Mirabai Chanu lifted India’s first gold of the Commonwealth Games 2026 on Sunday, completing a hat-trick of weightlifting titles as the country’s Glasgow tally reached four medals. One gold, two silver and one bronze, with 122 Indian athletes still chasing more before the Games close on August 2.
The count looks thin next to Birmingham’s 61 medals four years ago. Glasgow’s slimmed program has dropped wrestling, badminton, table tennis and hockey, the four sports that produced 25 of India’s medals last time, and shooting, historically India’s single biggest medal source at these Games, has been off the schedule since 2018. The gap traces back further than this fortnight, to a canceled bid on the other side of the world.
India’s Four Medals, Sport by Sport
Chanu went first. The Olympic silver medalist won the women’s 48kg gold with a total lift of 190kg, 85kg in the snatch and 105kg in the clean and jerk, breaking Games records in all three categories after recovering from a failed opening clean and jerk attempt. It is her third straight Commonwealth gold, following Gold Coast 2018 and Birmingham 2022.
Weightlifter Rishikanta Singh had already put India on the board a day earlier with silver in the men’s 60kg category, setting a new Games record in the snatch. Jhandu Kumar delivered India’s first medal of the Games outright, a bronze in para powerlifting. Boxer Lovlina Borgohain received a bye straight to the semi-finals in the women’s 75kg division, and since boxing awards bronze to both losing semi-finalists, she was guaranteed at least that. She has since gone a round further, reaching the final and locking in at least silver, with the gold medal bout still to come.
| Athlete | Sport / Event | Medal | Detail |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mirabai Chanu | Weightlifting, women’s 48kg | Gold | Games records in snatch, clean and jerk and total; third straight CWG title |
| Rishikanta Singh | Weightlifting, men’s 60kg | Silver | Games record in the snatch |
| Lovlina Borgohain | Boxing, women’s 75kg | Silver (assured) | Reached the final after a quarter-final bye; gold bout still ahead |
| Jhandu Kumar | Para powerlifting | Bronze | India’s first medal of the Glasgow Games |
Four names, four disciplines. The next six days will decide how many more join that list, but the ceiling on how many can is lower than it has been at any Commonwealth Games in decades.
The Bill Victoria Left Glasgow to Pay
Glasgow is only hosting these Games because Victoria, the Australian state, walked away from its own hosting rights in July 2023. Daniel Andrews, Victoria’s premier at the time, said projected costs had ballooned to between A$6 billion and A$7 billion, more than double the original estimate, and pulled out rather than proceed.
Andrews later drew criticism for declining to name who was behind the flawed bid that produced those runaway estimates. EY, the consulting firm caught up in the process, has since defended its role in the scrapped bid amid the fallout. Victoria ultimately paid roughly A$589 million in sunk costs and compensation, including about A$194 million to the Glasgow organizers who agreed to take the Games on, a settlement later examined in the state auditor’s review of the withdrawal.
Glasgow’s rescue version costs a fraction of what Victoria balked at. Organizers are budgeting about £150 million, roughly A$290 million and about five percent of Victoria’s projected bill, with no Scottish or UK government contribution to delivery costs. That budget is what shaped everything India’s athletes are now competing inside.
Ten Sports Where Birmingham Had Twenty
The Commonwealth Games Federation confirmed the reduced shape of Glasgow 2026 in October 2024. It settled on a 10-sport programme squeezed into four venues within roughly an eight-mile stretch of the city, a deliberate design to fit the smaller budget. The Commonwealth Games Federation’s Glasgow 2026 hub lists the window as July 23 to August 2.
The ten sports are athletics, swimming, artistic gymnastics, track cycling, netball, weightlifting, boxing, judo, bowls and 3×3 basketball. India contests eight of the able-bodied disciplines, sitting out netball and able-bodied 3×3 basketball, and adds five integrated para events on top: para athletics, para powerlifting, para swimming, para track cycling and 3×3 wheelchair basketball.
What is missing matters more to India’s medal math than what remains. Cricket, diving, squash, rugby sevens, beach volleyball, mountain biking and rhythmic gymnastics are also gone from Birmingham’s lineup, but wrestling, badminton, table tennis and hockey are the ones that used to fill India’s medal count.
The Twenty-Five Medals Glasgow No Longer Offers
Birmingham 2022 gave India 61 medals and fourth place on the table, its best finish since the host-nation surge of 2010. Twenty-five of those 61 came from the four sports Glasgow has cut. That is not a rounding error. It is more than a third of India’s last complete medal haul, gone before a single Glaswegian venue opened its doors.
- 61 medals – India’s total at Birmingham 2022 (22 gold, 16 silver, 23 bronze)
- 25 medals – won in wrestling, badminton, table tennis and hockey, all absent from Glasgow
- 10 sports – Glasgow’s programme, down from 20 at Birmingham
- 564 medals – India’s all-time Commonwealth Games total heading into Glasgow, across 18 prior appearances
Strip those 25 Birmingham medals out and India’s remaining 36 came from athletics, weightlifting, boxing, wrestling-adjacent combat sports, gymnastics, judo, swimming, table tennis’s absence aside, and table events still on Glasgow’s card. That narrower base is what the current four-medal count is being built on.
A Medal Legacy Built Without Shooting
India has won 564 medals across 18 Commonwealth Games appearances, the fourth-most of any nation behind Australia, England and Canada, since its debut in 1934. Glasgow is the 19th appearance. No single athlete embodies that history like pistol shooter Jaspal Rana, who sits atop India’s all-time list with 15 medals: nine gold, four silver and two bronze. Shooting has been India’s single biggest medal contributor across CWG history, and it has not been on the program since Gold Coast 2018, the same edition where Neeraj Chopra won his first Commonwealth javelin gold.
- 1934: India competes at the Commonwealth Games for the first time.
- 2010: Hosting in New Delhi, India wins a record 101 medals, 39 gold, 26 silver and 36 bronze, finishing second, the only time it has crossed 100 medals at the Games.
- 2018: At Gold Coast, Neeraj Chopra wins Commonwealth javelin gold in what turns out to be shooting’s final appearance on the programme.
- 2022: Birmingham delivers 61 medals and fourth place, across a 20-sport programme that still included wrestling, badminton, table tennis and hockey.
- 2026: Glasgow hosts India’s 19th Commonwealth Games on a 10-sport programme rebuilt after Victoria’s cancelled bid.
Two Games running now, India has lost a different pillar of its historical medal engine before competition even begins. Gold Coast to Birmingham cost it shooting. Birmingham to Glasgow costs it four more sports at once.
Who Else Can Still Add to India’s Tally?
Neeraj Chopra leads a 32-member Indian athletics squad chasing the rest of Glasgow’s medals. He skipped his Birmingham title defense through injury and now returns to Commonwealth competition still holding his Gold Coast crown. Gurindervir Singh, Animesh Kujur, Murali Sreeshankar, Tajinderpal Singh Toor, Parul Chaudhary and Gulveer Singh round out an athletics group with medal chances of its own across the remaining days of competition.
- Confirmed: Chanu’s weightlifting gold, Rishikanta’s weightlifting silver, Jhandu Kumar’s para powerlifting bronze and Lovlina’s guaranteed boxing medal.
- Confirmed: 122 Indian athletes remain entered across eight able-bodied sports and five para disciplines through August 2.
- Unconfirmed: Whether Lovlina Borgohain converts her guaranteed silver into gold in the 75kg final.
- Unconfirmed: Neeraj Chopra’s result in the men’s javelin final, held the same day this tally was last updated.
Six days of competition remain in Glasgow. Of the 122 Indian athletes who traveled here, 118 have not yet won anything.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many sports were cut from the Commonwealth Games 2026 programme?
The Commonwealth Games Federation’s October 2024 announcement stripped Birmingham’s twenty-sport lineup down to ten for Glasgow, cutting cricket, diving, squash, rugby sevens, beach volleyball, mountain biking and rhythmic gymnastics along with wrestling, badminton, table tennis and hockey.
How many athletes are competing at Glasgow 2026 compared with Birmingham 2022?
Organizers expect roughly 3,000 athletes in Glasgow, down from 5,054 in Birmingham in 2022, and the Games are running without a dedicated athletes’ village.
When does Neeraj Chopra compete in the men’s javelin final at Glasgow 2026?
Chopra throws in the men’s javelin final at Scotstoun Stadium, the venue hosting athletics through August 1, as he chases the Commonwealth title he missed at Birmingham 2022 through injury.
Who is Arshad Nadeem, Neeraj Chopra’s main rival in Glasgow?
Nadeem is Pakistan’s reigning Olympic and Commonwealth javelin champion, who threw 92.97 meters to set the Olympic record at Paris 2024, making him Chopra’s sternest test in the Glasgow final.
