Updated: Saturday, 26 September 2026
Pakistan at Asian Games 2026 has so far been a story of hard-won bronze medals and one very big hope. A week into the Games in Aichi and Nagoya, Japan, Pakistan has four medals, all bronze: one in mixed martial arts, one in women’s cricket and two in squash. That is already one more medal than the country brought home from Hangzhou three years ago.
The gold, if it comes, is most likely to come on Monday. Olympic champion Arshad Nadeem is Pakistan’s clearest chance of finishing on top of a podium, and the men’s javelin final is set for 4:15 p.m. Pakistan time on September 28. His form this season has been patchy, however, and the field includes a Sri Lankan thrower who has been beating him.
Here is where Pakistan stands, who has delivered, what went wrong elsewhere, and what to watch in the final week.
Table of Contents
Pakistan at Asian Games 2026: the medal count so far
The 20th Asian Games opened on September 19 and run until October 4, with about 470 sets of medals on offer across Nagoya, Aichi Prefecture and a few venues elsewhere in Japan, according to the Olympics.com live medal table. Pakistan sent a contingent of about 168 people and entered 23 disciplines.
By Saturday evening, Pakistan’s tally stood at four bronze medals:
- Asim Khan, mixed martial arts
- The women’s cricket team
- Noor Zaman, men’s singles squash
- Muhammad Ashab Irfan, men’s singles squash
There is no gold or silver yet. Pakistan has not won an Asian Games gold since the women’s cricket team took the title in 2014, so a first-place finish in Japan would end a 12-year wait.
Asim Khan opens the account with a historic MMA bronze
Pakistan’s first medal came from a sport making its Asian Games debut for the country. Karachi-based fighter Asim Khan lost his mixed martial arts semi-final, but the competition format awards bronze to both losing semi-finalists, and The Nation reported that his place in the last four was enough to put Pakistan on the medal table.
It was Pakistan’s first-ever Asian Games medal in MMA. Asim had previously won bronze at a world championship and silver at Asian level, and he dedicated the medal to the people of Pakistan. The Pakistan Mixed Martial Arts Federation said it hoped the result would bring more support for a sport that has grown quickly in Karachi and Lahore gyms but still gets little official funding.
For a country that often measures its Asian Games campaigns in hockey and squash, an MMA medal is a reminder that new sports can offer new routes to the podium.
Women’s cricket team takes bronze against Bangladesh
The second medal came on September 22, when Pakistan’s women beat Bangladesh by 31 runs in the third-place play-off at Korogi Sports Park in Nisshin.
Pakistan batted first and were struggling at 90 for 5 after 15 overs. Captain Fatima Sana changed the innings with an unbeaten 45 off 30 balls, including three sixes, and Aliya Riaz added a quick 25 off 22. Together they took 55 runs off the last five overs to lift Pakistan to 145 for 8, Daily Pakistan reported. Opener Gull Feroza had given the innings a quick start with 31 off 23.
The bowlers then made sure the total was enough. Umm-e-Hani took three wickets for 10 runs in her four overs, and Tasmia Rubab, Fatima Sana, Nashra Sandhu and Ayesha Zafar each picked up a wicket.
Pakistan’s women won Asian Games cricket gold in 2010 and 2014, so bronze is a step down from their best. Still, in a year when Fatima Sana has been Pakistan’s leading run-scorer and wicket-taker in women’s T20 internationals, a medal was a fair reward for a team that has improved steadily.
Squash: two semi-finalists for the first time since 2002
Squash once made Pakistan famous around the world, and this week offered a glimpse of that old strength. Noor Zaman and Muhammad Ashab Irfan both reached the semi-finals of the men’s singles, the first time since 2002 that two Pakistani players had got that far at the Asian Games.
Both were impressive on the way there. Neither dropped a game in the round of 16. In Friday’s quarter-finals, third seed Noor beat Hong Kong’s Henry Leung 11-7, 11-6, 3-11, 11-4, and fifth seed Ashab came from a game down to beat India’s fourth seed Veer Chotrani 6-11, 11-8, 11-6, 11-6, Dawn reported. That win avenged Pakistan’s loss to India in the men’s team final in Hangzhou.
Saturday’s semi-finals were a step too far. Noor ran into Malaysia’s top seed Eain Yow Ng, stayed level with him until the middle of the first game, and then lost it 11-7 before Ng ran away with the second 11-2. Ashab also lost his semi-final, and both players leave Nagoya with bronze.
Two medals in the same event is still a real result. Both players are young, and Noor has already won the world under-23 title. If Pakistan wants a squash revival that lasts, these are the players to build it around.
Arshad Nadeem and Monday’s javelin final
Arshad Nadeem is Pakistan’s biggest sports star and its best chance of gold in Japan. He won the Paris 2024 Olympics with a throw of 92.97 metres, an Olympic record and still the Asian record, and he won the Asian Athletics Championships in Gumi, South Korea, in 2025.
He and fellow Pakistani Muhammad Yasir were entered in the qualifying round on Saturday morning. The final is scheduled for Monday, September 28, at 4:15 p.m. Pakistan time at Nagoya’s Mizuho Park Athletic Stadium.
The concern is form. Arshad finished ninth at a meeting in Lucerne in July with a best of 78.47 metres, then ninth again in the Commonwealth Games final. Most recently, he came fifth at the World Athletics Ultimate Championship in Budapest with 81.49 metres, The Express Tribune noted, while Sri Lanka’s Rumesh Tharanga Pathirage won with 91.09 metres.
That makes Pathirage the man to beat. The Sri Lankan has been one of the most improved throwers in the world, and he pushed Arshad hard at the Asian Championships in 2025 before the Pakistani came through to win. A repeat of that contest in Nagoya would make for one of the best events of the Games.
What a winning throw might look like
The Asian Games record is 89.15 metres, set by China’s Zhao Qinggang in Incheon in 2014. A throw in the high 80s would probably be enough to win in most years, and Arshad has thrown well beyond that before. The question is whether his body and rhythm are back to where they were in Paris.
Arshad has a history of producing his best on the biggest stage, often after a poor build-up. His first Asian Games medal was a bronze in Jakarta in 2018, and he has improved enormously since then. Pakistan will be watching on Monday afternoon hoping he can do it again.
Arshad Nadeem’s road from Mian Channu
It is easy to forget how unlikely Arshad’s rise has been. He was born in Mian Channu in Punjab in 1997 and came to the javelin after trying other sports as a schoolboy, training for years on basic grounds with little of the equipment or support that athletes in richer countries take for granted.
His breakthroughs came one after another. At the 2022 Commonwealth Games in Birmingham, he threw 90.18 metres to win gold and became the first South Asian athlete to pass 90 metres. A year later, he won silver at the World Championships in Budapest, the first world athletics medal by any Pakistani.
Then came Paris. His winning throw of 92.97 metres gave Pakistan its first Olympic medal since 1992, its first gold since the hockey team’s win in 1984, and its first-ever individual Olympic gold. The celebrations at home lasted weeks.
Since then, injuries have made his path harder. A stubborn calf problem led to surgery and rehabilitation in the United Kingdom, and he has spent much of the past year trying to find his old rhythm. That background is why Monday’s final matters so much, both for the medal and for what it would say about his comeback.
Muhammad Yasir, the other Pakistani in the javelin
Arshad is not Pakistan’s only javelin thrower in Nagoya. Muhammad Yasir, a bronze medallist at the Asian Athletics Championships, was also entered in the event.
Yasir has been a steady presence behind Arshad for several years and reached the final of the 2025 Asian Championships alongside him. This season has been harder: at the Commonwealth Games in July, his best of 74.36 metres left him 14th in qualifying, just outside the 12 places for the final. A strong throw in Japan would mean a great deal for a thrower who has often been overshadowed by his famous teammate.
Having two Pakistanis in a continental javelin event is itself a sign of how much Arshad’s success has done for the sport at home. More young athletes are now taking up the javelin in Punjab and elsewhere, and a few of them may be on this stage in four years.
Hockey: first defeat, but the campaign goes on
Pakistan’s men’s hockey team, eight-time Asian Games champions with their last gold in 2010, suffered their first defeat of the Games on Saturday against Malaysia at the Gifu Prefectural Green Stadium.
Hockey remains the sport where many Pakistanis still expect medals, even though results in recent decades have rarely matched that expectation. A strong finish in the rest of the tournament would do a lot to restore confidence in a team that has been rebuilding for years.
Disappointments in kabaddi and boxing
Not every sport has gone well. Pakistan’s kabaddi team, bronze medallists in both 2018 and Hangzhou, missed the semi-finals for the first time after losing to Iran earlier in the week.
In boxing, Fatima Zehra, Pakistan’s only medallist at the 2026 Commonwealth Games, lost clearly to Tajikistan’s Mijgona Samadova in the women’s 60kg division on Saturday. Samadova won every round on most of the judges’ cards and knocked Fatima down once, although the 22-year-old went the full distance. Irfan Khan had a difficult debut in the men’s 90kg class, stopped in the second round by South Korea’s Gichae Kim.
There were also early exits in soft tennis and table tennis, where the women’s team lost to India in the group stage.
How 2026 compares with Hangzhou and Jakarta
Pakistan’s recent Asian Games record has been thin. In Hangzhou, at the Games held in 2023 after a year’s delay, Pakistan won three medals: a silver in the men’s squash team event, and bronzes for shooter Kishmala Talat and the kabaddi team. It was the country’s lowest medal count ever at the Asian Games. In Jakarta and Palembang in 2018, Pakistan won four bronze medals and no gold or silver.
With four bronzes already and the javelin still to come, Pakistan at Asian Games 2026 is on course for its best total in at least three editions. That is a modest bar, and it is worth keeping in perspective. In 2002 in Busan, Pakistan won 13 medals, including a gold.
Why Pakistan keeps falling short
Pakistan’s athletes are rarely short of talent or effort. The problems that coaches, former players and sports journalists raise again and again are about the system around them: limited funding, few modern training facilities, too little international competition, and long-running disputes between sports federations and government bodies.
Arshad Nadeem’s own story shows both sides. He became an Olympic champion despite training for years with poor equipment and limited support, which is a tribute to his determination but not a model that can be repeated across dozens of sports. Squash players, fighters and cricketers who reached the podium in Japan have mostly done so through private academies, family support or their own persistence.
The medals in Nagoya suggest where investment could pay off quickly: squash, combat sports, women’s cricket and field events such as the javelin. Whether that happens depends on decisions made long after the Games end.
What to watch in the final week
The javelin final on Monday is the headline event for Pakistani fans. Beyond that, keep an eye on the hockey team’s remaining matches, the men’s cricket team led by Sahibzada Farhan, and Pakistan’s athletes in shooting and other individual events.
Pakistan also made history in equestrian, with rider Usman Khan becoming the country’s first competitor in Asian Games eventing. Results in these sports rarely make headlines at home, but they show a slowly widening base of Pakistani sport.
The Games close on October 4. We will update this article with the javelin result and any further medals.
Why squash and MMA give two bronze medals
Some readers have asked why Pakistan won two bronze medals in the same squash event. The answer is the format. In squash and in combat sports such as boxing, wrestling and mixed martial arts, the Asian Games do not hold a third-place match. Both players who lose in the semi-finals receive bronze.
That is also how Asim Khan secured his medal in MMA. Reaching the last four is the key step, because it guarantees a place on the podium even before the semi-final is fought.
Team sports work differently. In cricket and hockey, the two losing semi-finalists play each other for bronze, which is why Pakistan’s women had to beat Bangladesh to claim their medal.
The medal table itself ranks countries by gold medals first, then silver, then bronze. That is why a country with one gold can sit above another with several bronze medals, and why Pakistan’s four bronzes leave it well down the standings for now.
How to follow the Games from Pakistan
Japan is four hours ahead of Pakistan, so events that start in the Japanese afternoon take place in the late morning or around midday at home. Monday’s javelin final at 4:15 p.m. Pakistan time falls in the Japanese evening, which makes it easier to watch live after work or school.
The official Asian Games results system publishes every result, schedule and medal count as events finish. Broadcast arrangements in Pakistan can change during the Games, so check the schedules of PTV Sports and any official streaming partners on the day rather than relying on older announcements.
Social media accounts of the Pakistan Olympic Association and individual sports federations often post results quickly, although they are not always complete. For a full picture, the official results system is the most reliable source.
Pakistan at Asian Games 2026: common questions
How many medals has Pakistan won at the Asian Games 2026?
Four bronze medals as of September 26: Asim Khan in MMA, the women’s cricket team, and Noor Zaman and Muhammad Ashab Irfan in men’s singles squash.
When is Arshad Nadeem’s javelin final?
The men’s javelin final is scheduled for Monday, September 28, at 4:15 p.m. Pakistan time in Nagoya.
Has Pakistan won any gold at the 2026 Asian Games?
Not yet. Pakistan’s last Asian Games gold was in women’s cricket in 2014.
How did Pakistan do at the last Asian Games?
In Hangzhou, Pakistan won three medals: one silver in squash and two bronze in shooting and kabaddi.
When do the Asian Games 2026 end?
The Games run from September 19 to October 4 in Aichi and Nagoya, Japan.
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