The India 2038 Asian Games bid for Ahmedabad just became official — and it’s the third mega event this city has taken on in eight years. Not one. Not two. Three. As of Friday, India has officially put pen to paper on the third one — the 2038 Asian Games.
PT Usha, heading the Indian Olympic Association, confirmed the bid from Sanya, China — where she’s attending the Asian Beach Games. The IOA has formally submitted India’s Expression of Interest to the Olympic Council of Asia. The OCA’s executive board already discussed it on April 21. An evaluation team is on its way to India “very soon.” If everything clicks, Ahmedabad will host the world’s largest multi-sport event eight years from now.
But here’s the thing nobody’s quite saying out loud — 2038 isn’t the only mega event Ahmedabad is preparing for. It’s the third in a row. And what that actually means is more chaotic than the headlines suggest.
What PT Usha Just Confirmed — And Why It Wasn’t Quite a Surprise
The bid wasn’t dropped out of nowhere. South Korea has been eyeing 2038 since 2021, with Gwangju and Daegu lined up as proposed host cities. Mongolia is also reportedly in. The actual host city gets decided around 2028 — roughly two years from now.
Why does this matter? Because the Asian Games is bigger than the Olympics in raw athlete count. Hangzhou 2023 pulled in over 11,000 athletes across 40 sports from 45 nations. If India hosts the Asian Games in 2038, it would be only the third time — after the inaugural edition in 1951 and again in 1982, both in Delhi. Both more than 40 years ago.
So genuinely historic territory. Which would be exciting, except for one detail almost nobody is talking about.
The Schedule Nobody Is Talking About — 3 Mega Events, One City, 8 Years
Look at what Ahmedabad already has on its calendar:
- 2030 Commonwealth Games — confirmed. A 350-acre sports district is being built around Narendra Modi Stadium. Commonwealth Sport’s president said in April he was “satisfied” with India’s preparations.
- 2036 Olympics — bid in. The Ahmedabad-Gandhinagar twin city has unveiled a Rs 34,700-64,000 crore infrastructure plan. India is competing with Qatar.
- 2038 Asian Games — just bid, as of last week. The Ahmedabad Asian Games infrastructure build would ride on the same venues.
Three mega events. Eight years. One city. To pull this off, Gujarat is acquiring 650 acres of land — and displacing 300+ families — just for the CWG buildout. Narendra Modi Stadium is already the world’s biggest at 132,000 capacity — Ahmedabad already proved it can host a world-class final — but the rest of the venues are still being designed, financed, and built. In a city where construction crews work through the kind of summers that put 19 of the world’s 20 hottest cities in India.
Has any city ever attempted this back-to-back-to-back? No. There’s literally no playbook for India’s hosting mega sporting events ambition at this scale.
But the bigger question isn’t whether Ahmedabad can build it. It’s whether India, as a country, can actually run it.
The 2010 Ghost — Can India Pull Off Its 2038 Asian Games Bid?
The last time India hosted a mega multi-sport event was 2010 — the Commonwealth Games in Delhi. The legacy? Suresh Kalmadi. Corruption charges. A money laundering case so tangled it only formally closed in April 2025 — thirteen years after the games ended. And safety isn’t exactly a solved problem either — 11 fans died in a stadium stampede just last year.
Then there’s the doping problem. WADA flagged India as the worst lawbreaker for three consecutive years. That’s not a rounding error. That’s a credibility crisis the OCA evaluation team will ask very pointed questions about.
This is also the same India whose global brand just took a public hit when Trump called it a “hellhole” — credibility matters more in 2026 than it has in years.
Gujarat is at least trying to address one piece — it’s drafting expo and hotel policies so post-CWG infrastructure doesn’t go the way of Delhi’s half-empty Games Village. Sustainable use after the event is the new mantra. Whether it actually works depends on execution India hasn’t yet demonstrated.
So when PT Usha shakes hands in Sanya and the OCA evaluation team flies in next month — what they’re really evaluating isn’t Ahmedabad’s stadiums. It’s whether India 2026 is anything like India 2010.
The decision comes in 2028. Between now and then, India has to convince Asia — and itself — that this isn’t a sequel to the last disaster with a different city, a different organiser, and a much, much bigger price tag.
Ahmedabad is already building. The question is whether the rest of us are ready for what comes after the India 2038 Asian Games bid for Ahmedabad becomes reality.