Competitions

Asian Games

Also Known As Asiad

Citation Formats

General Reference

Sport and Games Atlas. "Asian Games." Accessed August 30, 2026. https://dev-sport.interactiveatlas.org/competitions/asian-games.

APA Style

Sport and Games Atlas. (n.d.). Asian Games. Retrieved August 30, 2026, from https://dev-sport.interactiveatlas.org/competitions/asian-games

BibTeX

@misc{sportandgamesatlas-asian-games,
  author = {Sport and Games Atlas},
  title = {Asian Games},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://dev-sport.interactiveatlas.org/competitions/asian-games},
  note = {Accessed August 30, 2026}
}

The Asian Games is a continental multi sport competition first held in New Delhi in 1951 under the Asian Games Federation, more than three decades before the body that governs it today existed. The Olympic Council of Asia, established in New Delhi on 16 November 1982 with thirty four founding National Olympic Committees and now headquartered in Kuwait City, replaced the Asian Games Federation and organized the 1982 New Delhi Games as its first edition under its own charter.

Facts

Founding Date

1951-03-04 1

Opening day of the inaugural 1951 Asian Games in New Delhi; the closing ceremony followed on 11 March 1951.

Frequency

Quadrennial 2

Host History

New Delhi hosted the inaugural 1951 edition. Later hosts include Manila (1954), Tokyo (1958), Jakarta (1962), Bangkok (three times: 1966, 1970 and 1978), Tehran (1974), New Delhi again (1982), Seoul (1986), Beijing (1990), Hiroshima (1994), Bangkok again (1998), Busan (2002), Doha (2006), Guangzhou (2010), Incheon (2014), Jakarta again (2018) and Hangzhou (2023, postponed from 2022). 3

Disputed

Founding Year

1951

1951 marks the first Asian Games, held under the earlier Asian Games Federation; the Olympic Council of Asia, the body that governs the Games today, was not established until 1982.

Learn More

Three Decades Before Its Own Federation: The Asian Games Before the OCA

This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.

New Delhi hosted the first Asian Games in 1951 under the Asian Games Federation, a body formed specifically to run the new continental competition in the years immediately following the end of the Second World War and the independence of several of the founding nations. That federation kept the Games running across the 1950s, 1960s and into the early 1980s, building a genuine multi decade tradition of continental competition well before the organization that governs the Games today existed.

The Olympic Council of Asia replaced the Asian Games Federation in 1982, established in New Delhi, the same city where the whole tradition had started thirty one years earlier, with thirty four founding National Olympic Committees. The OCA's first Games under its own charter, fittingly, were also held in New Delhi that same year, closing a loop that had opened three decades before with a different governing body running the show.

From New Delhi to New Delhi: Bookending Three Decades of Asian Games History

This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.

It is a coincidence worth noticing rather than a planned symmetry: both the very first Asian Games in 1951 and the first Games organized under the newly formed Olympic Council of Asia in 1982 were held in the same city, New Delhi, thirty one years apart. Between those two editions, the Asian Games Federation ran seven further editions across cities including Manila, Tokyo, Jakarta, Bangkok and Tehran, building the continental profile and the participation base that made the 1982 transition to a permanent, better resourced governing council possible in the first place.

For a reader trying to place a single founding date on the Asian Games, the New Delhi bookends offer a useful discipline: 1951 answers when the competition itself began, 1982 answers when the body that runs it today took charge, and neither date alone tells the whole story on its own.

Cross-Tradition Connections