article 18(1)), and article 2(4) gives foreigners, stateless persons and foreign legal entities the same rights and obligations as Kazakh persons unless the Code, the laws or ratified treaties provide otherwise. A foreign legal entity attaches an extract from the commercial register or another legalised document evidencing its status. Nationality restrictions appear in only two places: only a citizen of the Republic of Kazakhstan may hold an artisanal mining licence (article 263(2)), and only the national company in the field of uranium may apply over uranium territories.

In practice a foreign group almost always incorporates in Kazakhstan. That is driven not by the licensing provisions themselves but by everything around them: the bank account needed to evidence financial capacity, the business identification number needed to pay the signature bonus, the land use right over the plot, and Kazakh-producer status in procurement. We compared the available forms of presence in Branch and Representative Office of a Foreign Company vs an LLP.

Permission for a transfer

The transfer of a subsoil use right, or a share in it, arising under an exploration licence, a production licence for solid minerals or a subsoil space licence, and the transfer of objects connected with the subsoil use right, require the permission of the competent authority (article 44(1)). Transactions made without permission, or after the permission has expired, may be declared invalid by a court on the competent authority’s claim (article 44(4), as amended by Law No. 337-VIII).

Permission is not required in sixteen cases (article 44(2)). The intra-group ones are the most used: a transfer to a subsidiary in which the subsoil user holds at least ninety-nine per cent; a transfer between organisations in each of which at least ninety-nine per cent is held directly or indirectly by the same person; a transfer up to a parent holding at least ninety-nine per cent; and a distribution on liquidation on the same condition. All four are subject to a common filter: the acquirer must not be registered in a state with preferential taxation.

Law No. 337-VIII changed two things here with effect from 7 September 2026. First, in article 44(2)(5) the threshold for transfers of participatory interests and shares that are objects connected with the subsoil use right was raised from one per cent to twenty-five per cent: no permission is needed where, as a result, the person comes to hold less than twenty-five per cent in the charter capital of the subsoil user or of a person able to influence its decisions. Second, a new sub-paragraph 16 exempts passive instruments: no permission is needed for transfers of shares, units and other securities or financial instruments connected with the subsoil use right that carry no voting rights and no right to participate in the management. But where a passive investor acquires control of the subsoil user, including a right to more than twenty-five per cent of its net income, the duty to notify the competent authority under article 47 survives.

A separate duty is the notification of a change of control. Under article 47 a subsoil user holding a right under a contract, an exploration licence or a production licence for solid minerals must notify the state body that granted the right of any change in the persons and organisations directly or indirectly controlling it within thirty calendar days of that change. The notification is filed on the competent authority’s form in Kazakh and Russian and states who lost and who acquired control and the form, means and grounds of that control; the authority may require originals or notarised copies of the supporting documents. The duty applies whether or not the transaction itself needed permission. Handling corporate changes inside a Kazakh structure is part of UPPERSETUP’s Kazakhstan services.

Strategic plots and the State’s pre-emptive right

The State’s pre-emptive right applies only to subsoil use contracts and only to strategic subsoil plots (article 43(1)). A plot is strategic where it contains geological oil reserves above fifty million tonnes or natural gas above fifteen billion cubic metres; where it lies in the Kazakh sector of the Caspian Sea; or where it contains a uranium deposit, including a rare-earth-uranium deposit. The list of strategic plots and the procedure for maintaining it are approved by the competent authority in agreement with the authority for the study of the subsoil.

For solid minerals licences there is no state pre-emptive right. There are, however, two filters of equivalent force: refusal of a licence where it would create a threat to national security or a concentration of subsoil use rights — issued without reasons (article 190(1)(6), article 207(1)(6)) — and revocation for a breach of article 44(1) that has created a threat to national security (article 200(1)(1) and article 221(3)(1)). In the latter case the breach must be cured within no more than one year by restoring the position that existed before it or, where restoration is impossible, through other transfers of the connected objects with the competent authority’s permission.

Revocation and Liability: Civil, Administrative and Criminal

Revocation of the licence is the principal sanction of the licence regime, and the procedure is the same for exploration and production (articles 200 and 221). The grounds are set out in the table below.

Revocation is effected by written notice, and the licence ceases to have effect three months after the notice is received. It may be challenged within fifteen working days, and for the period of the challenge the three-month period is extended until the decision takes effect. Revocation is not permitted where the failure was caused by force majeure; but a lack of technical or financial resources, the unavailability of goods, works or services on the market, and the imposition of an administrative penalty are not force majeure (article 221(8), article 200(6)). For a geological study licence the regime is stricter: twenty working days to cure, and the licence ceases ten calendar days after the notice is received (article 92).

Administrative liability

The distinctive feature of article 139 is that the sanction is tied not to the monthly calculation index but to the market value of the resources unlawfully extracted — there is no ceiling.

Criminal liability

Article 334 of the Criminal Code, “Unauthorised use of the subsoil”, in the wording of Law No. 186-VII of 3 January 2023, covers unauthorised use of the subsoil and unauthorised production where significant damage is caused: a fine of up to three thousand monthly calculation indices (12,975,000 tenge), corrective labour, community service of up to eight hundred hours, restriction or deprivation of liberty of up to three years, with or without confiscation and with or without disqualification for up to three years. Where the damage is large, the act is committed by a group, or it is repeated, the ceiling is four thousand monthly calculation indices or four years. Where the act is committed by a criminal group, in a specially protected natural area, or causes especially large damage, the sanction is three to seven years’ imprisonmentwith disqualification for up to ten years.

Step by Step: From Choosing a Block to a Production Licence

The route to a licence has nine steps; the first five concern exploration and the last four the move into production. The periods in the table are statutory and exclude the time the applicant itself needs to assemble documents.

What this route does not contain. There is no tender for an exploration licence over a free block — there is a queue. There is no state approval of the exploration plan — a copy is simply filed for information. There is no state reserves expert review in the Soviet sense — there is a competent person’s report and entry in the state register. And there is no separate subsoil permit under Law No. 202-V: a subsoil use licence is not one.

Typical Mistakes and What They Cost

Mistake 1. Treating a subsoil use licence as a permit under Law No. 202-V. The second part of article 29(1) expressly takes it outside the permits legislation. The consequence: the applicant waits for “silence is consent” and the fifteen-working-day rule that do not exist here, misses the forty-working-day deadline for the liquidation security and is refused under article 190(1)(9). Cost: the block — it goes to the next in the queue, and refiling is possible only once the queue comes back round.

Mistake 2. Filing an incomplete pack and expecting to top it up. For exploration there is no right to top up: a non-compliant application and missing documents are free-standing grounds of refusal (article 190(1)(1) and (2)). The thirty-day window to cure defects exists only for a production application filed under the exclusive right (article 207(5)). Cost: the block, and two to six weeks to rebuild the pack.

Mistake 3. Counting blocks by fact rather than by rule. A partial block counts as a full one for the purposes of determining the number of blocks (article 188(5), article 192(5)). A licence over six partial blocks costs the same as one over six full blocks. Cost: moving from the “2–5 blocks” band to the “6–10 blocks” band raises first-year minimum spend from 1,800 to 2,300 MCI — 2,162,500 tenge a year — and by year eleven the gap reaches 3,500 MCI a year, or 15,137,500 tenge.

Mistake 4. Leaving the payment for the subsoil plot out of the budget, or treating it as land tax. It is a separate payment under article 617 of the Tax Code; the annual amount falls due by 25 February, and the calculation of current payments by 20 February. Cost: for a 10 km² production plot that is 4,500 MCI, or 19,462,500 tenge a year; and late payment is itself a ground of revocation under article 221(3)(2), with three months to cure.

Mistake 5. Spending money “in general” rather than on qualifying works under the right licence. Article 192(7) and article 210(7) contain closed lists. Management and administrative costs count for no more than twenty per cent of the total declared, on exploration and production alike, and acquisition of the subsoil use right, land management works and compensation to landowners do not count at all (article 192(8) and (9), article 210(8) and (9)). Spend under another licence does not count. Cost: a shortfall must be made good within four months of the reporting year on exploration (article 192(10)) and three months on production (article 210(10)), and those amounts are not counted in the current year’s spend — so the year is effectively paid for twice.

Mistake 6. Forgetting the auditor. Spend figures in the report on performance of licence obligations must be confirmed by an auditor, or separately disclosed in audited financial statements (article 195(3), article 215(3)). Cost: unconfirmed spend in a report is a breach of the reporting rules under article 349 of the Code of Administrative Offences (20 MCI) and, if the competent authority declines to recognise the spend, a minimum-spend shortfall with everything that follows.

Mistake 7. Starting “trial” stripping on an exploration plot. Extracting more than one thousand cubic metres of rock mass without the permission of the authority for solid minerals is a free-standing ground for revoking an exploration licence (article 200(1)(3), introduced by Law No. 249-VIII). In parallel, works without approved project documents fall under article 356(4) of the Code of Administrative Offences. Cost: up to 2,000 MCI (8,650,000 tenge) for a large business, plus revocation of the licence and loss of the exclusive right to production.

Mistake 8. Planning to extend an exploration licence without budgeting for the relinquishment of forty per cent of the blocks. For licences over ten or more blocks, relinquishing forty per cent of the blocks is a condition of extension (article 193(3)), counted from the number of blocks as at issue, less those claimed for production. Cost: refusal to extend under article 193(5)(4) and loss of the whole plot, including prospective blocks for which no production application has yet been filed.

Mistake 9. Relying on 2025 sources. Between 26 February and 7 September 2026 three laws amended the Code, the in-country value share rose from fifty to seventy per cent, the auction for a newly free block and Chapter 28-2 on the national company appeared, and royalty starts on 1 January 2027. Cost: an in-country value obligation calculated on the old share attracts a penalty of thirty per cent of the value of the works and services attributable to the unperformed volume (article 221(2)).

Who the Licence Regime Suits, and Who It Does Not

It suits a junior exploration company. An exploration licence is granted on application, without a tender and without negotiation, over any free block, in roughly three months from filing to issue, for a signature bonus of 432,500 tenge and minimum spend from 5,190,000 tenge a year for a single block. The exclusive right to production is guaranteed by the Code, and the payment reimbursing historical costs does not arise at all for licences issued after 31 December 2017 over ground that was clear. That is one of the lowest entry thresholds among comparable jurisdictions.

It suits a mining and metals group ready to add processing. Royalty rates from 1 January 2027 fall from 13% on ore raw material to 7% on metals and alloys; investment preferences are available under a solid minerals processing agreement where investment reaches 70,000,000 monthly calculation indices; and an industrial-innovation project above 14,500,000 monthly calculation indices opens the door to an auction plot without an auction.

It suits the owner of man-made mineral formations. A production licence may be issued over sites where man-made mineral formations are stored, including inside settlements and the one-thousand-metre strip — on condition that only those formations are removed, that they are hauled away and processed outside that territory, that the land is reclaimed, and that the socio-economic support agreement is observed (article 208, second part).

It does not suit anyone hoping to sit on ground. The minimum spend structure makes holding dearer every year, extension requires giving up forty per cent of the blocks, and retention status on a production licence is capped at ten years in total and requires proof either of unprofitability with a prospect of recovery or of the absence of an environmentally acceptable technology.

It does not suit a project with no Kazakh operating base. Seventy per cent in-country value in works and services, Kazakh-producer status with a ninety-five per cent citizen-employment threshold, compulsory auditor confirmation of spend, filing of the application and supporting documents in Kazakh and Russian with notarised translations, and confirmation of royalty volumes through accredited laboratories located in Kazakhstan all assume a real presence rather than remote management. Where that presence has to be built from scratch, that is what the UPPERSETUP team in Kazakhstan does.

It does not suit uranium. Uranium exploration and production run under the contract regime and direct negotiations with the national company in the field of uranium. More than that, discovering a uranium deposit on a solid minerals exploration plot removes the exclusive right to production and obliges the holder to relinquish the relevant blocks on extension.

It calls for care with coal and with ground the national company wants. Since 7 September 2026 a territory earmarked for auction may be moved into the category reserved for priority allocation to the national company in the field of solid minerals, on the recommendation of a consultative and advisory body under the Government, before third-party applications open. Coal territories are not transferable in this way, and that is the only express guarantee in the new Chapter.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can a foreign company obtain an exploration licence in Kazakhstan directly, without a Kazakh entity?

Formally yes: the Code places no nationality restriction on applicants, and a foreign legal entity attaches an extract from the commercial register or another legalised document. In practice a Kazakh entity is almost always incorporated: financial capacity is evidenced by a statement from an account with a Kazakh second-tier bank or the National Postal Operator, the signature bonus is paid against a business identification number, and the land use right over a production plot is granted by the local executive body under the Land Code.

What does an exploration licence for solid minerals cost in 2026?

The state service itself is free. The compulsory first-year payments are: a signature bonus of 100 monthly calculation indices — 432,500 tenge; the payment for the subsoil plot from 15 monthly calculation indices per block a year — 64,875 tenge per block where the area is under seventy blocks; and minimum exploration spend from 1,200 monthly calculation indices — 5,190,000 tenge for a single block. To that add liquidation security, calculated under the methodology of the authority for solid minerals, and the operator’s charge for access to the Unified Subsoil Use Platform.

How long does an exploration licence take?

The statutory service period is ten working days to consider the application and forty-five working days to issue the licence or a reasoned refusal; for territories first included in the State Subsoil Fund Management Programme it is twenty and forty-five working days. Within that period the applicant must provide the liquidation security no later than forty working days from publication of the notice, and the licence is issued no later than five working days after that.

What happens if several companies apply for the same block?

The general rule is the queue: applications are considered in the order received, and the next one only after the previous has been refused and ten working days have passed since notice of that refusal. The exception is a newly free block: where two or more applications are filed within fifteen working days of details of the block being published on the platform, priority is decided by auction (article 189-1). If nobody takes part, the auction fails and the ordinary queue returns.

Does an exploration licence guarantee the right to produce?

Yes, where a deposit is discovered whose resources and reserves are confirmed by a resource and reserve evaluation report: article 201(1) gives the holder of an exploration licence the exclusive right to a production licence over a plot within its exploration area. Such an application may be refused only where breaches of the exploration licence conditions remain unremedied, or where the agreed draft mining plan was not filed in time. Uranium is the exception: where a uranium deposit is discovered, there is no exclusive right.

Can a subsoil use licence be sold?

Transfer of the subsoil use right under an exploration licence, a production licence for solid minerals or a subsoil space licence requires the competent authority’s permission, and a transaction without it may be declared invalid by a court on that authority’s claim. Sixteen cases need no permission, including intra-group transfers at a ninety-nine per cent threshold, provided the acquirer is not registered in a state with preferential taxation. An artisanal mining licence cannot be transferred at all, and the exclusive right to production cannot be assigned separately from the licence.

What changes on 1 January 2027?

Chapter 90 of the Tax Code, on royalty for solid minerals, takes effect. Royalty replaces the mineral extraction tax for subsoil users holding licences issued after 31 December 2026 over ground not held under a subsoil use right before that date. The rates are 13% on ore raw material after crushing and sorting, 10% on beneficiation concentrates and 7% on metals and alloys. Volumes and grades are confirmed lot by lot by accredited laboratories located in Kazakhstan.

Is a permit under Law No. 202-V “On Permits and Notifications” needed in addition to a subsoil use licence?

Not for subsoil use itself: a subsoil use licence does not belong to the permits governed by the permits and notifications legislation. Adjacent activities are licensed separately, however — works using explosives, waste management activity, and certain export and import operations. Those must be checked against the annexes to Law No. 202-V rather than against the Subsoil Code.

What is a block, and how many can be taken at once?

A block is a notional cell of the country’s territory with a side of one minute in the geographic coordinate system. A single exploration licence application may cover no more than two hundred blocks, and each block must share a side with at least one other block of the claimed area. For counting blocks and calculating minimum spend, a partial block counts as a full one.

Can production be suspended without losing the licence?

Yes, through retention status (Chapter 29 of the Code). It removes the annual minimum production spend and the related reporting, is granted for up to five years and extendable by up to a further five, subject to a ten-year overall cap, and is confirmed by a re-issued licence. The grounds are unprofitability with reasonable grounds to expect profitability within five years, the absence of an environmentally acceptable technology, force majeure, or a court ruling applying a rehabilitation procedure.

Key Takeaways

Rights to solid minerals in Kazakhstan are granted by licence, not by contract. Since 7 September 2026 the contract regime survives only for the exploration and production of hydrocarbons and for the exploration or production of uranium.

An exploration licence is granted on application, without a tender. The term is six years, extendable once by up to five; the area is up to two hundred blocks; priority is decided by the order of filing, recorded to the minute; and where applications compete over a newly free block, by auction under article 189-1.

A production licence runs for up to twenty-five years with an unlimited number of extensions, but the bottleneck in the procedure is the environmental permit and the expert reviews of the mining and liquidation plans, for which the applicant has up to a year, extendable by up to a further year.

The exclusive right joins the two stages. The holder of an exploration licence has a guaranteed right to a production licence within its exploration area; refusal is available only for unremedied breaches of the exploration licence conditions or a missed deadline for the agreed draft mining plan. The right cannot be assigned separately, and it does not apply where uranium is found.

The main money is not the bonus but the mandatory spend and the payment for the subsoil plot. The signature bonus is 100 monthly calculation indices for an exploration licence and 200 for a production licence; minimum exploration spend starts at 1,200 monthly calculation indices a year and reaches 11,500 by year eleven; the payment for the subsoil plot under a production licence is 450 monthly calculation indices per square kilometre a year, due by 25 February.

The payment reimbursing historical costs does not arise for new projects. Article 767(2) of the Tax Code exempts holders of exploration and production licences for solid minerals issued after 31 December 2017 over ground not held under contracts before 1 January 2018.

From 1 January 2027 the mineral extraction tax is replaced by royalty for new licences, at 13%, 10% and 7% of the value of what is sold, depending on the depth of processing. The dividing line is the date of issue: after 31 December 2026, over ground not previously held under a subsoil use right.

2026 changed the regime three times. Law No. 243-VIII from 26 February, Law No. 249-VIII from 2 March and Law No. 337-VIII from 7 September 2026. They brought the Unified Subsoil Use Platform as the only filing channel, the auction for a newly free block, seventy per cent in-country value instead of fifty, priority for the national company in the field of solid minerals, and the ability to take an auction plot without an auction for an industrial-innovation project.

Revocation is a real risk, not a theoretical one. The grounds include non-payment of the signature bonus and of the payment for the subsoil plot, a minimum-spend shortfall, extracting more than one thousand cubic metres of rock mass without permission, and transferring the right without the competent authority’s permission. A lack of money, the unavailability of contractors and an administrative fine are not force majeure.

Summary

The right to explore and produce solid minerals in Kazakhstan is granted by a subsoil use licence under Code of the Republic of Kazakhstan No. 125-VI of 27 December 2017 “On Subsoil and Subsoil Use” — not by a contract and not by a permit under Law No. 202-V. Licences are issued by the Ministry of Industry and Construction of the Republic of Kazakhstan exclusively through the Unified Subsoil Use Platform at minerals.e-qazyna.kz. An exploration licence runs for six years, extendable once by up to five, and covers up to two hundred one-minute blocks; the signature bonus is 100 monthly calculation indices, that is 432,500 tenge at the 2026 index of 4,325 tenge; annual minimum spend starts at 1,200 monthly calculation indices for a single block. A production licence runs for up to twenty-five years with an unlimited number of extensions, the signature bonus is 200 monthly calculation indices, the payment for the subsoil plot is 450 monthly calculation indices per square kilometre a year, and the minimum share of in-country value in works and services is seventy per cent. The holder of an exploration licence has an exclusive right to obtain a production licence within its own plot. From 1 January 2027, for licences issued after 31 December 2026 over previously free ground, the mineral extraction tax is replaced by a royalty of 13% on ore raw material, 10% on concentrates and 7% on metals and alloys. According to the Unified Subsoil Use Platform, as at 11 September 2026 Kazakhstan had issued 3,236 exploration licences and 191 production licences for solid minerals.

Sources

All legal acts are cited from the consolidated texts held in the “Adilet” legal information system of the Institute of Legislation and Legal Information of the Ministry of Justice of the Republic of Kazakhstan. Code No. 125-VI was checked against the version of 7 September 2026, the latest in that system’s change history, and Tax Code No. 214-VIII against the version of 1 July 2026, likewise the latest. Official publication and commencement dates were checked against the “Information on official publication of the act” section of the same system. The licence counts were taken directly from the Unified Subsoil Use Platform on 11 September 2026.

Codes and laws

1.        Code of the Republic of Kazakhstan No. 125-VI of 27 December 2017 “On Subsoil and Subsoil Use”

2.        Law of the Republic of Kazakhstan No. 243-VIII of 26 December 2025 amending the Subsoil Code on the improvement of subsoil use in hydrocarbons and uranium

3.        Law of the Republic of Kazakhstan No. 249-VIII of 30 December 2025 amending the Subsoil Code to implement the instructions of the Head of State — published in Egemen Qazaqstan No. 251 (31231) and Kazakhstanskaya Pravda No. 251 (30629) of 31 December 2025

4.        Law of the Republic of Kazakhstan No. 337-VIII of 7 July 2026 amending the Subsoil Code on radioactive waste management and the improvement of the regulation of subsoil operations — published in Egemen Qazaqstan No. 125 (31356) and Kazakhstanskaya Pravda No. 125 (30754) of 8 July 2026

5.        Code of the Republic of Kazakhstan No. 214-VIII of 18 July 2025 “On Taxes and Other Obligatory Payments to the Budget (Tax Code)”

6.        Law of the Republic of Kazakhstan No. 239-VIII of 8 December 2025 “On the Republican Budget for 2026–2028”

7.        Code of the Republic of Kazakhstan No. 235-V of 5 July 2014 “On Administrative Offences”

8.        Criminal Code of the Republic of Kazakhstan No. 226-V of 3 July 2014

9.        Law of the Republic of Kazakhstan No. 202-V of 16 May 2014 “On Permits and Notifications”

Subordinate acts

10.    Government Resolution No. 864 of 4 October 2023 “Certain Issues of the Ministry of Industry and Construction of the Republic of Kazakhstan”

11.    Government Resolution No. 802 of 15 July 2011 on designating the single operator for state property accounting

12.    Order No. 365 of the Minister for Investment and Development of 23 May 2018 approving the Rules on filing and consideration of applications for exploration licences for solid minerals — Rules as restated by Order No. 6 of 14 September 2023 and amended by Order No. 105 of the Minister of Industry and Construction of 16 March 2026

13.    Order No. 366 of the Minister for Investment and Development of 23 May 2018 approving the Rules on filing and consideration of applications for production licences for solid minerals

14.    Order No. 236 of the Minister of Industry and Construction of 15 May 2026 approving the Rules for forming the State Subsoil Fund Management Programme

15.    Order No. 323 of the Minister of Industry and Infrastructure Development of 30 May 2020 approving the Rules on state services in subsoil use other than hydrocarbons and uranium

16.    Order of the Acting Minister of Industry and Infrastructure Development of 24 April 2023 approving the list and composition of publicly available information on subsoil plots included in the State Subsoil Fund Management Programme

17.    Order of the Prime Minister of the Republic of Kazakhstan No. 19-r of 16 February 2026 on measures to implement Law No. 249-VIII

18.    Order No. 478 of the Minister for Investment and Development of 28 June 2018 approving the State Subsoil Fund Management Programme — the page lists the full chain of amending orders, including No. 283 of 4 June, No. 313 of 17 June and No. 367 of 17 July 2026; the consolidated text on that page is stated as at 30 July 2025 and is not relied on for the content of the Programme

19.    Order No. 283 of the Acting Minister of Industry and Construction of 4 June 2026 amending Order No. 478

Official information resources

20.    Unified Subsoil Use Platform “Minerals” — the state information system under article 68-1 of the Code; figures on subsoil users, licences and contracts as at 11 September 2026

21.    User agreement of the Unified Subsoil Use Platform

22.    Price list for access to the Unified Subsoil Use Platform

23.    State property register web portal (the auction venue)

24.    Order No. 283 of 4 June 2026 on the official website of the Ministry of Industry and Construction

Official publication and secondary sources

25.    Law No. 337-VIII of 7 July 2026 — official publication in Kazakhstanskaya Pravda

26.    Consolidated text of the Subsoil Code in the “Paragraph” information system, current to 7 September 2026

27.    BAQ.KZ, 12 August 2026: “Kazakhstan has opened more than 138 thousand blocks for exploration” — Ministry of Industry and Construction data on licences issued by year, the make-up of the foreign investors and the results of the January 2025 auction (secondary source)

Related UPPERSETUP material

28.    Permits and Notifications in Kazakhstan in 2026

29.    LLP (TOO) in Kazakhstan for Foreigners 2026

30.    Investment Preferences and the Investment Contract in Kazakhstan in 2026

31.    Mandatory Audit and Financial Reporting in Kazakhstan in 2026

32.    Kazakhstan’s Tax System 2026

33.    Transfer Pricing in Kazakhstan in 2026

34.    Employer Permits to Attract Foreign Labour in Kazakhstan

35.    Opening a Bank Account in Kazakhstan for a Foreign Company

36.    Branch and Representative Office of a Foreign Company vs an LLP

37.    Business support in Kazakhstan

Note on verification. This material is stated as at 11 September 2026. The consolidated text of Code No. 125-VI was checked including Law No. 337-VIII, which came into force on 7 September 2026; the commencement dates of Laws No. 243-VIII, No. 249-VIII and No. 337-VIII were derived from the official publication dates recorded in the “Adilet” legal information system. The rates of mineral extraction tax, royalty, signature bonus and payment for the use of land plots are given under Tax Code No. 214-VIII as amended to 1 July 2026. Tenge amounts are calculated at the 2026 monthly calculation index of 4,325 tenge, set by article 7 of Law of the Republic of Kazakhstan No. 239-VIII of 8 December 2025. The numbers of licences and the territory open to subsoil use were read from the Unified Subsoil Use Platform and reflect the position on the date of access; the licences-by-year figures and the January 2025 auction results are taken from the BAQ.KZ publication citing the Ministry of Industry and Construction and are secondary.

Disclaimer. This material is for information purposes only and does not constitute legal, tax, financial, investment or consulting advice. Before taking any decision, individual professional advice should be obtained that takes into account the specific situation, the jurisdiction, the status of the company and the current requirements of the regulators.

Current as of September 2026.