The bow sport closed out its biggest multi-sport test of the year at the Aichi-Nagoya Asian Games, watched a brand-new Olympic qualification map get drawn for Los Angeles 2028, and is mid-stride through a dense autumn calendar of Para Series and continental championships. Here's what actually happened, and what's still in flight.

India matches its record haul as Korea holds the recurve line

Aichi-Nagoya, Japan · 26 Sep–3 Oct

Archery at the 2026 Asian Games produced one of the tightest medal fights of the Games, and India came out of it with nine medals from ten events — five gold, two silver, two bronze — matching the record haul it set in Hangzhou in 2023.

The standout was 17-year-old Kumkum Mohod, who ended South Korea's grip on the women's recurve individual title by beating Oh Ye-jin in a shoot-off. It was a rare crack in Korea's recurve dominance: the Koreans still took men's individual recurve gold through Lee Woo-seok, who beat Japan's Junya Nakanishi 6-2, and the men's team title, edging India 5-1 in the final.

India's real strength showed in compound, where both the men's and women's teams won gold — the women beating China 238-234, the men beating China 238-237 in finals separated by a single arrow's margin.

  • Women's recurve individual — Kumkum Mohod (IND) def. Oh Ye-jin (KOR), shoot-off
  • Men's recurve individual — Lee Woo-seok (KOR) def. Nakanishi (JPN) 6-2
  • Men's recurve team — Korea def. India 5-1
  • Women's compound team — India def. China 238-234
  • Men's compound team — India def. China 238-237

Bommadevara becomes only the second Indian to win a Final title

Saltillo, Mexico · 12–13 September

A few weeks earlier, at the season-closing Hyundai Archery World Cup Final in Saltillo, Dhiraj Bommadevara beat Japan's Nakanishi Junya 6-5 in a men's recurve gold match that went to a shoot-off — only the second individual Final title an Indian archer has ever won. Turkey's Mete Gazoz, the Tokyo 2020 champion, took bronze after a 6-0 semi-final loss to Nakanishi, beating France's Jean-Charles Valladont 6-0 for third.

In the women's recurve final, the Czech Republic's Marie Horáčková topped a field that included Germany's Katharina Bauer and Turkey's Elif Berra Gökkır.

It capped a strong year for the USA team too, which left Saltillo with five medals across the week, continuing a season in which Casey Kaufhold and Jack Williams featured regularly on World Cup podiums.

The Olympic qualification map is finally official — and compound is in

World Archery has locked in the qualification system for Los Angeles 2028, and the headline change is structural: compound archery makes its Olympic debut through a mixed team event, taking the programme from five medal events at Paris 2024 to six. In total, 128 archers — 64 men, 64 women — will compete, with 12 compound mixed teams qualifying for that event alone.

Qualifying minimum scores have been tightened for recurve, up 10 points to 650 for men and 620 for women over the 70-metre round; compound minimums sit at 690 and 670 over 50 metres. The qualification window opens at the 2027 World Championships in Medellín, with some places decided earlier through multi-sport events like the Asian Games, and a final qualifier held just before the Games. As host nation, the USA has guaranteed recurve team places per gender plus one compound mixed team slot.

A packed October: Para Series in Santiago, Asian Para Games next

Santiago, Chile · through 18 October

While the outdoor recurve and compound tours wind down for the year, the Para calendar is in full swing. Stage four of the Hyundai World Archery Para Series is running in Santiago this week, the fourth of five stops in a season that's already passed through Bangkok, Nové Mêsto and Ahmedabad. It's immediately followed by the South American Youth and Masters Championships in Ecuador, and then the Asian Para Games in Aichi-Nagoya (19–24 October), which will fold straight into the Para Pan American Championships in Lima at the end of the month.

Restrictions on Russian archers lifted; Gold Coast lands a Para Championships

Off the field, World Archery's August newsletter confirmed it has lifted restrictions on Russian athletes, teams and officials that had been in place since 2022. The same update released the 2027 Hyundai Indoor World Series calendar under revised rules, and named the Gold Coast as host of the 2027 World Archery Para Championships.

The next marker to watch: the Asian Para Games wraps October 24, and the World Championships in Medellín in 2027 opens the first real qualification window for LA28 — where, for the first time, a compound bow on an Olympic podium won't just be a demonstration.

Compiled from publicly available news coverage and federation releases as of 17 October 2026. Some figures (dates, exact scores) varied slightly between sources during live reporting; official results should be confirmed at worldarchery.sport.

Sources