The 2026 Asian Games are yet to formally open, but for several athletes arriving in Japan, the first contest has seemingly been getting to their rooms.
A series of accommodation, accreditation and transportation problems have overshadowed preparations for the Aichi-Nagoya Asian Games, with athletes and officials from several countries reporting long waits, inadequate rooms, lengthy journeys to training venues and other logistical problems.
The scale of the complaints is significant because they are not confined to one delegation. Reports involving athletes and officials from India, China and South Korea have emerged in the days before the opening ceremony, while even host nation Japan has had to examine alternative accommodation arrangements for some of its athletes.
At the centre of the controversy is an unusual decision taken by the organisers: unlike most major multi-sport events, Aichi-Nagoya 2026 does not have a traditional central Athletes’ Village. Instead, more than 17,000 athletes and officials are being accommodated across hotels, temporary container-style units and the Costa Serena, an Italian cruise ship docked at Nagoya Port. The Olympic Council of Asia has defended the model, arguing that constructing a conventional village could have created an expensive “white elephant” after the Games, according to Reuters.
But as thousands of athletes descended on Japan this week, the unconventional system has come under severe pressure.
Indian athletes report hours-long waits and lengthy journeys
India has been among the delegations affected.
Indian Chef de Mission Sahdev Yadav said on Friday that accommodation problems affected approximately 30 to 35 Indian athletes. According to Yadav, the Indian contingent had adhered to the numbers communicated to it, but some athletes were subsequently removed from the organisers’ accommodation list, forcing India to arrange hotels for them separately, according to Press Trust of India via Business Standard.
The problems were not restricted to room availability. Indian shooters reportedly faced journeys of roughly 50-60 kilometres between their hotels and the shooting range, with one member of the contingent telling The Indian Express that a delayed bus meant the trip took close to two hours.
India’s wushu contingent encountered another problem. Coaches and support staff reportedly waited for more than six hours in an assembly area before being allocated rooms aboard the Costa Serena. One coach told The Indian Express that the group had little more than airport snacks and water during the wait before finally reaching their rooms after 11 pm. MMA athlete Varun Sanyal documented an even longer ordeal. According to The Indian Express, Sanyal posted while he was seven hours into his wait for accommodation. His wait eventually stretched to around 10 hours, only for two other athletes to arrive shortly after he had fallen asleep because they had apparently been allocated the same room.
There have been positive experiences within the Indian camp as well. Women’s cricket coach Amol Muzumdar said his team was satisfied with its accommodation and described its check-in experience as smooth. That contrast suggests the difficulties have not affected every venue or delegation uniformly.
Chinese world champion says he was “totally exhausted”
China’s delegation has reported its own arrival problems. Chinese gymnast Zhang Boheng, a two-time world champion and double silver medallist at the Paris Olympics, said he and some of his teammates were left waiting for approximately six hours after arriving in Japan. “I’m totally exhausted,” Zhang said in a video that circulated on Chinese social media before being removed, according to AFP.
Zhang said he had breakfast at around 7 am but did not get another proper meal until close to 7 pm. Registration and administrative procedures delayed the delegation before they headed towards the cruise ship, where heavy rain created another obstacle to boarding. “A whole day was basically wasted like this,” Zhang said, adding that some members eventually decided to book hotel rooms themselves because they could no longer continue waiting. The transportation problems became unusual enough to involve members of the local community.
AFP, citing China’s Xinhua news agency, reported that the Chinese consulate in Nagoya contacted Chinese residents in the area to help transport members of the badminton team after shuttle-bus problems and a shortage of public transport tickets.
Images and videos of Chinese athletes exercising and stretching while waiting at the airport subsequently circulated online. AFP reported that the Weibo hashtag roughly translating to “Asian Games absurd” had accumulated more than 94 million views.
South Korea calls accommodation “worst ever”
Some of the strongest criticism has come from South Korea. The Korean delegation raised concerns about temporary accommodation at the Games even before the latest arrival problems. The Games are using container-style units around Nagoya Port as one part of the accommodation network. South Korean basketball official Jung Jae-Yong described the arrangement to AFP as the “worst it has ever been”, while players complained that beds were too short for taller athletes. Basketball player Byeon Jun-Hyeong also posted footage showing what appeared to be a leaking sink, according to AFP.
South Korean athletes reportedly faced lengthy airport delays as well, with some waiting more than five hours. A Korean Sport and Olympic Committee official confirmed to AFP that the organisation was aware of reports involving athletes waiting for hours and said it was working to address the situation.
Transport has produced further problems. The Indian Express reported that South Korea’s football team was taken to a baseball venue rather than its intended football stadium ahead of a match against Qatar, causing the team to arrive later than planned.
Even Team Japan has been affected
Perhaps the clearest indication that the issue extends beyond visiting delegations is that Japan’s own athletes have encountered accommodation problems.
Reuters reported that Team Japan began considering alternative arrangements after instances in which male and female athletes were allocated shared rooms. Organisers have also faced reports of coaches, officials and athletes being placed together because of room-allocation problems. Japan’s deputy Chef de Mission Hisashi Mizutori said officials were working on adjustments and could use backup accommodation prepared by Team Japan where necessary. The situation has therefore created an unusual spectacle: the host delegation itself looking for alternatives to parts of the accommodation system designed for its home Asian Games.
Why doesn’t the Asian Games have an Athletes’ Village?
The controversy has brought renewed attention to one of the defining organisational decisions behind Aichi-Nagoya 2026. Organisers initially planned an Athletes’ Village but abandoned the idea as part of efforts to control expenditure. The alternative system relies on existing hotels and temporary facilities, alongside the Costa Serena cruise ship and container-style accommodation. The OCA has strongly defended that decision. “It’s very easy, you can insist on an Athletes’ Village,” OCA Director General Husain Al-Musallam told reporters, arguing that organisers also have to consider what happens to expensive purpose-built accommodation after the event ends, according to Reuters.
Tayyab Ikram, chairman of the OCA Coordination Committee, similarly argued that an Athletes’ Village is not mandatory and said organisers wanted to avoid leaving behind an expensive development with little long-term use. There is another important number behind the controversy. The organising committee had planned accommodation around a smaller delegation population, but the eventual number of registered athletes and officials surpassed 17,000. Organisers have attributed some of the increase to sports being added to the programme, while OCA officials have argued that excluding athletes was not an acceptable solution simply because participation numbers increased.
The OCA and Aichi Nagoya Asian Games Organizing Committee have also pushed back against reports suggesting registered participants had simply been left without accommodation. In a joint statement, the two bodies said all 17,000-plus athletes and officials registered before the Entry by Name deadline in July had been provided with “Games-appropriate accommodation”.
That position now sits alongside accounts from individual delegations describing room reassignment, lengthy delays and teams arranging alternative hotels.
Accommodation isn’t the only controversy
The organisational problems have extended beyond beds and buses. South Korea’s Olympic committee also lodged a complaint after a welcoming ceremony featured a performer representing Toyotomi Hideyoshi, the Japanese warlord whose forces invaded Korea in the late 16th century, according to AFP. The appearance triggered criticism in South Korea given the historical significance of Hideyoshi’s invasions and the wider sensitivities surrounding Japan-Korea relations. The Games have also had to contend with severe weather.
Nagoya was recently hit by heavy rainfall, while organisers have been preparing contingency measures amid concerns over a potential typhoon. Nagoya Mayor Ichiro Hirosawa said protocols exist to temporarily evacuate athletes during severe weather and that the cruise ship could be moved offshore in the event of typhoon-strength winds, Reuters reported.
Organisers defend the experiment
Despite the mounting complaints, officials have resisted the suggestion that the accommodation model itself has failed. Organisers have described the accommodation as safe and functional, while OCA officials argue that major sporting events need to become more flexible about infrastructure rather than automatically constructing expensive villages that may have limited use after competition ends.
There is merit to the underlying sustainability question. Purpose-built accommodation can become a costly legacy for host cities once athletes leave. The Aichi-Nagoya model was intended to offer an alternative built around existing hotels and temporary infrastructure rather than another permanent Games village. Aichi-Nagoya, however, is now providing an unusually visible test of that alternative. The debate is no longer simply about whether athletes need a traditional village. It is about whether a decentralised model can reliably move, feed, register and accommodate more than 17,000 athletes and officials while allowing elite competitors to prepare for competition without unnecessary disruption.
For some teams, the system appears to be working. For others, the opening week has involved hours-long waits, long-distance bus journeys, emergency hotel bookings and accommodation they say is unsuitable. And all of it has happened before the opening ceremony. The 20th Asian Games officially open in Aichi-Nagoya on September 19, with more than 11,000 athletes from 45 countries set to compete across 43 sports. Once competition begins, attention will inevitably move towards medals and performances.
For organisers, however, another contest has already begun, proving that one of the most ambitious accommodation experiments attempted at a major multi-sport event can survive the pressure of the Games themselves.
