The Tubalars are an ethnic subgroup of the Altaians native to the Altai Republic in Russia.
According to the 2010 census, there were 1,965 Tubalars in Russia.
Due to socio-economic changes taking place in the area during the middle to late 20th century, traditional Tubalar culture witnessed a decline. Many Tubalars migrated to cities for work and the merging of small, "unpromising" villages into larger ones resulted in many historically Tuba villages being left abandoned or non-existent. There has been a recent push by the Tubalars to conserve their culture and language. The Tubalars consider themselves to be distinct from the other Turkic peoples in the Altai region.
Culture
The Tubalars were originally hunters and animals living in the taiga were vital to the local subsistence economy.
The traditional dwellings of the Tubalars included polygonal yurts made out of bark or log and topped with a conic bark roof. Other types of dwellings also included conic yurts made out of bark or perches.