5 sports where India topped the medal tables at the Asian Games 2026

India did not top the overall medal table at the 2026 Asian Games. That belonged, as it has so often, to China, which finished with 169 gold medals. India ended Aichi-Nagoya fourth with 21 gold, 27 silver and 37 bronze medals for a total of 85.

Yet the overall table does not tell the entire story of India's campaign. Across individual sports, India finished on top in several disciplines, with particularly dominant performances in cricket, kabaddi, hockey, archery and boxing.

Three of those sports saw India sweep both available team golds, while archery produced the country's biggest single-sport gold haul and boxing its best Asian Games campaign by gold medals.

Here are five sports where India ruled the table in Aichi-Nagoya.

1. Kabaddi: India's dominance barely needs an asterisk

No Indian sport had a stronger historical claim to continental supremacy than kabaddi.

India won both the men's and women's gold medals in Aichi-Nagoya, beating Iran 40-34 in the men's final and 37-34 in the women's final. The men's victory was India's ninth Asian Games gold in the sport, while the women's title was their fourth.

The significance goes far beyond 2026. Men's kabaddi has been part of the Asian Games since 1990, while the women's competition was introduced in 2010. India had won every men's and women's title except the 2018 edition, when Iran claimed both golds. By the end of Aichi-Nagoya, India had 14 kabaddi medals overall, including 12 golds, with Iran a distant second on the all-time table.

In other words, this was not simply another successful Games for Indian kabaddi. It was another chapter in a level of dominance almost unmatched anywhere else in the Indian Asian Games programme.

2. Cricket: two teams, two golds

Cricket has not had the decades of history that kabaddi or hockey can boast at the Asian Games. But since its return, India has been almost impossible to dislodge.

India's men's and women's teams both won gold in Aichi-Nagoya, successfully defending the titles they had won at Hangzhou. The women crushed Sri Lanka by 147 runs in the final, while the men beat Pakistan to complete a second successive men's title.

That means India has now won all four available cricket gold medals since making its Asian Games return at Hangzhou, after skipping the 2010 and 2014 editions.

The men's final also added a familiar Asian Games ingredient to India's cricket dominance: Pakistan were on the other side. A tournament that began with rain disruptions and a controversial quarter-final washout ended with India lifting another gold against one of its biggest sporting rivals.

For a sport that has only recently become a regular part of India's Asian Games story, the record is already spotless.

3. Hockey: the double that carried history with it

India's hockey success in Nagoya was about much more than topping a sport-wise medal table.

For the first time in Asian Games history, India won both the men's and women's hockey gold medals at the same edition. The men's team beat Malaysia 5-1 to retain its title and defend an Asian Games hockey gold for the first time. The women's team defeated defending champions China 1-0, ending a 44-year wait for the title.

The men's victory took India's tally to five Asian Games golds, after previous triumphs in 1966, 1998, 2014 and 2023. Pakistan remain ahead historically with eight men's hockey golds, so India's claim here is about the 2026 table and the extraordinary nature of the double rather than all-time supremacy.

For the women's team, meanwhile, the wait was the story. India's previous and only women's hockey gold had come in 1982. Lalremsiami scored the winner against China, but Savita Punia's penalty-stroke save became one of the defining images of the entire Games.

Both teams also secured direct qualification for the Los Angeles 2028 Olympics.

4. Archery: five golds and another statement

Archery produced India's biggest gold haul from a single sport in Aichi-Nagoya.

India finished with five gold, two silver and two bronze medals, again matching the five-gold haul from Hangzhou.

The compound archers remained formidable, while the recurve team produced arguably the most significant breakthroughs. India's women's recurve team won Asian Games gold for the first time, ending South Korea's run of seven consecutive titles in the event. One day later, 17-year-old Kumkum Mohod became the first Indian to win individual women's recurve gold at the Asian Games.

Mohod's individual triumph was especially dramatic. She trailed South Korea's Oh Yejin 3-5 going into the final end, then shot X, X and 10 to force a shoot-off. The teenager won 6-5 on shoot-off with a 10-8 and secured a quota place for the Los Angeles Olympics.

It was a campaign that showed India's archery strength was no longer confined to one discipline or one generation.

5. Boxing: a gold-medal revival

Indian boxing came to Aichi-Nagoya looking to recover from a disappointing Hangzhou campaign, where the team failed to win a gold. It left Japan with three.

Lovlina Borgohain won the women's 75kg title on her 29th birthday, Parveen Hooda took gold in the 65kg category, and Ankush Panghal won the men's 80kg title. India also collected three bronze medals, giving the boxing contingent six medals from 11 entries.

The three golds made it India's most successful Asian Games boxing campaign in terms of gold medals. Lovlina became only the second Indian woman after Mary Kom to win an Asian Games boxing gold, while Panghal became the first Indian male boxer since Amit Panghal in 2018 to reclaim the continental title.

Parveen's victory carried its own layer of redemption. After losing her Hangzhou bronze medal following a 22-month suspension over whereabouts failures, she returned to win the biggest title of her Asian Games career.

The bigger picture

India's fourth-place finish in Aichi-Nagoya will inevitably be compared with the record 107-medal haul at Hangzhou. But the sport-wise picture is more complicated, and arguably more interesting.

Cricket, kabaddi and hockey each produced two gold medals. Archery supplied five, the biggest gold return from any Indian sport. Boxing, meanwhile, went from zero golds at Hangzhou to three in Nagoya. The Times of India

So while India did not come close to China in the overall standings, five sports provided something different: not merely medals, but evidence of genuine continental dominance.

Some of it was historic, some of it was a continuation of long-established supremacy, and some of it belonged to a new generation arriving at exactly the right time.