Asian Games Esport: Eleven Medals, No Shooter

Asian Games 2026: a player holds up a gold medal engraved with a game controller in a packed arena

Article by Kami

An official gold medal for a match of Pokémon Unite. The 2026 Asian Games esport program counts eleven video game events in the medal table, on equal footing with athletics or swimming. The list of selected games reads two ways: what it includes, and what it leaves out.

Asian Games Esport: Eleven Real Medals

An official medal, counted in the medal table, awarded for a video game match. That’s the format chosen for esports at the 2026 Asian Games, held in Aichi-Nagoya, Japan, from September 9 to October 4. The discipline isn’t a demonstration between two sporting events here. It is a full part of the program, with its own podiums and national rankings, as the official website of the Olympic movement detailed.

Page from the Olympic website listing the eleven 2026 Asian Games esport medal events — The official list published on the Olympic movement’s website.

The tournament will run from September 23 to October 2, at the Aichi International Exhibition Center, in the city of Tokoname. Twenty-three nations will send players. Eleven events will be contested, compared to seven at the previous edition in Hangzhou in 2022. Four more disciplines, over a four-year cycle.

The list spans platforms that are very different from one another. PC, mobile, home console and handheld console all coexist in the same program. Formats vary widely too: some events are played solo, others pit teams of five, six or seven players against each other. One event even groups three separate fighting games under a single title, « Competitive Martial Arts. » Here is the full breakdown of the eleven disciplines selected.

Event	Platform	Format
eFootball	PC and mobile	Individual
Gran Turismo 7	PlayStation 5	Individual
Honor of Kings	Mobile	Teams of 5
Naraka: Bladepoint	PC	In teams
Puyo Puyo Champions	PC	Individual
Identity V	Mobile	Teams of 7
League of Legends	PC	Teams of 5
Mobile Legends: Bang Bang	Mobile	Teams of 5
Pokémon Unite	Nintendo Switch	Teams of 6
PUBG Mobile	Mobile	Teams of 5
Competitive Martial Arts (Street Fighter 6, Tekken 8, The King of Fighters XV)	Console	Individual

What the List Says, and What It Leaves Out

The detailed event page lists eleven titles selected for these Asian Games. One absence stands out: no first-person shooter from the Western competitive scene. No Counter-Strike, no Valorant, no Overwatch, no Rainbow Six.

Mobile carries a lot of weight in this selection. Honor of Kings, Identity V, Mobile Legends: Bang Bang and PUBG Mobile all run on phones. eFootball adds a mobile version alongside its PC version. Five events out of eleven go through a smartphone screen at least in part, a format still marginal in major Western competitions.

Detailed page of esport events at the 2026 Asian Games — The event page, with platforms and formats.

Schedule and participants of the 2026 Asian Games esport tournament — Sheep Esports details the schedule and the nations involved.

Take a look at the publishers, and a second pattern emerges. League of Legends is the only major Western title on the list, but Riot Games belongs to China’s Tencent, which also publishes Honor of Kings. The studio is also working on its own MMO, of which a playable playtest has already leaked. Naraka: Bladepoint and Identity V come from China’s NetEase.

Japan, the host nation, has its own representatives too. The competitive martial arts event brings together three Japanese fighting games: Street Fighter 6 from Capcom, Tekken 8 from Bandai Namco, The King of Fighters XV from SNK. Puyo Puyo Champions and Pokémon Unite are Japanese as well. Gran Turismo 7 is published by Sony, eFootball by Konami. Seven events out of eleven therefore have a Chinese or Japanese publisher.

The organizers have not published, in the sources consulted, the criteria that led to this selection. It favors mobile games and Asian titles, and it excludes Western shooters, but nothing publicly indicates why these choices were made over others.

Following the Asian Games from France

The ten days of competition start on September 23 and wrap up on October 2, two days before the Games’ closing ceremony. Everything takes place at the Aichi International Exhibition Center, in Tokoname, a coastal city in Aichi prefecture. The tournament arrives after an already packed September, whose hour-by-hour schedule we detailed.

One practical detail matters for anyone wanting to watch live: Japan is seven hours ahead of France in September. A final scheduled for 7 p.m. there plays out at noon for you. Events held in the Japanese morning therefore fall in the early hours of the French morning.

Twenty-three nations are competing. The esport medal table will be consolidated with the rest of the program, which means a Pokémon Unite victory will carry the same weight in the count as a fencing or archery medal.