FC Okzhetpes

In Northern Kazakhstan, where pine forests meet open steppe and blue-grey hills fade into mist, sits a football club whose badge carries industry, legend, and deep steppe memory. FC Okzhetpes are not just a provincial side playing out of the small city of Kokshetau – approximately a three-hour drive north of the capital – and set among some of the most beautiful forests and lakes you will ever find. They are a club shaped by factories, horses, mountains, and a story about freedom that is stitched into their soul.

On the pitch, Okzhetpes have never been a dominant force in Kazakh football, but their story includes a fascinating footnote that only football can produce.

In 2008, they finished ninth in the Kazakhstan Premier League. Ordinarily, that would have meant nothing more than survival. Instead, through a combination of UEFA licence denials and the withdrawal of higher-placed teams, Okzhetpes found themselves entering the inaugural UEFA Europa League qualifiers. They lost 3–2 over two legs to Moldova’s FC Zimbru Chișinău – but they can now boast having competed in Europe.

So, let’s #GetTheBadgeIn – and see what lies behind this team with the blue horse on its crest.

Like many clubs across the former Soviet Union, Okzhetpes did not begin with a poetic or ancient name. It began as the rather more industrial Torpedo.

In Soviet sporting culture, club names reflected industry, labour, and state purpose. Torpedo was not about weapons. Instead, it was used for teams linked to mechanical and engineering plants, especially those producing cars, engines, heavy machinery, and precision metal parts. The most famous example was Torpedo Moscow, backed by the ZIL automobile factory, but the name spread everywhere.

Kokshetau followed the same pattern.

During the Second World War, the town became a place of evacuation and survival. In the autumn of 1941, factories were dismantled and moved east to escape the advancing German armies. Sewing machine plants from Podolsk, factories from Ordzhonikidze, and military hospitals were relocated to Kokshetau. Workers, engineers, and skilled labourers arrived with them. It is likely from this industrial pool that the original football team emerged.

Football, as ever, followed work.

For decades, the club carried that industrial identity. But after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Kazakhstan began reshaping not just its politics, but its symbols. Cities were renamed. Languages were reasserted. History was reclaimed.

Okzhetpes was chosen – a name not from industry, but from legend.

Okzhetpes refers to a dramatic cliff formation overlooking Lake Auliekol in the Burabay region. The name means “an arrow won’t reach.” According to local tradition, in the 18th century Ablai Khan, the last of the Kazakh Khans, faced a dilemma. A captive young woman was among the spoils of war, and the khan could not decide which warrior should marry her.

Instead, he allowed her to choose.

She climbed to the top of the highest cliff and declared she would marry whoever could strike her shawl with an arrow. None succeeded. Rather than submit, she leapt into the lake below, choosing freedom over ownership. The lake became known as Auliekol — the “holy lake” — and the cliff was remembered forever as Okzhetpes.

This is not a story about victory. It is a story about choice.

That matters in Kazakh culture. Freedom, autonomy, and dignity sit at the heart of steppe identity. The word Kazakh itself comes from a Turkic root meaning “free person” — someone who lives beyond fixed authority. Okzhetpes, as a name, carries that same meaning.

The city name itself, Kokshetau, comes from Kazakh words meaning “smoky-blue mountain” — kökşe (bluish) and tau (mountain). The name refers to the way the nearby hills always seem to turn blue in the haze, especially at a distance. The club’s colours and the blue of the horse are a natural follow-on. Only a team in blue could come from the Blue Mountains.

This region sits close to Burabay National Park (also known historically as Borovoye), a landscape of pine forests, lakes, and granite outcrops that feels almost out of place in the flat steppe imagination. It is one of Kazakhstan’s most beautiful natural regions — and is dotted with luxury hotels and spas that cater to the capital’s wealthy on day trips.

The final piece of the badge puzzle is the horse itself.

On the Kazakh steppe, horses were never just transport. They were survival.

Horses allowed people to move vast distances, migrate with the seasons, and respond to danger. They were central to the economy — used to herd livestock, traded across Central Asia, and providing food, milk, hides, and status. Wealth was counted in horses. Honour was proven on horseback.

In war, horses turned steppe fighters into fast, flexible forces capable of striking and disappearing. This tradition linked the Kazakhs to earlier steppe powers: Scythians, Turks, and Mongols. Control of horses meant control of space.

Culturally, the bond ran even deeper. Horses appear constantly in Kazakh poetry, folklore, and ritual. A rider and horse were seen as a single unit. Skill on horseback marked adulthood. Losing horse culture under imperial and Soviet systems was felt as a loss of freedom itself.

FC Okzhetpes are not the richest club in Kazakhstan. They are not serial champions. But their badge holds together layers of history that stretch from Soviet factories to steppe legends, from wartime evacuation to ancient mountains, from industrial Torpedo to Kazakh cliffs.