India launches massive search for future Olympians: target is the 2036 Games and a significantly higher medal count
India is launching one of the most extensive sports scouting campaigns in its history, targeting children aged five to 15 who could form the core of the Olympic team in ten years. The national search is expected to cover schools, villages, cities and districts across the country, including disciplines in which India currently has few or no representatives. The plan has been publicly confirmed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Indian Olympic Association (IOA) CEO Raghuram Iyer. According to their statements, the identification process has already begun, while the Sports Authority of India (SAI) and national federations are working on a development model for the selected talents. The ambition is to create a system that would deliver a broader Olympic team and significantly more medals by 2036.
On 19 August, Iyer told the PTI news agency that the search would be conducted in all Indian districts and that the age group of five to 15 had been chosen precisely because some of those children will be at an age suitable for top-level sports competitions in 2036. He also said that SAI is actively cooperating with the national federations on the plan, while the IOA should provide support to the federations and become involved in other elements of athlete development. Iyer also confirmed that the Indian sports system is seriously discussing a target of 30 to 40 medals at the 2036 Olympic Games. This is an exceptionally high target compared with India's previous performance at the Summer Games and therefore requires a much broader base of athletes, coaches, experts and competitions than the country has had in previous Olympic cycles.
The search starts in schools, villages and cities
The announcement of nationwide scouting gained political weight on 15 August 2026, when Modi, in his Independence Day speech, described a plan to search for sporting talent among children aged five to 15. According to a statement by India's Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports, the prime minister said the search should be conducted in villages, cities and schools across the country, with the abilities of identified children assessed and the children then included in specialized training. He particularly emphasized the need to include girls, indicating an intention for the program to be broad-based and not dependent only on existing sports centres or traditionally successful states. Such an approach should reduce the risk of talent remaining undiscovered because of geographical location, a family's economic status or poorer access to quality training.
In the same speech, Modi also pointed to the problem of the breadth of India's Olympic participation. According to the official statement from the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports, he said that India currently does not participate or qualify in approximately two-thirds of the roughly 325 Olympic disciplines and competitive events he mentioned in the speech. That figure should be read as a political argument for expanding the national sports system, rather than merely as a search for additional medals in several established sports. If the plan is implemented as announced, federations would also have to search for athlete profiles for disciplines that still lack a large competitive base in India, which implies investment in expert staff, equipment, facilities, sports-science support and international experience.
Identification, however, will only be the first step. The system must distinguish between currently strong results and long-term potential and monitor children through growth, education and the transition from junior to senior sport. The International Olympic Committee's consensus on youth athlete development emphasizes a healthy, sustainable and individualized approach, while a more recent document on elite youth athletes warns that physical, physiological, psychological and social characteristics change at different rates during adolescence. The value of mass scouting will therefore also depend on repeated assessments, rather than on a single early test.
From talent identification to academies and elite training
During 2026, the Indian government already began building the institutional framework into which the new generation of athletes is expected to be integrated. In July, the cabinet approved an expanded Khelo India scheme and increased assistance to national sports federations for the period from financial year 2026/27 to 2030/31, with a total five-year amount of 36,441 crore rupees, or about 364.41 billion rupees. According to an official statement from the Indian government, the objective is to establish an uninterrupted development pathway from school playgrounds and local sporting environments to elite and Olympic sport. The system should connect National Centres of Excellence, Khelo India Centres of Excellence, SAI Training Centres, accredited academies, local Khelo India centres and the sports structures of the armed forces.
A particularly important part of the expanded scheme concerns schools. The government announced Khelo India Feeder Schools and Khelo India Utkrishta Vidyalayas, models through which sport would be more strongly integrated into regular education and children with potential could be identified earlier. At the same time, the Emerging Khelo India Athletes category is being introduced, with the aim of significantly increasing the number of young athletes included in a structured system of professional coaching, sports science and long-term mentoring. The official plan also provides for a network of talent identification committees, regional bodies, scouts, and high-performance directors and managers who are expected to monitor athlete development through different stages.
According to Press Information Bureau data published in early August, by July 2026 Khelo India had supported 349 new infrastructure projects worth a total of 3,176 crore rupees, established 1,067 Khelo India centres and supported 267 academies. At the same time, 2,745 athletes with Khelo India Athlete status were receiving support that included coaching, equipment, medical care and financial assistance. These figures show that the new talent hunt is not starting from scratch, but also that the planned coverage of children from across the country will require a significantly greater capacity for assessment, selection and monitoring than the existing system provides. The government is therefore also expanding digital infrastructure so that data on athletes, competitions, coaches, facilities and funding can be consolidated and used for long-term monitoring.
Khelo India gains significantly greater financial and strategic importance
In the 2026/27 budget, 924.35 crore rupees, or about 9.24 billion rupees, was allocated to the Khelo India program, while the total budget of the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports reached 4,479.88 crore rupees. At the same time, the Ministry of Finance announced the Khelo India Mission as a ten-year framework for transforming the sports sector. According to official documents, the mission is based on five pillars: an integrated talent development pathway from grassroots to elite level, systematic development of coaches and expert staff, the inclusion of sports science and technology, a greater number of competitions and leagues, and the development of infrastructure for training and competition.
The five-year package of 36,441 crore rupees approved at the end of July extends this approach to national sports federations as well, which are crucial because they run individual Olympic sports, organize national championships, determine technical programs and prepare national teams for international competitions. The official government strategy provides for a clearer transition from local and school competitions into the Khelo India system, and then, for the best athletes, toward the Target Olympic Podium Scheme (TOPS), intended for candidates capable of top-level international results. In an ideal scenario, a child discovered at a school or in a small town would no longer depend on chance or individual initiative to reach a quality coach and a national federation, but would instead have a defined pathway through several levels of the system.
Such a model, however, also increases the responsibility of institutions. A large number of identified children does not automatically mean a large number of future Olympians, so success will depend on the quality of coaches, continuity of funding, availability of sports medicine, nutrition, psychological support, rehabilitation and competitions at an appropriate level. The ability to retain athletes within the system during education and adolescence, when many leave competitive sport, will also be important. This is precisely why official documents increasingly refer to long-term athlete development rather than merely a one-off talent hunt.
The target of 30 to 40 medals represents a major leap
The most ambitious part of the plan is not the search for children itself, but the expectation that by 2036 they could change India's position in world Olympic sport. In his interview with PTI, Iyer spoke openly about the pressure created by the target of 30 to 40 medals. By comparison, according to the annual report of the International Olympic Committee's Olympic Solidarity, India competed at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games with 112 athletes and won six medals, one silver and five bronze. A jump to several dozen medals would therefore require not only improvements in existing medal-winning sports, but also the emergence of competitive national representatives in a range of new disciplines.
India's strategy is not focused only on 2036. The next major test will be the Los Angeles 2028 Olympic Games, followed by a series of Asian and world championships at which the progress of athletes included in Khelo India and TOPS can be measured. An additional organizational test will come in 2030, when Amdavad, or Ahmedabad, will host the centenary Commonwealth Games. Commonwealth Sport officially confirmed the Indian city as host in November 2025, and organizing this major multisport event will give India an opportunity to test facilities, logistics, competition management and athlete experience several years before 2036.
India is simultaneously pursuing a bid to host the 2036 Olympic Games
The sports plan and the bid to host the 2036 Olympic and Paralympic Games are developing in parallel, but they are two separate processes. The Indian Olympic Association sent a letter of intent to the International Olympic Committee during 2024, and in July 2025 the Indian government announced that the bid was in continuous dialogue with the IOC's Future Host Commission. That process has since been reformed after new IOC President Kirsty Coventry launched a review of the way future hosts are selected.
On 24 June 2026, the IOC announced a new timetable under which the host of the 2036 Games is expected to be selected in mid-2029. In March 2027, the IOC Executive Board is expected to select from the group of interested bids those that will move from the continuous dialogue phase into a new strategic dialogue phase. Candidates will then have to submit initial responses to the Future Host Commission questionnaire and key financial guarantees, while visits to the proposed hosts are also planned. Targeted dialogue with preferred candidates is expected to begin at the end of 2028, after which the final decision would be made at an IOC Session in 2029.
This means India has not yet been awarded the Games and the success of its bid is not guaranteed. The new model gives the IOC several years to assess financial sustainability, infrastructure, governance, guarantees and the legacy of the project, while India is competing in an international process in which other countries are also showing interest. Nevertheless, hosting the 2030 Commonwealth Games, the major increase in sports investment and the launch of a program intended to broaden the athlete base are clearly parts of a wider strategy through which New Delhi wants to demonstrate that it is preparing not only to organize a major event but also for a more competitive performance by its own athletes.
The biggest challenge will be turning mass scouting into a sustainable system
India's sheer size gives the project enormous potential, but also creates a logistical challenge. A search covering children aged five to 15 in schools and local communities must have sufficiently standardized tests for results to be comparable, but also enough flexibility to take account of different stages of physical development and the specific requirements of individual sports. After the first selection, there must be sufficient places in centres and academies, experts to monitor the children and a competition system through which their progress can be regularly assessed. Without these links, mass testing can produce a large number of names, but not a stable generation of elite athletes.
Sports-science guidelines also warn that early identification of potential should not automatically mean early and narrow specialization. Consensus documents on youth athlete development emphasize health, safety, enjoyment of sport and individual development, while specialist literature on early specialization warns of the risk of overload and dropout if children are directed toward only one discipline too early. For the Indian project, this means the quality of the program will be measured not only by the number of children who enter the system, but also by how many of them remain healthy, motivated and competitive over the next ten years.
The Indian government is attempting to reduce that risk by expanding the network of centres, developing coaches, using sports science, introducing digital monitoring and increasing the number of competitions. If these links are connected, the talent search could become one of the key projects leading into the 2036 Olympic cycle. If the connection between schools, academies, federations and elite programs remains uneven, the target of 30 to 40 medals will be significantly harder to achieve. The coming years will show whether the announced campaign can develop into a lasting transformation of Indian sport.
Sources:
- Press Information Bureau, India's Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports - official release of 15 August 2026 on the national search for talents aged five to 15 and the expansion of Olympic participation (link)
- Press Trust of India / The Economic Times - statement by IOA CEO Raghuram Iyer on the search in all districts, the role of SAI and national federations, and the target of 30 to 40 Olympic medals (link)
- Press Information Bureau / Government of India - expanded Khelo India program, five-year investment, athlete development pathway and institutional network (link)
- Press Information Bureau - data on the budget, infrastructure, Khelo India centres, academies and number of supported athletes through July 2026 (link)
- International Olympic Committee - new process for selecting the host of the 2036 Olympic Games and timetable leading to a decision in mid-2029 (link)
- Press Information Bureau - official confirmation that the IOA submitted a letter of intent and that India's bid entered dialogue with the IOC Future Host Commission (link)
- Commonwealth Sport - confirmation of Amdavad/Ahmedabad as host of the 2030 Commonwealth Games (link)
- PubMed / British Journal of Sports Medicine - IOC consensus on youth athlete development and the need for a healthy, sustainable and individualized development pathway (link)
- PubMed / British Journal of Sports Medicine - IOC consensus on elite youth athletes and the changing physical, psychological and social characteristics of adolescence (link)
- PubMed / American Orthopaedic Society for Sports Medicine - consensus on the risks of premature sports specialization among young athletes (link)