Kabaddi Requires You to Hold One Breath While Chanting and It Has Been an Asian Games Medal Sport Since 1990
The 2026 tournament runs 21 to 26 September at the Tokai Citizens Gymnasium in Aichi. India defend both titles; Iran broke their streak in 2018.
Kabaddi is a contact sport in which a single attacker enters the opposition half, tries to touch as many defenders as possible, and has to get back over the halfway line without taking a breath. Proof of the held breath is audible: the raider chants the word "kabaddi" continuously, and if the chant — the cant — breaks, the raid is over.
It is on the Asian Games programme for the ninth consecutive time in 2026. The tournament runs from 21 to 26 September at the Tokai Citizens Gymnasium in Tokai City, Aichi Prefecture, with preliminaries from the 21st to the 24th, semi-finals on the 25th and both finals on the 26th. Men's and women's team events are contested.
The sport appeared as an exhibition at the 1982 Games in New Delhi, became a full medal sport in 1990, and added a women's competition in 2010. India have won eleven golds across the two events and arrive as defending champion in both.
That record has one interruption in it, and it is a large one. At the 2018 Games in Jakarta and Palembang, Iran won gold in both the men's and women's tournaments, ending an Indian monopoly that had run unbroken since the sport was first contested for medals.
The rules are more precise than the premise suggests. Each side fields seven players with five in reserve. The men's court measures 10 metres by 13, the women's 8 by 12. Matches are two halves of twenty minutes. A raid must be completed within thirty seconds. Eliminating all seven opponents — an "All Out" — is worth two bonus points on top of the points for each defender touched.
What makes it work as a spectator sport is that every raid is a self-contained thirty-second problem with a visible clock: the raider's own lungs.
No 2026 results exist yet. The tournament is three weeks away.