The Athletes' Village That Floats
Most host cities build an athletes' village. Aichi decided not to. The organising committee originally planned one on the former site of the Nagoya Racecourse, then dropped the idea because construction material costs were high and they feared leaving behind a white elephant once the Games ended.
Instead the athletes were scattered. Around 4,000 to 5,000 of them were housed aboard the Costa Serena, a cruise ship docked at Kinjo Pier. Another 2,000 stayed in temporary wooden villas styled after shipping containers at the Port of Nagoya Garden Wharf, which will be reused afterwards as disaster response units and tourist lodging.
The rest were spread across hotels in the prefecture and nearby cities. Swimmers and divers, for instance, stayed at a hotel on Tokyo Bay, close to the pool they were competing in rather than close to the host city.
Aichi-Nagoya 2026
Officially the XX Asian Games, and known as Aichi-Nagoya 2026, the Games are being held in Aichi Prefecture in Japan from 19 September to 4 October 2026, although several competitions started as early as 10 September.
Nagoya, the capital of Aichi, is the third Japanese city to host the Asian Games, after Tokyo in 1958 and Hiroshima in 1994. The Olympic Council of Asia welcomed the joint bid from Aichi Prefecture and Nagoya at its assembly in Da Nang, Vietnam, on 25 September 2016, after financial differences between the two had nearly sunk the proposal.
The event marks the 75th anniversary of the first Asian Games, held in New Delhi in 1951. It also returns the competition to its traditional four-year cycle, after the 2022 edition had to be postponed to 2023 because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The opening ceremony was held on 19 September at Paloma Mizuho Stadium, following a torch relay that ran from 22 August to 18 September.
43 Sports, and Some New Ones
The 2026 Asian Games includes 469 medal events across 43 sports, which is twelve events fewer than Hangzhou 2022.
Several sports are making their Asian Games debut, and the list is a good snapshot of what counts as sport in 2026: freestyle BMX, mixed martial arts, padel, surfing, teqball and virtual taekwondo.
The venues are unusually scattered. Although Aichi is the primary host, competitions are taking place in three other prefectures and in Tokyo Metropolis as well, making these the first ever Asian Games with decentralised venues. Cycling is at the Izu Velodrome in Shizuoka. Swimming had to be moved to the Tokyo Aquatics Centre with less than three years to go, after the Olympic Council of Asia pointed out that the original pool did not meet World Aquatics regulations, and equestrian events moved to Tokyo Equestrian Park.
The Budget, and the Flood
The costs did not behave. Nagoya received an initial estimate of roughly 85 billion yen, about 560 million dollars. By February 2023 the figure had ballooned to 140.5 billion yen. By September 2026 it stood at 370 billion yen, around 2.4 billion dollars.
Aichi governor Hideaki Omura blamed the weakening yen since 2021, geopolitical instability and rising resource prices. He also pointed out that leaning on a cruise ship and temporary accommodation instead of a permanent village, and prioritising existing venues, had saved about 100 billion yen.
Nature then tested the plan. Because the Games fall near the end of the Pacific typhoon season, organisers had prepared contingency plans for evacuating the cruise ship. On 8 September 2026, two days before competition began, record-breaking torrential rain hit Nagoya and caused widespread flash flooding. Several hundred athletes in the temporary port structures were told to evacuate. Some venues had leaking roofs, but no major damage was reported.
