The Asian Games 2026 shall be held from September 19 to October 4, 2026, although competitors in a number of disciplines will start earlier than the opening ceremony on Saturday. India’s marketing campaign on the Asian Video games 2026 begins with teqball on Thursday, September 17, 2026, two days earlier than the opening ceremony in Aichi-Nagoya, Japan.
Schedule
The whole schedule of the 2026 Asian Video games is slated between September 19 to October 4, 2026 within the metropolis of Nagoya within the Aichi Prefecture of Japan.
Venue
The Asian Video games 2026 will convey collectively athletes from 45 international locations and areas throughout 43 sports activities. It will likely be the twentieth version of the Video games and the third time Japan has hosted the occasion, following Tokyo in 1958 and Hiroshima in 1994. The Video games shall be held throughout 54 competitors venues in Japan, with the Nagoya Metropolis Mizuho Park Athletic Stadium serving as the primary venue, in keeping with Olympics.com.
Occasions
The multi-sport occasion will function 43 commonplace sports activities together with newer disciplines akin to freestyle BMX, combined martial arts, paddle browsing, teqball and digital taekwondo. Seven disciplines, particularly archery, hockey, crusing, squash, browsing, tennis and triathlon, provide direct qualification quotas for the Los Angeles 2028 Olympics.
The sports activities included within the event climbing, squash, browsing, desk tennis, taekwondo, tennis, mushy tennis, teqball, triathlon, volleyball, seaside volleyball, weightlifting, wrestling, wushu, esports, fencing, soccer, golf, inventive gymnastics, rhythmic gymnastics, trampoline gymnastics, handball, hockey, judo, kabaddi, karate, trendy pentathlon, padel, rowing, rugby sevens, crusing, sepak takraw, capturing, skateboarding, swimming, diving, inventive swimming, water polo, archery, athletics, badminton, baseball, softball, basketball, 3×3 basketball, boxing, breaking, canoe dash, canoe slalom, jiu-jitsu, kurash, combined martial arts, cricket, biking observe, biking highway, biking mountain bike, biking BMX racing, biking BMX freestyle and equestrian.
Indian athletes
India heads into the event trying to construct on its record-breaking efficiency at Hangzhou 2023, the place it gained 107 medals, together with 28 gold. India will look to defend its males’s and ladies’s cricket titles in addition to the boys’s and ladies’s kabaddi crowns. The boys’s hockey staff additionally enters the competitors because the reigning champion.
In cricket, Shreyas Iyer will lead India’s title defence within the males’s T20 competitors, with teenage batting sensation Vaibhav Sooryavanshi additionally included within the squad. The Indian girls’s cricket staff shall be led by T20 captain Harmanpreet Kaur.
Hockey carries added significance in Aichi-Nagoya, with the boys’s and ladies’s tournaments serving as continental qualification occasions for the Los Angeles 2028 Olympics.
India also can safe Olympic quotas in archery, crusing, squash, browsing and tennis. Regardless of the withdrawal of defending javelin throw champion Neeraj Chopra due to an ankle damage, India’s contingent will nonetheless embody 5 particular person Olympic medallists.
PV Sindhu will spearhead India’s badminton marketing campaign, whereas Mirabai Chanu will lead the weightlifting contingent. Manu Bhaker shall be amongst India’s main hopes in capturing, Aman Sehrawat will compete in wrestling, and Lovlina Borgohain will intention for fulfillment in boxing.
India’s boxers arrive in Aichi-Nagoya on the again of a record-breaking Commonwealth Video games marketing campaign during which they gained 10 medals, together with seven gold.
Athletics will function greater than 70 Indian observe and discipline athletes, with Gulveer Singh, Tejaswin Shankar and Olympian Sarvesh Kushare among the many nation’s main medal prospects. Tajinderpal Singh Toor heads to Aichi-Nagoya as a two-time defending champion within the shot put.
Anahat Singh will return to the Asian Video games after serving to India win the ladies’s staff bronze medal in squash at Hangzhou 2023. She additionally claimed a combined doubles bronze alongside Abhay Singh.
The place to look at
Dwell streaming of the Asian Video games 2026 shall be accessible on Sony LIV in India. The Asian Video games shall be telecast stay on the Sony Sports activities 1 and Sony Sports activities 5 channels in India. Protection may also be accessible in regional languages on Sony Sports activities 3 (Hindi) and Sony Sports activities 4 (Tamil, Telugu and Kannada).
(Supply Olympics.com)
Printed – September 17, 2026 04:39 pm IST
