Finding Cyrillic Fonts

This section offers tips for finding Cyrillic TrueType and Type 1 fonts. The information presented is not comprehensive, but we do hope it is accurate. Please let us know of any corrections or suggestions for improvement.

Updated September 1, 1999

Commercial Fonts

Adobe offers six Cyrillic typefaces in Type 1 format.
Castle Systems offers five Cyrillic display typefaces in TrueType and Type 1 format.
Fingertip Software offers a set of eight decorative Cyrillic TrueType fonts in Cyrillic Font Pack 1 (shown in the graphic to the right).
ParaType offers a wide selection of Cyrillic typefaces, in both Type 1 and TrueType formats.

Windows 95, 98, and NT

Pan-European versions of Arial, Courier New, and Times New Roman which contain Cyrillic letters are available. These are installed by default under Windows NT. To use them under Windows 95 or 98, you will need to install Multilanguage Support. To do this, start Control Panel, open the "Add/Remove Programs" icon, select the "Windows Setup" dialog tab, check the "Multilanguage Support" box, and click OK. If you have a floppy disk or pre-installed copy of Windows 95 which lacks this component, you can download it from Microsoft's site.

After downloading and running lang.exe you'll see a readme file which describes the installation process.

Once multilanguage support is installed, the font selection dialogs of most programs will offer typefaces named Arial Cyr, Courier New Cyr, and Times New Roman Cyr. Some programs will instead offer to let you select the typeface name (e.g., "Arial") separately from the Script (e.g., "Cyrillic"). Please note that these Cyrillic fonts cannot be used in many 16-bit programs, and even in some 32-bit programs such as Microsoft Publisher 95.

Note: In some applications (e.g., Word 97 and 2000, WordPerfect 7 and 8), you cannot directly select the Cyrillic typefaces Arial Cyr, Courier New Cyr, and Times New Roman Cyr. To use the Cyrillic letters in these word processors, you need to activate a Cyrillic keyboard layout. This can be easily done with our Cyrillic Starter Kit, or you can start Control Panel, open the "Keyboard" icon, click the "Language" dialog tab, and install at least one Cyrillic language. If you activate a Cyrillic layout while a Unicode font such as Arial, Courier New, or Times New Roman is selected, these word processors automatically use the Cyrillic letters from these fonts.

Several Unicode fonts come with Word 97: Arial Black, Arial Narrow, Bookman Old Style, Garamond, Impact, and Tahoma.

Microsoft offers additional free Unicode fonts on their Web site. Be sure to download the Windows 95/98/NT versions of these fonts (which have larger file sizes), as the Windows 3.1 versions do not contain the Cyrillic letters.

Finally, the font Lucida Sans Unicode also contains Cyrillic letters. It is installed by default under Windows 98 and NT, and it comes as part of the Plus Pack for Windows 95.

Shareware or Freeware Fonts

Unfortunately, many Cyrillic fonts in this category have a non-standard or incomplete character set. Keep this in mind as you explore the following sources of fonts:

Internet: Check out our annotated list of Cyrillic fonts that can be downloaded from various sites.
America Online: Search software libraries using keyword "Russian."
CompuServe: GO FLEFO and look in library #5, "Slavic/E. European."