Kyrgyz Express Post issues five-stamp Great Personalities series

Kyrgyz Express Post placed a new five-stamp series titled “The Anniversaries of Great Personalities” into circulation on 5 October 2026. The issue brings together the Italian Renaissance painter Titian, Russian satirist Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin, Italian composer Giuseppe Verdi, American animation pioneer Walt Disney and American jazz musician Louis Armstrong. Although their fields and national backgrounds differ, the five subjects are linked by anniversaries falling in 2026: 450 years since Titian's death, 200 years since Saltykov-Shchedrin's birth, 125 years since Verdi's death, and 125 years since the births of Disney and Armstrong.

Each stamp has a face value of 150 Kyrgyz som and measures 46 by 27.5 millimetres. The stamps were printed by full-colour offset lithography on coated gummed paper and have comb perforation 14:14½. Kyrgyz Express Post lists a print run of 6,000 for each design, making the quantities and technical format consistent across the whole group. Designer Daria Maier treated the portraits as a unified series, while retaining visual references suited to the individual cultural figures. Printing was carried out by Nova Imprim in Chișinău, Moldova.

The stamps are also arranged in individual miniature sheets. Each 113 by 108 millimetre sheet contains five examples of one design together with a central label, so the complete programme comprises five different miniature sheets rather than one mixed sheet carrying all five personalities. That distinction matters for collectors planning a complete acquisition: a set of five single stamps records the entire subject list, while a complete miniature-sheet holding requires one sheet for each personality. The larger format also retains the decorative margins and label that form part of the issued presentation.

Titian's stamp marks the 450th anniversary of the death of one of the leading painters of the Venetian Renaissance. Saltykov-Shchedrin's design marks the bicentenary of the author and satirist born in 1826. Verdi's stamp observes 125 years since the death of the composer whose operas became central to the international repertory. The two American subjects share 125th-birth anniversaries: Disney as a defining figure in twentieth-century animation and popular culture, and Armstrong as an innovative trumpeter and singer whose work shaped the history of jazz. The range gives the issue particular appeal to collectors of art, literature, opera, cinema, animation and music.

Kyrgyz Express Post supplemented the stamps with a full first-day programme. Five official first-day covers, numbered F151 to F155, correspond to the five personalities. Each cover measures 162 by 114 millimetres, is priced at 230 som and has a stated production of 300. Five maximum cards were also prepared, one for each subject, with 400 examples of each card. A special pictorial first-day cancellation was available at the KEP office in Bishkek, giving collectors the opportunity to build matched stamp, miniature-sheet, cover and maximum-card groups for every personality.

The issue entered circulation under an order of the Ministry of Digital Development and Innovative Technologies of the Kyrgyz Republic. The official release date is therefore more than a sales-page date: it is the point at which the previously announced designs became current postal issues. For chronological collections of Kyrgyzstan, 5 October should be used as the issue date, while the ministry order and the earlier newsletter belong to the administrative and advance-publicity history of the release.

The five-design structure creates several practical collecting routes. A compact collection can use the five mint singles. A more complete presentation can add all five miniature sheets with margins intact. Postal-history collectors can pursue separately serviced first-day covers, while maximum-card collectors have an unusually neat one-card-per-stamp set. Because each miniature sheet repeats only one design, it is important