Asian Para Games
Explained: Asian Para Games vs Paralympics vs Asian Games – What’s the difference?
All three are multi-sport festivals held every four years, and all three draw on the same continent’s talent pool in part.
All have its own governing body, its own field of athletes and different weight in an athlete’s career.
When the 2026 Asian Para Games open in Aichi-Nagoya on October 18, India’s athletes will arrive carrying the memory of Hangzhou, where the contingent won a record 111 medals in 2023.
The event’s name echoes two other major Games, the Paralympics and the Asian Games, and the overlap is easy to understand. All three are multi-sport festivals held every four years, and all three draw on the same continent’s talent pool in part.
Yet each has its own governing body, its own field of athletes and different weight in an athlete’s career. Here is how they fit together, and what a medal at each one is worth.
Paralympics, the biggest stage
The Paralympic Games are the highest stage in sport for athletes with disabilities. They are held every four years and run by the International Paralympic Committee (IPC), which was founded in 1989.
The Games trace their origins to 1948, when Dr Ludwig Guttmann organized a sporting competition for wounded war veterans at Stoke Mandeville Hospital in England.
The first official Paralympics took place in Rome in 1960, and since the Seoul Games of 1988 they have been staged in the same host city as the Olympics, shortly after the Olympic Games end.
Athletes come from across the world, and qualification is demanding. Most sports use ranking systems, qualifying standards or continental pathways, and each nation receives a limited number of places. Winning a Paralympic medal is the career peak for most para-athletes.
India’s recent performance has been strong: the contingent returned from Paris 2024 with 29 medals, its best ever, including seven gold medals.
Asian Games
The Asian Games, also held every four years, are a multi-sport event for athletes from member nations of the Olympic Council of Asia (OCA). They began in New Delhi in 1951. Their participants are not para-athletes.
They are the continent’s Olympic-style competitors, from sprinters and swimmers to hockey players and wrestlers.
The Asian Games are organized under the OCA, a body that answers to a different structure from the IPC.
The most recent edition took place in Aichi-Nagoya, Japan, in 2026, a few weeks before the Para Games begin in the same region.
For Indian fans, the Asian Games are a major medal tally event and a stepping stone toward the Olympics.
Asian Para Games – The continental parallel
The Asian Para Games stand somewhere between the other two. They are the continental multi-sport event for athletes with disabilities, run by the Asian Paralympic Committee (APC), which operates under the IPC umbrella.
Like the Paralympics, they feature classified athletes. Like the Asian Games, they are limited to Asian nations too.
The event was created to give para-athletes in Asia a regular, high-quality stage closer to home. The inaugural edition was held in Guangzhou in 2010, immediately after that year’s Asian Games, and the pattern has continued since.
The 2022 edition was postponed because of the pandemic and finally held in Hangzhou in October 2023, where India won a record 111 medals.
That haul, among the largest ever by an Indian contingent at any multi-sport event, showed how much the country’s para-sport system has grown.
How they connect?
It helps to picture a ladder. The Asian Para Games sit below the Paralympics in terms of global prestige, but they matter enormously for rankings, funding and selection.
Strong results in Asia often confirm an athlete’s place in the national pipeline toward the Paralympic podium. In several sports, performances at the continental level feed directly into qualification.
The Asian Games and the Asian Para Games share a continent, a host-city tradition and a rhythm, because the two are typically staged in the same country within weeks of each other.
Even so, they remain legally and administratively distinct. Medals, rankings and records from one do not carry over to the other.
What to watch out for
As the 2026 Asian Para Games begin, India’s athletes arrive with high expectations after Hangzhou.
Para athletics, para badminton, para archery and para shooting have been consistent sources of medals, and the country’s growing depth in these disciplines suggests another strong showing.
The Games also serve as a proving ground ahead of the 2028 Los Angeles Paralympics.