The Badminton Asia Championships is a tournament that began in 1962. It has been held annually since 1991 and has switched between an individual and team event in its earlier years. Since 1994, the event is played as an individual event. It is organized by the Badminton Asia Confederation.
The tournament has been hosted in multiple cities of Southeast Asia. It is contested to crown the best player or players of Asia across all five disciplines: men’s singles, women’s singles, men’s doubles, women’s doubles, and mixed doubles. The tournament features a single elimination draw of 32 pairs or players, eight of whom are seeded.
The draw also has a few positions reserved for qualifiers. The qualifying draws are regional competitions played between players that were not ranked enough to make the main draw. These events can be played in either a round-robin or knockout format.
The Badminton World Federation classifies this event under the BWF World Tour Super 1000 events. As per this categorisation, the winner of each discipline receives 12,000 ranking points, whereas the runner-up gets 10,200 points. The semi-finalists and quarterfinalist get 8400 and 6600 points each. The total prize pool of the competition is $450,000 as of 2024, whereas the winners in the singles and doubles discipline get $31,500 and $33,300 respectively.
The most successful men’s singles player at the event is Lin Dan with four gold medals, whereas the most trumphant women’s singles gold medalist is Ye Zhaoying with five gold medals. Ha Tae-Kwon has had the most podium finishes in men’s doubles, having bagged the gold thrice. The most successful women’s doubles team is that of Gu Fei and Gu Jun who have the gold four times at the event. In the mixed doubles category, Kim Dong-Moon and Ra Kyung-Min have won the gold thrice.
China has produced the most medal winners, with 79 of its 257 winners winning the gold. The next best nations are Indonesia and South Korea with 142 and 101 medals.
