Badminton gold medallist Pramod Bhagat and table tennis Paralympic champion Bhavina Patel are set to carry the national flag together at the opening of the 5th Asian Para Games, a seven-day competition running from 18 to 24 October 2026 at the Aichi-Nagoya venues in Japan, where India will begin its bid for medals.

A total of 168 athletes received approval from the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports to compete at the Games. Of the 281 people granted clearance, 168 are competing athletes, 98 hold roles in team management and support, and the remaining 15 serve as contingent-level staff.

Compared with the 303 athletes India sent to the Hangzhou Games in 2023, the current contingent travelling to this edition is notably leaner in number. A smaller delegation resulted from two converging factors: certain events — among them Blind Chess, Para-Rowing, and Para-Canoeing — did not feature on the programme, while the Organising Committee applied entry caps across a number of sporting categories that further limited available spots.

Heading into the Aichi-Nagoya Games, the number of para athletics spots allocated to India stands at 62 — roughly half the 123 berths the country held at Hangzhou. A field of 168 athletes — two-thirds of them men, one-third women — will take part across 11 separate disciplines.

Ahead of the opening ceremony, disciplines such as blind football, para badminton, boccia, and para table tennis will already be underway, with athletes competing in their early qualifying matches.

At the Aichi-Nagoya Games, the country's delegation arrives off the back of a Hangzhou campaign that produced a total of 111 podium finishes — 29 of them gold, 31 silver, and 51 bronze — a haul that stands as the largest the nation has accumulated at any Asian Para Games to date. A haul of 72 medals at the 2018 Jakarta edition had stood as the country's continental high-water mark — a figure the delegation eclipsed on that occasion.

Para athletics stood as the top medal-producing discipline at the 2023 Games, with 55 podium finishes — 18 of them gold — giving it a larger share of the overall national tally than any other sport on the programme.

Javelin competitor Sumit Antil, a two-time Paralympic gold medallist in the F64 category, is scheduled to compete again at the Aichi-Nagoya Games. Three gold medallists from the Paralympics — Dharambir Nain, Praveen Kumar, and Navdeep Singh — feature in the para athletics squad alongside Preethi Pal, Deepthi Jeevanji, Nishad Kumar, Sachin Sarjerao Khilari, and Hokato Hotozhe Sema, each of whom returned from the Games with a medal to their name.

Heading the para shooting contingent will be Avani Lekhara, who holds both a pair of Paralympic gold medals and the title of reigning Asian Para Games champion in the women's 10-metre air rifle event. Sheetal Devi, who turns 20 this year, heads into the para archery women's compound competition at this edition having already claimed two podium finishes at the 2023 event — one of them a silver in the doubles, the other coming through the mixed team contest.

Heading the para badminton contingent are Nitesh Kumar, a Paralympic gold medallist, and Pramod Bhagat, alongside Suhas Yathiraj and Thulasimathi Murugesan — both of whom collected silver at the Paralympics — and Nithya Sre Sumathy Sivan, whose bronze-medal performance rounded out the group's roster of Paralympic honours.

From 14 medals at the 2010 Guangzhou edition, the country's Paralympic tally at the Asian Para Games grew to 33 at Incheon in 2014, then nearly doubled again to 72 when Jakarta hosted in 2018, before reaching a total of 111 across the Hangzhou competition in 2023. Spread across 19 separate locations, the athletic programme will use Nagoya City Mizuho Park Athletic Stadium as its central hub for competition.