Asian Games 2026: India sends 503 athletes to Aichi-Nagoya with many entered in multiple events
India is sending a 503-member athlete contingent to the 2026 Asian Games in Aichi-Nagoya, Japan, with the Games running from September 19 to October 4; the squad comprises 269 men and 234 women. A notable portion of the team has been entered in more than one event across a range of sports.
The 503-athlete delegation is smaller than the 655-strong squad India sent to Hangzhou in 2023, where India won 107 medals — 28 gold, 38 silver and 41 bronze — and finished fourth behind China, Japan and South Korea. The country’s overall Asian Games medal tally first crossed the 100-mark in 2022, with much of the recent success coming from athletics, shooting, archery, boxing, wrestling and team sports. Observers have described this contingent as one of India’s most closely watched in years.
Several athletes with prior Olympic medals are part of the Aichi-Nagoya delegation, including PV Sindhu, Manu Bhaker, Lovlina Borgohain, Aman Sehrawat and Mirabai Chanu. Neeraj Chopra has withdrawn because of an ankle injury, which the original report described as a blow given his profile.
A significant number of Indian competitors are entered in multiple events: across archery, athletics, badminton, shooting, swimming, table tennis and other sports many athletes appear in two, three or even five disciplines. Gulveer Singh is entered in three distances, from the 1500m through to the 10000m, a scheduling choice that underlines his range across middle and long distances.
Shooting provides some of the deepest multi-event representation, with several shooters entered across three or four disciplines once mixed team events are included. Manu Bhaker and Esha Singh are each listed in four events, contesting the air pistol and the 25m pistol along with their respective team events, which gives them among the busiest timetables in the shooting squad.
Organisers and selectors have also named well over a hundred Indian athletes across the sports mentioned in more than one event, a pattern driven largely by the way team and mixed events are structured alongside individual competitions. Swimmer Benediction Rohit Beniston Manickaraj has the busiest schedule in the contingent, entered in five events: the 50m and 100m butterfly, the 100m freestyle and two relay races; similarly, archers and shooters who qualify individually are frequently included in their nation’s team events, producing multiple entries for the same athletes.
India’s competitive programme at Aichi-Nagoya begins before the opening ceremony: teqball is scheduled for September 17, with the women’s cricket team beginning their title defence against Japan a day later, and the men’s cricket side — also defending champions — entering straight into the quarter-finals on September 28 under Shreyas Iyer.
