The closing ceremony at the Nagoya City Mizuho Park Athletic Stadium is still to come, with double gold medallist Neeru Dhanda set to be India’s flag bearer. But India’s campaign at the 2026 Asian Games wrapped up on Saturday with a late gold rush in archery, wrestling and hockey.
India won 85 medals at the 2026 Asian Games India had sent 495 athletes to Aichi-Nagoya, who gave their all — physically and mentally — across 36 sporting disciplines over 15 days. The contingent returned with 85 medals — 21 gold, 27 silver and 37 bronze — recording the nation’s second-best performance at the Games.
India’s best-ever performance came at the Hangzhou Games in 2023, when it won 18 more medals, including seven more golds. On paper, that might paint a grim picture for India. But the nation arrived in Japan with a contingent 25% smaller than the one it had sent to Hangzhou.
The opening days raised plenty of concerns, with a dearth of medals, near-misses and heartbreaks. But the athletes turned things around in the second half, producing a medal rush that allowed India to close the Games on a high.
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And before the focus shifts entirely to the build-up for the Los Angeles Olympics in 2028, we take one last look at India’s Asian Games campaign and break it down sport by sport — where the campaign delivered, and where it quietly fell apart.
HITS — Six sports carried the best storylines of the Games. Archery: India matched its own record from the 2022 Games with another nine-medal haul, and yet there was more to the campaign in Aichi-Nagoya. As usual, India completed a clean sweep in the compound team events, but unfortunately failed to defend the two other golds on offer in the individual categories.
The breakthrough, however, came in recurve, with 17-year-old Kumkum Mohod capping off her campaign with three medals — two golds and a silver. In fact, this was the first time India had won an Asian Games gold in recurve.
Boxing: India’s zero golds in Hangzhou were converted into three in Aichi-Nagoya. Overall, India managed six medals, two more than in 2023, making for a far more successful campaign. The Asian Games were always a litmus test after the high of the CWG in July, but Lovlina Borgohain (75kg), Parveen Hooda (65kg) and Ankush Panghal (80kg) all turned their 2022 podium finishes into gold.
Wrestling: Another sport that saw no golds in 2023 produced two top-of-the-podium finishes this time, with Aman Sehrawat (57kg freestyle) and Sujeet Kalkal (65kg freestyle) emerging as champions. Sujeet had also defeated the Olympic champion en route to India’s first wrestling gold at the Asiad since 2018.
But the bigger significance of a six-medal campaign was that two of those medals came in Greco-Roman, with Nitesh Siwach becoming the first Indian in 64 years to reach the final in the discipline.
Overall, India capped its best wrestling campaign since Jakarta 1962, when it won 12 medals — three gold, six silver and three bronze.
Team dominance: The golds across men’s and women’s kabaddi and cricket were well on the cards ev
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