Asian Games 2026 in Nagoya: A Visitor’s Guide to Tickets, Venues and Getting Around

I have lived in Nagoya for thirty-five years, and the city has never hosted anything on this scale. When friends overseas started asking me about the Asian Games, I went looking for a practical guide in English and could not find one. The information exists, but it is scattered across the organizing committee’s site, the Aichi prefectural government’s spectator pages, and a ticketing PDF. So I read all of it and put the useful parts in one place. Two things surprised me enough that they belonged at the very top: the competition started nine days before the opening ceremony, and the swimming was in Tokyo.

This is the overview page. If you already know what you need, go straight to the dedicated guide: buying tickets from overseas, reaching each venue without a car, or choosing where to stay.

Last updated: August 2026 | Author: Yuu (Nagoya-born, 35-year resident)

This article may contain affiliate links. See our affiliate disclosure for details.

---

Table of Contents

1. The Games in 30 Seconds
2. Check This First: Where Your Sport Actually Takes Place
3. Getting Your Bearings: The Venues by Area
4. Buying Tickets, and What to Watch For
5. When to Come, and How Many Nights
6. Where to Stay: Choosing a Base
7. From the Airport into the City
8. Getting Around During the Games: Subway and IC Cards
9. Your Phone: Digital Tickets Assume You Have Data
10. What to Do Between Sessions
11. Halal Food, Dietary Needs and Prayer Rooms During the Games
12. On the Day: Practicalities and Accessibility
13. Frequently Asked Questions
14. About the Author
15. Related Guides

---

The Games in 30 Seconds

The official site states the period as “2026.9.19–2026.10.4 (16 days)” [Source]. Both ceremonies are at Nagoya City Mizuho Park Athletic Stadium, and Aichi Prefecture has published a dedicated access page for that venue [Source].

The sport and venue counts come straight from the official site, whose home page heads its sports panel “43 Sports” and invites you to “dive into 43 exciting sports featured at the Aichi-Nagoya 2026 Asian Games” [Source], and which introduces “54 competition venues that will host events for the 20th Asian Games Aichi-Nagoya 2026” [Source]. The venue count went from 53 to 54 in early August 2026, when the organizing committee rebuilt its website, so older guides (including this one before August 14) still say 53.

One honest note before you read further. International sports media still carry the figure “41 sports, 460 events.” That is the older number from the point at which the Olympic Council of Asia approved the program. The current official site says 43 sports, so 43 is the number used throughout this guide.

Two weeks after the Games closed on October 4, the same region hosts the 5th Asian Para Games (October 18–24) [Source]. If your trip lands in the second half of October, that is your alternative.

---

Check This First: Where Your Sport Actually Takes Place

Staying in Nagoya does not mean you can see everything

This is the single most important warning in this guide. The event is called “Aichi-Nagoya,” but several of the 54 venues sit outside Aichi Prefecture entirely. Pulled out of the official venue list, here they are [Source].

Swimming is the one that catches people out. One of the most popular sports at any Games is happening in Tokyo, not Nagoya. “Book a Nagoya hotel and watch the swimming” is not a plan that works.

If you do end up moving between Tokyo and Nagoya, our Tokyo to Nagoya transport guide compares the options, and the Central Japan rail pass guide covers whether a rail pass earns its keep.

The competition starts before the opening ceremony

Here is the second trap. The Games period is announced as starting September 19, but the official ticketing guide lists paid sessions from September 10 [Source]. That is nine days before the opening ceremony.

The official session schedule tells the same story: the grid begins on September 10 (Games minus 9), places the opening ceremony on day zero, September 19, and the closing ceremony at plus 15, October 4. That grid still holds in the version reissued on August 19, 2026, which is the current one [Source]. Note that the organizing committee publishes the schedule as PDFs linked from that news post rather than as a schedule page on its own site, and states that dates can change again without notice.

From what we could confirm, basketball begins with a 10:00 a.m. session on September 10, and that is still the earliest paid session in the ticketing guide reissued on August 19, 2026 [Source]. How many sessions fell inside the September 10–18 window changed with that revision.

What this does to your itinerary

Anyone who flew in on September 19 for the opening ceremony had already missed nine days of the competition schedule.

The full day-by-day breakdown — what runs on which date, and where the official schedule actually lives now that the site has no schedule page — is in our Asian Games 2026 schedule: what is on, day by day.

Padel and teqball: the venue is now confirmed

Padel and teqball are both at Nagoya City Higashi Sports Center, in Higashi Ward. The venue is now on the organizing committee’s official venue list, and both sport pages name it [Source] [Source]. Nagoya City gives the address as 1-1-10 Taiko-minami, Higashi-ku, with the events in the First Competition Hall, and asks visitors to come by public transport; the city’s sports facility directory gives the nearest station as Nagoya Dome-mae Yada on the Meijo Line, a very short walk from Exit 1 [Source] [Source]. The city lists teqball on September 17–20 and padel on September 28 – October 3, noting that the information is current as of August 19, 2026 [Source] [Source]. One thing we never confirmed: how spectators got in. Neither sport appears in the official ticket listings, and neither is on Aichi Prefecture’s sport-by-sport spectator access page [Source], so we could not tell you what admission looked like for these two.

---

Getting Your Bearings: The Venues by Area

Update (August 17, 2026): We now keep a dedicated venue-by-venue access guide — Asian Games 2026 Venues: How to Reach Every Arena Without a Car — with the nearest station for every Nagoya venue and the sports held outside Aichi entirely.

Here are the Nagoya and Aichi venues, grouped by how you get to them rather than by sport. Journey times and fares are not given anywhere in this section, because we could not confirm those figures on the transport operators’ own sites. If you read our guide to getting around Nagoya first, this section will make a great deal more sense.

Area A: Nagoya venues you can reach by train

This is the easy group. Stay in the city and you cover all of it.

Every station name and walking time above is taken from Aichi Prefecture’s venue access pages [Source] [Source] [Source] — except Nagoya City Higashi Sports Center, which does not appear on the prefecture’s venue hub and is sourced instead from the city’s own facility page [Source].

The “0-minute walk” at Aichi International Arena is not marketing. The prefectural page really does say the arena is a 0-minute walk from Exit 4 of Meijo-koen Station. On a wet day you will barely get rained on.

Mizuho Park Athletic Stadium, where both ceremonies are held, has three usable subway stations. After a ceremony the crowd splits three ways, so keep in mind that you do not have to leave from the station you arrived at.

Area B: the venue at the airport

Aichi Sky Expo sits right next to Chubu Centrair International Airport, in Tokoname. The prefectural access page gives the address as Centrair, Tokoname City, and the walk as about 10 minutes from the Terminal 2 side exit of the Access Plaza at Meitetsu Airport Line’s Chubu Centrair International Airport Station [Source].

Breaking, esports, fencing, skateboarding and BMX freestyle are all held here [Source]. It is where the newer sports are clustered.

A way to use this that most people miss

You can fold this venue into your arrival or departure day. It is close enough to the airport to visit on the afternoon you land, or in the hours before your flight home. Just plan what you will do with your bags first — see our luggage forwarding guide.

Area C: venues in Aichi but outside Nagoya

A large share of the venues are in other cities across the prefecture [Source].

• Toyota — Toyota Stadium (football), Sky Hall Toyota (table tennis), Aichi Prefectural Shooting Range (shooting), Miyoshi Pond Canoe Course and Yahagi River Canoe Slalom Course (canoe)
• Okazaki — Okazaki Chuo General Park (archery, baseball, volleyball)
• Toyohashi — Toyohashi City Gymnasium (karate, taekwondo), Toyohashi Municipal Baseball Stadium (baseball)
• Kasugai — Kasugai Country Club East Course (golf), Kasugai City Gymnasium (handball)
• Ichinomiya — Ichinomiya City Gymnasium (badminton) / Nisshin — Korogi Athletic Park (cricket)
• Komaki — Entrio and Komaki City Sports Park Gymnasium (handball, volleyball)
• Anjo — Anjo General Sports Park (softball, modern pentathlon)
• Nishio — Nishio City Gymnasium (boxing) / Kariya — Wave Stadium Kariya (football) / Tokai — Tokai City Gymnasium (kabaddi) / Hekinan — Hekinan Ryokuchi Beach Court (beach volleyball)
• Gamagori — temporary course in the city (triathlon) / Tahara — Taiheiyo Long Beach (surfing) / Shinshiro — temporary course in the city (road cycling)

You will not find journey times or fares to these cities in this guide. We could not confirm those numbers on the rail operators’ own pages, so we are not printing them. Check your route on the day with a transfer search. For how to think about day trips out of Nagoya in general, our day trips from Nagoya guide is the place to start.

---

Buying Tickets, and What to Watch For

Just here for tickets? We have a dedicated page that goes deeper than this section: Asian Games 2026 tickets — how to buy from overseas. It covers the official resale service, the three authorized agencies, and why a session showing as “Currently Unavailable” was often still worth checking back on. New since September 2: the same page now also covers same-day tickets and the walk-in Aichi-Nagoya 2026 Ticket Center in Sakae.

Where sales stood (as of August 20, 2026)

General sale was open. According to the official ticket site, general sale ran from 5:00 p.m. on June 30, 2026 (Tue) until the day each session took place, on a first come, first served basis [Source]. There was no lottery involved, so if seats remained, you could buy them up to the day of the session.

The earlier presale rounds had already closed. Sales were open to buyers overseas: the official English page listed general sales as having “No restrictions (including international sales)” [Source].

A session shown as unavailable was not necessarily gone. On July 14, 2026 the organizers renamed the sold-out status: what used to read “Sold Out” now reads “Currently Unavailable” in English (予定枚数終了 in Japanese). Their explanation is that seat numbers are still being finalized and many sports will have more stock added later; a genuine, permanent sell-out will be announced separately [Source]. This is not theoretical — on August 4, 2026 they released more tickets for equestrian, surfing, volleyball at Okazaki, squash and other sessions [Source].

New since August 19: three more ways to buy

Between August 18 and August 20, 2026 the organizers opened three sales routes that older guides do not mention. All three are official, and all three are covered properly on our ticket guide.

• Asian Q Ticket (from 10:00 a.m., August 19) — bought without registering a Supporter ID. Unreserved seating only; general, child and disability tickets only; Apple Pay or Google Pay; on sale until 90 minutes before a session was due to finish [Source].
• After 4 Ticket (from 5:00 p.m., August 19) — a time-restricted ticket admitting you from 4:00 p.m., ¥1,500 to ¥6,500, covering 11 Asian Games sports. A Supporter ID is required for this one [Source].
• City Ticket Office at Oasis 21 — a walk-in counter in Sakae selling paper tickets over the counter for cash or card, August 20 to September 6, 2026, 10:15 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. (now closed) [Source]. It closed on September 6, and the Aichi-Nagoya 2026 Ticket Center below took over.
• Aichi-Nagoya 2026 Ticket Center (announced September 2) — a second walk-in counter, at 3-5-10 Sakae, Naka-ku, right by Exit 15 of Sakae Station and next to Sakae Mitsukoshi on the Hisaya-odori side. Its announced opening periods were September 9 to October 4 and again October 15 to 24, 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., and it sold tickets for every sport in the Games, subject to what was left [Source].

Separately, on August 19 the competition schedule itself was reissued, and eight sessions in handball, weightlifting and water polo were cancelled outright rather than moved; those were to be refunded after the Games, with the organizers emailing affected buyers [Source]. On the same evening more tickets went on sale for the ceremonies, athletics, shooting, table tennis, badminton, volleyball and artistic swimming as venue seat counts were finalized [Source].

How buying works

The official site sets out the steps as follows [Source].

1. Go to the official ticket site
2. Register an “Ouen-ID” (the official English pages also call it a Supporter ID) — this is required for general sales and for the After 4 Ticket, though not for the Asian Q Ticket introduced on August 19, 2026 [Source]
3. Choose your sport and session
4. Choose your seat category and number of tickets
5. Pay
6. Retrieve your ticket

The official ticket sales site is https://generalsale.tickets-aichi-nagoya2026.org/. As a starting point, the official ticket information site at https://lp-ag.tickets-aichi-nagoya2026.org/ is easier to navigate, since it gathers the guidance in one place.

When we visited the sales site on August 3, 2026, it routed us through a virtual waiting room.

What tickets cost

Seats come in five categories: AA, A, B, C and D, though the opening and closing ceremonies use only A to D. There are also child prices (under 15), disability prices, wheelchair spaces, and a “Heartful” ticket category for people aged 65 and over or for people with a disability traveling with family [Source].

Here are the two ends of the price range as confirmed in the official ticketing guide [Source].

Sports sessions started at ¥1,500. The top seat at the opening ceremony was ¥60,000, but a category D seat at that same ceremony was ¥7,500, and a child ticket was ¥4,000.

We are not reproducing the full sport-by-sport price table here. The Japanese sport labels in the official PDF cannot be extracted reliably, and transcribing them by eye risks attaching the wrong price to the wrong sport. For exact prices, always check the official ticketing guide.

Resale: use the official service, and nothing else

The official site is blunt about it: “You cannot enter with a ticket purchased through unofficial channels.” [Source]

There was an official resale service for buyers whose plans changed. It opened at 5:00 p.m. on August 4, 2026. Tickets could be listed until 23:59 three days before the session. The two ceremonies had their own, earlier deadlines — 23:59 on August 19 for the opening ceremony and 23:59 on September 7 for the closing ceremony — and both have now passed, so ceremony tickets can no longer be listed for resale. Only electronic tickets bought on the official site with a credit card, debit card or Google Pay can be listed, and hospitality packages and tickets bought in the additional-sales round are excluded [Source]. As a buyer, resale tickets appear on the official sales site under their own button. Handball, weightlifting, water polo and cricket are outside the resale service entirely, along with two football sessions whose schedules moved [Source].

The agencies the official site names are Ticket Pia, TBS Tickets and CBC Ticket Center. Which sports each one sells varies, and each requires its own membership registration [Source]. Note that tickets bought through a play guide generally cannot be put back into the official resale service — Ticket Pia purchases are the exception. There is also a package-tour route: the official site lists Tobu Top Tours (group travel only, and its group allocation was already gone as of July 2) and JTB, which has both a corporate desk and an individual-traveler product [Source].

How you receive your ticket

Tickets were digital by default, shown on screen or printed from a PDF. Tickets bought through one of the ticket agencies were collected at a convenience store [Source]. There was also a counter route in Sakae. Until September 6, 2026 it was the City Ticket Office inside the Oasis 21 i Center; from September 9 it was the Aichi-Nagoya 2026 Ticket Center at 3-5-10 Sakae, Naka-ku (September 9 to October 4, then October 15 to 24, 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.). Either one issued a physical paper ticket on the spot [Source].

Which means your phone is the thing standing between you and the turnstile. Section 9 covers how to make sure it works.

Ticket enquiries

Email: Aichi-Nagoya2026_support@pia.co.jp / Phone: 052-990-6573 (weekdays 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.) [Source]

Whether English support is available has not been published. Email, written in plain English or in Japanese, is the safer channel.

---

When to Come, and How Many Nights

This section was written for planning a trip during the Games, which closed on October 4, 2026. It is kept below as a record of how the dates fell.

The Games opened on a Saturday and closed on a Sunday.

If you would rather start from a worked example than a blank calendar, our Asian Games 2026 spectator itinerary builds a few sample trips around real session times.

For what late September and early October actually feel like in Nagoya, and what to pack, see our best time to visit Nagoya guide. For putting a budget together, see the Nagoya trip cost guide.

---

Where to Stay: Choosing a Base

Update (August 17, 2026): For the full area-by-area logic — including why the Meijo Line is the key to the whole event — see our dedicated guide, Where to Stay for the Asian Games 2026.

First, what this guide will not tell you

You will not read “hotels are sold out for the Games” or “rooms are going for three times the usual rate” here. No official data exists to support claims like that, and we do not publish what we cannot verify.

What we can say is what holds true for any large international event.

1. Moving early means more choice. That is constant across every Games
2. Take the free-cancellation rate first. Even with your plans unsettled, holding a room and deciding later puts you ahead
3. Do not fix on one neighborhood. If nothing is left by Nagoya Station, there are options along the subway lines

Choosing an area

With venues spread across the city, the right question is not “which venue is closest” but “how easily can I move by subway.”

• Around Nagoya Station — the Shinkansen, the airport line and three subway lines all meet here, and it is the easiest base for the out-of-prefecture venues in Tokyo, Osaka, Gifu and Hamamatsu → hotels near Nagoya Station
• Sakae and Fushimi — the center of gravity for eating and sightseeing. Comfortable if your evenings run late
• Comparing the areas — where to stay in Nagoya
• Watching the budget — budget hotels in Nagoya
• Traveling with children — family hotels in Nagoya

You do not need to stay near Mizuho Park, where the ceremonies are held. It is on the Meijo and Sakura-dori subway lines, so basing yourself centrally and traveling out makes far more sense once you factor in food, shopping and everything else you will want to do.

---

From the Airport into the City

Nagoya’s gateway is Chubu Centrair International Airport (NGO). Routes, journey times and fares from the airport into the city are all verified and laid out in our Centrair to the city guide, so this article will not repeat them.

There are two things worth adding in a Games context.

1. There is a competition venue at the airport. As section 3 covers, Aichi Sky Expo is about a 10-minute walk from Chubu Centrair International Airport Station [Source]. It fits neatly into an arrival or departure day
2. You do not want to be carrying big bags to a venue. Consider sending your luggage from the airport to your hotel — see the luggage forwarding guide

---

Getting Around During the Games: Subway and IC Cards

The basic rule: go by public transportation

Aichi Prefecture puts it plainly to spectators: “For these Games, spectators are expected to travel to venues by public transportation.” [Source]

And on parking: “As a rule no parking is provided, although a small number of venues will offer free parking.” [Source]

The three venue pages we checked — Mizuho Park Athletic Stadium, Aichi International Arena and Aichi Sky Expo — all state that there is no spectator parking or bicycle parking at the venue, and ask people not to arrive by car or bicycle [Source].

Aichi Prefecture also explicitly prohibited parking on residential streets nearby and using the parking lots of neighboring businesses.

Shuttle buses and park and bus ride

Some venues will run free shuttle buses from the nearest station [Source]. Which venues “some” covers varies, so check the official access page for the venue you are going to.

For those who do want to drive, there is a park and bus ride system: park at a designated free lot and transfer to a shuttle bus. Most of these require a reservation [Source].

Get an IC card sorted in advance

Nagoya’s subway, buses, JR and Meitetsu services all accept transit IC cards. Ticket machines are likely to have queues during the Games, so having an IC card ready removes that wait entirely. Which cards work, and how overseas visitors can currently top them up, is covered in our Suica and IC card guide.

For reading the route map, deciding whether a day pass is worth it, and how to ride the buses, start with our guide to getting around Nagoya.

For the Games specifically — which line serves which venue, what the fares actually are, and whether a day pass pays for itself — see our Asian Games 2026 transport guide: getting to every venue.

On crowding, honestly

You will not find “the subway will be X percent busier on this date” or “extra trains will run” in this guide, because we could not confirm any such announcement from the rail operators. As a general matter, stations get busy before and after the bigger sessions, so leave yourself time. Anything beyond that goes in only once an official announcement exists.

---

Your Phone: Digital Tickets Assume You Have Data

As section 4 explained, tickets are digital by default [Source]. In practice that means a phone that will not cooperate on the day can cost you entry.

During the Games your phone is doing at least four jobs.

• Displaying your digital ticket (potentially a condition of entry)
• Transfer searches (essential, with venues this spread out)
• Checking venue access pages (whether there is a shuttle bus, for instance)
• Translation, maps, and staying in touch with the people you came with

The fixes are simple.

1. Sort your connectivity before you leave home. More reliable than hunting for a SIM after you land
2. Save the ticket as a PDF too. The official guidance is on-screen display or a printed PDF, so having a form that survives a dead connection is worth the two minutes
3. Carry a power bank. A full day at a venue — ticket on screen, maps open, photos — drains a battery fast

How to choose between an eSIM, pocket WiFi and a local SIM, and how that changes with trip length, is compared in our Japan pocket WiFi and SIM guide.

---

What to Do Between Sessions

The Games landed in the middle of Central Japan’s autumn festival season. Two of the region’s big pottery festivals fell inside the Games period: the Seto Pottery Festival on September 12–13 (during the pre-ceremony competition days) and the Tokoname Pottery Festival on October 3–4, which is worth knowing about because Tokoname is the town next to Centrair airport — the same corner of the prefecture as the Aichi Sky Expo venue. The Owari Tsushima Autumn Festival also fell on October 3–4, and the Maneki-neko festival in Seto on September 26–27. Dates, access and what each one is actually like are in our guide to autumn festivals in Nagoya and Central Japan. If you are staying on past the closing ceremony, the Nagoya Festival on October 17–18 is the city’s own big one, and it runs right up against the Asian Para Games.

Competition does not run continuously all day. A morning session and an evening session often leave half a day open in between, and Nagoya is a good city for filling half a day.

• Eat — miso katsu, tebasaki, ankake spaghetti, kishimen. The full picture is in our Nagoya meshi food guide, and the city’s signature dish has its own hitsumabushi guide. If you eat halal, vegetarian or vegan, read the section below first — most of those dishes are off the list in their standard form
• See the castle — Nagoya Castle complete guide
• Walk a neighborhood — Osu shopping street guide. It is covered, so it works in the rain
• Pick from everything — things to do in Nagoya
• If sightseeing is the main event — take our 3-day Nagoya itinerary as your frame and slot the sport into it

If your trip overlaps late September to early October, that window is also autumn festival season in Central Japan — see our guide to autumn festivals in Nagoya and Central Japan for events you can fit around your sessions.

---

Halal Food, Dietary Needs and Prayer Rooms During the Games

If you keep halal, or eat vegetarian or vegan, sort this part of the trip out before you fly. Nagoya is a hard city for both. When we worked through the halal side properly, only two food venues in the whole of Aichi Prefecture could be traced back to a certifying body’s own published client list — and one of those two is inside Centrair airport, not in Nagoya City. The wording matters too: “halal-certified”, “Muslim-friendly” and “pork-free” are three different claims, and Japanese tourism listings blur them constantly. Venue by venue, with who said what, is in our Nagoya halal food guide.

Two things have moved on the food side because of the Games (both verified August 16, 2026).

• A Nagoya restaurant group has put Muslim-friendly dishes into 25 of its shops. JB Eleven, the company behind chains including Ikkoku Kaido, developed the menu in May 2026 and extended it to 25 restaurants from June 25, 2026 — the dish to know about being a soy-meat Taiwan ramen, the pork-topped noodle bowl invented in this city, rebuilt without the pork. The company states the dishes use no pork, no lard and no alcohol, with halal-certified seasonings, and states in the same announcement that the shops and the company itself hold no halal certification [Source]. A certified seasoning is not a certified kitchen.
• The tebasaki chain at Centrair airport publishes a Muslim menu. The Sekai no Yamachan branch at Chubu Centrair International Airport lists a Muslim Menu marked NO PORK and NO ALCOHOL and supervised by the Halal Japan Association: beef sukiyaki ¥1,650, phantom chicken wings 5 pieces ¥660, phantom tulip 3 pieces ¥880, chicken wing tempura 3 pieces ¥660, all including tax. The menu carries its own note that “The chicken used in this product is not Halal-certified.” [Source] Read it as Muslim-friendly, not certified.

For prayer, plan around the airport and the museum rather than the mosque. Nagoya Masjid in Nakamura-ku is open for prayer, but its Japanese-language page states that applications for individual visits are suspended for the time being (checked August 16, 2026). Centrair has three prayer rooms — Terminal 1 arrivals lobby, the Terminal 1 international departures restricted area, and the Terminal 2 arrivals lobby — with no reservation needed and partitions so men and women can pray separately [Source]. In the city, the Toyota Commemorative Museum of Industry and Technology has a prayer room in its entrance lobby, applied for at the reception desk [Source].

Vegetarian and vegan spectators have an easier time, though not by much: the practical list is our twelve verified vegan and vegetarian restaurants in Nagoya, and the background — what is in the local dishes, the phrases to ask with — is in our vegetarian and vegan phrase guide and our halal food guide. All of this can change, and a Games-period menu is exactly the kind of thing that does: phone the restaurant before you build a meal around it.

---

On the Day: Practicalities and Accessibility

Three things spectators were asked to check before setting out

1. Assume there is no parking at your venue (section 8)
2. Find out whether your venue has a shuttle bus — check Aichi Prefecture’s access page for that venue
3. Confirm you saved your ticket as a PDF

Accessibility

The Games planned an “accessible shuttle” from the nearest station to the venue for wheelchair users and people with disabilities. It was free, and reservations were required as a rule [Source].

Some venues also set aside parking for wheelchair users and people with disabilities. At Nagoya City General Gymnasium, for example, 25 spaces in the first parking lot are reserved, free, by advance booking [Source].

On the ticketing side there are wheelchair spaces and the Heartful ticket category for people aged 65 and over, or people with a disability traveling with family [Source].

Bags

We could not find official material on what you may and may not bring into the venues, so this guide does not publish a list of prohibited items. As a general matter, do not turn up at a venue with a large suitcase. Leave it at your hotel, or use luggage forwarding.

---

Frequently Asked Questions

When and where were the Asian Games 2026 held?

September 19, 2026 (Sat) through October 4, 2026 (Sun), centered on Aichi Prefecture and the city of Nagoya [Source]. The program ran to 43 sports at 54 venues, with 45 countries and regions of Asia taking part [Source] [Source] [Source]. The competition itself, however, was scheduled from September 10 — see the next question.

Did competition really start before the opening ceremony?

Yes. The official ticketing guide lists paid sessions from September 10 [Source], and the official session schedule likewise begins on September 10, marked as Games minus 9. Both still say so in the versions reissued on August 19, 2026 [Source]. From what we could confirm, basketball opens with a 10:00 a.m. session on September 10.

Where were the opening and closing ceremonies, and what did tickets cost?

Both are at Nagoya City Mizuho Park Athletic Stadium [Source]. The opening ceremony was scheduled to start at 6:00 p.m. on September 19, with categories A through D priced at ¥60,000 / ¥30,000 / ¥15,000 / ¥7,500 and a child ticket at ¥4,000. The closing ceremony was scheduled to start at 6:00 p.m. on October 4 and ran ¥40,000 / ¥20,000 / ¥10,000 / ¥5,000 for categories A to D, with a child ticket at ¥2,500 [Source]. One condition that does not apply to ordinary sessions: for both ceremonies you had to register your attendee details in advance, and those details were checked against your ticket at the gate [Source]. Entry times and the re-entry policy for the ceremonies were published on September 7 and September 12, 2026. Identity checks start at 1:00 p.m. and gates open at 1:30 p.m. for both; you must be inside by 4:00 p.m. for the opening ceremony and 4:30 p.m. for the closing ceremony, and entry is restricted from then until 5:20 p.m. and 5:40 p.m. respectively [Source]. Re-entry is not permitted at the ceremony venue [Source]. Games-wide rules did appear on September 3, 2026: bag and body checks at entry, a list of prohibited items and a list of prohibited behaviour inside venues, with no cloakroom or coin lockers at any venue [Source].

How were tickets sold, and where?

General sale ran from 5:00 p.m. on June 30, 2026 until the day of each session, first come, first served [Source]. For general sales you had to register an account (an Ouen-ID) on the official ticket site before you could buy; from August 19, 2026 the Asian Q Ticket was an exception and needed no registration, for unreserved seats only [Source]. There was also a walk-in counter in Sakae: the Oasis 21 office until September 6, 2026 [Source], then the Aichi-Nagoya 2026 Ticket Center at 3-5-10 Sakae, Naka-ku from September 9 to October 4 and October 15 to 24, 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. [Source]. The official site stated that you could not enter with a ticket purchased through unofficial channels.

The full walkthrough for overseas buyers — account registration, the official resale service and the authorized agencies — is on our Asian Games 2026 ticket guide.

If you stayed in Nagoya, could you watch every sport?

No. Some venues are outside Aichi Prefecture. Pool swimming, diving and equestrian were in Tokyo, track cycling was in Izu, artistic swimming was in Hamamatsu, and some football matches were in Osaka and Gifu [Source].

Could spectators drive to the venues?

As a rule, no. The Games expected spectators to travel by public transportation, and the guidance stated that “as a rule no parking is provided” [Source]. Mizuho Park Athletic Stadium, Aichi International Arena and Aichi Sky Expo all state explicitly that there is no spectator parking or bicycle parking [Source]. Drivers were pointed to park and bus ride, which mostly required a reservation.

Are the Asian Para Games at the same time?

No, they are separate. The 5th Asian Para Games run October 18, 2026 (Sun) through October 24, 2026 (Sat) [Source], two weeks after the Asian Games closed on October 4.

How much do I need my phone?

Quite a lot. Tickets are digital by default — shown on screen or printed from a PDF — and with venues spread across the region, transfer searches are unavoidable [Source]. Arrange your connectivity before you leave home (see our pocket WiFi and SIM guide), and save the ticket PDF to your device as a backup.

---

About the Author

Yuu was born in Nagoya and has lived here for 35 years. He spent a month backpacking around New York during university and has since traveled to more than 15 countries. This is the first time an international event of this size has come to his home city, and he wrote this guide by asking himself what he would want a friend flying in from abroad to know first. The answer turned out to be: check the venue before you buy the ticket — the swimming is in Tokyo.

---

Related Guides

The Asian Games 2026 series on this site:

• Asian Games 2026 Tickets: How to Buy From Overseas
• Asian Games 2026 Venues: How to Reach Every Arena Without a Car
• Where to Stay for the Asian Games 2026
• After the Asian Games: Stay On for the Takayama Autumn Festival
• Asian Games 2026 Schedule: What Is On, Day by Day
• Asian Games 2026 Transport: Getting to Every Venue
• Asian Games 2026 Spectator Itinerary

• Asian Games 2026 Tickets — buying from overseas, prices, and the official resale service
• Where to Stay in Nagoya — choosing your neighborhood
• Hotels Near Nagoya Station — basing yourself at the transport hub
• Centrair Airport to the City — getting in from the airport
• Getting Around Nagoya — subways and buses
• Suica and IC Card Guide — skipping the ticket-machine queue
• Pocket WiFi and SIM Guide — data for your digital ticket
• Things to Do in Nagoya — for the hours between sessions

— Yuu