Nagoya, Japan, April 29, 2025: The Olympic Council of Asia and organising committee AINAGOC are preparing for two major meetings over three days this week on the road to the 20th Asian Games in Aichi-Nagoya, Japan in 2026.
The 1st Technical Delegates Meeting will run from Wednesday, April 30 to Friday, May 2, with the 3rd OCA Coordination Committee Meeting taking place over two days on May 1-2.
Both events will mark key milestones in the countdown to the next Asian Games, which will be held from September 19 to October 4, 2026 with 41 sports and 15,000 athletes and officials from the OCA’s 45 National Olympic Committees.
Over 350 people are set to attend the three-day gathering of technical delegates – the officials who will be responsible for running the sports and disciplines during the Asian Games.
This figure includes 67 technical delegates, 12 representatives from International Federations and Asian Federations, 70 directors and other officials of AINAGOC and 200 managers and staff from various departments including sports, services and venues.
The TD meeting will begin with a general presentation on the first morning, followed by a series of venue visits and one-on-one sessions to confirm policy and protocol, rules and regulations and all details of the management and operations of the events.
The latest development in the compilation of the sports programme came at the 41st meeting of the AINAGOC Board of Directors at Nagoya City Hall on Monday, April 28, when cricket and Mixed Martial Arts were both formally approved.
MMA will feature six events in its Asian Games debut and be classed as a discipline under Combat Sports, along with kurash and jujitsu.
The venue for cricket will be in Aichi prefecture but the exact location has not been decided. Interest will be high, not only because of cricket’s popularity in South Asia in particular but also because the T20 (20 overs per side) format will be included in the Los Angeles Olympic Games in 2028. This will be cricket’s first appearance in the Olympics since 1900 in Paris, where Great Britain beat France by 158 runs in the final of the two-team tournament.
The 3rd OCA Coordination Committee (CC) meeting opens on Thursday, May 1 with presentations from 18 departments of organising committee AINAGOC. These include sports, accommodation, transportation, accreditation, marketing, ticketing and IT services.
Two sponsorship signing ceremonies have also been planned on the sidelines of the CC meeting.
The second day of the CC meeting, on Friday, May 2, will include venue visits to the Athletes’ Plaza at Garden Pier in Nagoya Port and to the badminton stadium at Ichinomiya City Municipal Gymnasium.
The CC meeting will conclude with a joint press conference between OCA and AINAGOC on the Friday afternoon.
Participants of the Technical Delegates Meeting and Coordination Committee Meeting will come together for a joint welcome reception with AINAGOC on the evening of Thursday, May 1.