Who governs esports in Asia's Olympic system: the OCA and the AESF

Esports medal events are being played in Japan this week, and their medals are not awarded by a publisher or a tournament organizer. The 20th Asian Games, held in Aichi and Nagoya from September 19 to October 4, 2026, carry eleven esports titles on their program, and each medal counts for a country in the same table as swimming or judo. Behind that table stands a chain of bodies that most fans never see: an Olympic council that owns the program, a regional federation that groups the national esports bodies, the National Olympic Committees that recognize them, and a technology partner that runs the competition system.

The question of who decides has become more pressing in the last two weeks. On September 19, the Olympic Council of Asia signed a contract with Kuwait for a new event built around esports, and on September 28 it said publicly that esports would continue within the Asian Games, while a board decision of 2024 records a vote to take it out after this edition.

This guide explains how each of these bodies is organized, what it decides, how a game reaches the Asian Games program, how the regional federation chooses its leaders and admits its members, and what is settled and what remains open for the events that follow Aichi-Nagoya.

Olympic Council of Asia release of February 22, 2025; Asian Electronic Sports Federation release of April 7, 2025.

Four layers between a game and a medal

An esports title at the Asian Games passes through several hands before a player stands on a podium, and each hand has its own source of authority.

The first is the Olympic Council of Asia, known as the OCA. It groups the National Olympic Committees of Asia, owns the Asian Games and its other multi-sport events, and decides through its Executive Board which sports and which titles are played.

The second is the Asian Electronic Sports Federation, the AESF. It is a federation of national esports associations, founded in 2017, which works alongside the council and serves as a technical body at multi-sport events in the region.

The third layer is national. Each country's esports association joins the AESF, and its standing there depends on whether its own National Olympic Committee recognizes it. The National Olympic Committees, in turn, are the members of the council and the first recipients of its decisions on the program.

The fourth is a company. Tencent Esports has been the council's Official Esports Technology Partner since a memorandum signed in October 2025, and supplies the system on which the competitions are run.

Publishers appear in this chain only through their games. The council's list of titles names the games, and in some cases a version prepared for the Games, but the publishers themselves are not parties to the decisions this guide describes.

The Olympic Council of Asia

The council is the continental association of National Olympic Committees. Its members meet in a General Assembly, and a smaller Executive Board takes decisions between assemblies.

The board's rulings are published meeting by meeting, in a document of decisions. The decisions of its 90th meeting, held virtually on November 26, 2024, show the range of its business: it approved the reports of six committees, a code of ethics presented by its Ethics Committee and amendments to the constitution and by-laws presented by its Legal Committee, and it approved a new board member for South Asia. The same document carries the council's decisions on esports and on an agreement with the government of Kuwait, described later in this guide.

Day-to-day communication runs through the council's Director General, Husain Al Musallam, who signed that document with the vice president who chaired the meeting, Timothy Fok, and who announces the board's decisions to the member committees in circulars.

How a title reaches the Asian Games program

The esports program of Aichi-Nagoya was fixed nineteen months before the Games, in one meeting. On Saturday, February 22, 2025, an emergency meeting of the council's Executive Board, held online, unanimously approved eleven esports titles for the 20th Asian Games, the council announced the same day from Kuwait City.

The council's Director General announced the decision in a circular dated February 22. It went to the member National Olympic Committees, to the members of the Executive Board, to the chairs of the council's standing committees and to the vice president in charge of the Games' organizing committee. The national committees come first on that list: the program is addressed to them.

The decision did more than name games. It set how some of them would be played. Fighting games were grouped into one team event, Competitive Martial Arts, which awards a single medal across three series: Street Fighter, Tekken and King of Fighters. Two titles were approved in versions prepared for the Games, PUBG Mobile and Identity V, each marked Asian Games Version in the council's list.

The council's announcement gives the decision and the list, and nothing on how the titles were chosen: it names no criteria, no consultation with publishers and no qualification system.

Names can also differ between languages. The Chinese state news agency Xinhua, reporting from Nagoya on September 28, 2026, listed the eleven events under the titles used in Chinese editions, such as Game for Peace Asian Games Edition for the mobile shooter. The council's own English list is the reference for the program.

From demonstration event to medal sport

The council's involvement with esports is older than its medals. Sheep Esports recalls that esports was part of the Asian Indoor Games, a smaller event of the council, from 2007 to 2017.

At the Asian Games themselves, the council lists three stages. Esports was introduced at the 18th Asian Games in Jakarta and Palembang in 2018 as a demonstration sport, meaning an event shown at the Games without counting in the medal table. It became a full medal sport, with seven titles, at the Hangzhou Asian Games, held in 2023. Aichi-Nagoya raises the count to eleven.

The council's younger events have followed. The AESF said in March 2025 that esports would be on the program of the 2025 Asian Youth Games in Bahrain with four titles, and Sheep Esports wrote in September 2026 that esports has been part of that event since the Bahrain edition.

The Asian Electronic Sports Federation

The AESF is the body that speaks for the national esports associations of the region. In a release dated March 13, 2025, it said it was founded in 2017 with five founding members.

It does not set the Asian Games program: that belongs to the council's board. Its role at the Games is technical. In April 2025 the federation listed the multi-sport events at which it has served as Technical Delegate: the Asian Games, the SEA Games, the Gulf Games, the East Asian Youth Games and the Asian Youth Games.

Its relations with the council are close and visible. The council's deputy director general, Vinod Tiwari, attended both of the federation's general assemblies of 2025. At the first, on March 12, 2025, he reaffirmed the council's commitment to esports and praised the federation's work on governance and transparency, the federation reported. The federation's president at the time, Kenneth Fok, credited the council with a central role in bringing esports into the Asian Games, from Jakarta in 2018 to Hangzhou.

The federation describes itself in stronger terms. At its electoral assembly of April 2025, Fok said the AESF had laid the foundation of esports governance in Asia as the continent's only governing body, according to the federation's own release. That is the federation's claim about itself; none of the council's releases cited in this guide describes it in those words.

The AESF constitution and its members

The federation gave itself a new constitution in 2025, and the text set the rules for everything that followed that year.

Its General Assembly met on March 12, 2025, chaired by Fok. The federation counted 73 participants, 51 of them representing 34 member associations. The draft had drawn feedback and recommendations from ten member associations, nine full members and one provisional member, and the assembly ratified the constitution.

The federation's release does not detail what the constitution changed. It says what it made possible: an Electoral General Assembly to choose the federation's leaders, with nominations open from March 13 to 19, 2025 and a campaign from March 24. The same meeting heard the federation's director general, Sebastian Lau, present its activity report for 2017 to 2024.

The federation admits national associations in three classes, and the first class is tied to the Olympic system.

A full member is an association recognized by its National Olympic Committee. That recognition is what links an esports association to the committee that will enter athletes at the Asian Games. The federation's releases also count development members and provisional members, without describing in those releases what each class requires.

The membership moved between the two assemblies of 2025. The federation counted 36 associations in March and 38 in April, and the number recognized by their National Olympic Committees rose from 29 to 30. In April, the 30 full members were the ones who voted.

How the federation chose its leaders

The Electoral General Assembly met virtually on April 6, 2025. Representatives of 38 member associations attended, with the council's deputy director general, and the 30 full members voted.

The vote filled three levels. Santi Lothong of Thailand, president of the Thailand Esports Federation and the only eligible candidate for the presidency, was elected with 22 votes, a simple majority. Five vice presidents were elected, one for each zone of Asia: Central Asia (Uzbekistan), East Asia (Republic of Korea), South Asia (India), Southeast Asia (Vietnam) and West Asia (Syria). Five further members joined the Executive Board: one each from Indonesia, the Philippines, Saudi Arabia, Turkmenistan and Hong Kong, China. The federation presents the new board as serving from 2025 to 2029.

The new board met for the first time in Bangkok on June 30, 2025, the council reported two days later. It began work on a vision, a mission and a strategic roadmap for 2025 to 2029, and prepared the federation's part in the Asian Youth Games 2025 in Bahrain, the SEA Games 2025 in Thailand and the Asian Games 2026 in Japan. Lothong appointed Steve Tae Hyung Kim, previously the federation's chief operating officer, as director general, and the board named Fok, who had led the federation for eight years, honorary president. In the council's account, the federation listed the council among the partners it should work more closely with, beside governments, National Olympic Committees, national federations and game publishers.

The technology partner

The competitions themselves run on a system supplied by a company. Tencent announced on January 22, 2026 a ten-year strategic partnership with the council, formalized by a memorandum of understanding signed in October 2025 at the 101st meeting of the council's Executive Board, in Bahrain.

Under it, Tencent Esports became the council's Official Esports Technology Partner and launched the Tencent Esports Competition System, which the company says will provide technical support for future Asian Games and other major Asian multi-sport events. Yati Zhang, a director of Tencent Esports, was appointed the council's Esports Manager, with a brief to help build the Asian esports event system.

Sheep Esports reported on September 27, 2026 that the system covers all eleven medal events at Aichi-Nagoya, handling equipment checks, live monitoring and post-match review, and that no involvement in the new Kuwait event had been confirmed.

The arrangement places a company inside the council's structure as a partner and a manager, not as a decision-maker: the program is still approved by the Executive Board.

The 2024 board decision and the 2026 statement

The future of esports at the Asian Games rests on two texts of the council that do not read the same way.

The first is the record of the Executive Board's 90th meeting, held virtually on November 26, 2024. On a proposal of the council's Esports, Martial Arts and Mind Sports Committee, the board approved removing esports from the Asian Games program after the Aichi-Nagoya Games and holding a separate Asian Esports and Mind Games. It also approved forming a separate Asian Mind Sports Federation with its own games. In the same meeting, it approved the signing of an agreement between the council and the government of Kuwait.

The idea had been built over the year. Sheep Esports reports that the council's committee for esports and martial arts discussed new competitions in April 2024, after the attention esports drew in Hangzhou, and that on June 30, 2024 the council announced an Asian Games Esports Festival, first planned for 2025 and then every two years.

The second text is a statement of Monday, September 28, 2026, issued in Chinese and reported by Xinhua and Sheep Esports. In it, the council said it had made no decision, and issued no announcement, on esports leaving the Asian Games, that esports would continue within the Games, and that the new event in Kuwait would not lower the standing of esports inside them. Al Musallam said the popularity of esports in Asia had been a key factor in the council's arrangements, and that the council would promote esports at its other events.

The governance point is the same in both texts: the place of a sport at the Asian Games is a decision of the council's own bodies. A new decision of the Executive Board, or a published program for the next Games, is the text that would settle it.

A separate games for esports and mind sports

The new event already has a host. On September 19, 2026, the day the Aichi-Nagoya Games opened, the council signed a host city contract with Kuwait for the first Asian Esports and Mind Sports Games, to be held in 2027. A host city contract is the document by which the owner of a multi-sport event hands its organization to a host and sets what each side owes the other.

The council expects about 4,000 athletes. It has not published dates within 2027 or a list of disciplines, and says the program will be announced in due course. Sheep Esports names chess, go, checkers and bridge as the kind of mind sports concerned.

A second edition is in discussion. The council says it is talking with the Philippines about hosting in 2029, with a decision expected at its General Assembly in Doha in 2027. The council's president, Sheikh Joaan bin Hamad Al-Thani, presents the event as part of his vision for the council, under the motto Together for Asia.

What is settled and what is open

On October 1, 2026, with the Aichi-Nagoya Games running until October 4, several points are fixed by the council's own documents. Esports is a medal sport at these Games, with eleven titles. Kuwait holds a contract for a separate event in 2027. The AESF has a constitution ratified in March 2025, a board elected for 2025 to 2029 and a membership whose full members are those recognized by their National Olympic Committees. Tencent is the council's technology partner for ten years.

Others are open. The next Asian Games after Aichi-Nagoya are in Doha in 2030, and Sheep Esports wrote on September 28 that the council's plans for esports there remain unclear. The program of the Kuwait games, its titles and its dates have not been published, nor has the role of the AESF or of Tencent in it.

For a national esports association, the links in the chain are the ones described above: the title must be on the council's program, approved by its Executive Board; full membership of the AESF depends on recognition by the country's National Olympic Committee; and that committee is the council's member. How each country turns this into a squad is set by its own bodies, and differs from one country to the next.

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