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The Commonwealth Games Federation (CGF) announced Victoria in Australia to host the 2026 edition. This will be the first edition to be held in multiple cities including Melbourne, Geelong, Bendigo, Ballarat, and Gippsland. The Organizing Committee has decided to keep sixteen sports on the provisional list for the 2026 Commonwealth Games. The list includes water sports (swimming, para-swimming, diving), athletics and para-athletics, badminton, boxing, beach volleyball, T20 cricket, cycling, gymnastics, hockey, lawn bowls, and para-lawn bowls, netball, rugby sevens, squash, and table tennis and, para-table tennis, triathlon, weightlifting, and powerlifting but dropped shooting, archery, and wrestling off the list. The federation also encouraged that aquatics and athletics could be compulsory sports in the coming years to attract crowds. The history of Indian wrestlers and archers is very bright in more than a few tournaments including the Commonwealth (2010) they received a total of 12 medals including five gold in wrestling and seven gold in archery.
Bajrang Punia, a multiple World Championships medalist and Olympic bronze medalist, said Indians are being targeted. "I need to know on what basis this choice was made because wrestling is one of the oldest sports and almost all countries practice our sport”.
“Also, it seems to me that the Indians are targeted. First, they got removed shooting and now wrestling. This decision is not always the most practical against athletes from other countries, it is really against India because we are doing well in these sports,” he added. Ronjan Sodhi, Shotgun shooter, and Khel Ratna award winner said: "It can be very unfortunate that the two sports in which India has dominated are excluded from the Commonwealth Games."
“The European countries are nevertheless considered most nations that are inferior to them. They cannot understand that a country like ours can improve and that is why they might try to suppress these sports. How else can you explain why they took shooting excluded in the Birmingham 2022 games? Do you actually believe that a rich country like Britain does not have enough money to build a range," he said. The Indian sports secretaries and officials also expressed their disappointment with this decision.