India Beat Japan 4-1 in Mohali on 5 November 2026 for a Record Sixth Asian Champions Trophy, Unbeaten in Seven Matches, With Harmanpreet Singh Reaching 250 International Goals

India’s men beat Japan 4-1 in the final of the Asian Champions Trophy at the Olympian Balbir Singh Senior International Hockey Stadium in Mohali on Thursday, 5 November 2026, for a sixth title in the tournament and a third in a row. They won all seven of their matches in the Hero Asian Champions Trophy Punjab 2026. Their captain, Harmanpreet Singh, ended as the top scorer with 10 goals and brought up his 250th senior international goal along the way, according to Hockey India.

A goal down at half-time, four up by the end

The final began at 7 pm IST in front of a full stadium, and Japan scored first. Kazumasa Matsumoto picked up the ball just outside the circle in the third minute and hit it into the top corner past goalkeeper Suraj Karkera, a goal The Hindu described as going through the smallest of gaps between the near post and the keeper’s gloves. India led the first half on possession and circle entries, with 11 entries to Japan’s six by The Indian Express’s count, but Japan’s defenders and goalkeepers held the score at 1-0 into the break. India did not win a penalty corner until the 33rd minute, and Harmanpreet’s drag-flick (a hard, low shot struck at a penalty corner) was saved by the Japanese goalkeeper.

The equaliser came in the 42nd minute from a penalty-corner variation, a rehearsed routine in place of the direct drag-flick, with Shilanand Lakra getting the final touch. Japan asked for a video review on the grounds of dangerous play, and the on-field decision stood. Dilpreet Singh put India ahead after a move through Sanjay and Hardik Singh. Jugraj Singh then converted a penalty corner with a drag-flick, and a fourth goal followed within a minute. The Hindu’s report says India scored four goals in the last 18 minutes.

Match reports differ on small points. Hockey India and The Hindu give Dilpreet’s goal as the 48th minute and ANI as the 47th. Jugraj’s goal is the 53rd minute in Hockey India’s report and the 52nd in The Hindu’s and ANI’s. For the fourth goal, Hockey India’s report credits Sukhjeet Singh with a deflection of a Vivek Sagar Prasad shot in the 54th minute, while ANI, The Hindu and The Indian Express credit Vivek Sagar Prasad. The International Hockey Federation’s goal table, read on 6 November, lists Sukhjeet on five goals and Vivek Sagar Prasad on two for the tournament, a count that fits the newspapers’ version. Japan had one more penalty corner with 12 seconds left, and Raiki Fujishima’s drag-flick went wide.

Harmanpreet told ANI after the match that the team’s aim had been to stay focused for the entire 60 minutes and that the players had kept their composure in the last quarter. He told The Indian Express that Japan had dominated the first two quarters. The head coach, Craig Fulton, told the same paper that India had not been down by three goals, so the team believed it could recover. India had also beaten Japan 4-1 in the league stage.

Seven matches, 46 goals

The tournament was a single round-robin of six teams (India, Japan, China, Malaysia, South Korea and Bangladesh) in Jalandhar from 27 October to 2 November, followed by semi-finals on 4 November and the medal matches on 5 November in Mohali, according to the International Hockey Federation (FIH). India’s results:

• 27 October: India 13, Bangladesh 0, with Mandeep Singh scoring three.
• 29 October: India 5, China 2.
• 30 October: India 4, Japan 1, with Abhishek scoring twice.
• 1 November: India 4, Malaysia 2, with Harmanpreet scoring a hat-trick.
• 2 November: India 8, South Korea 0.
• 4 November: India 8, South Korea 1 in the semi-final.
• 5 November: India 4, Japan 1 in the final.

Hockey India’s league summary has India finishing top with 15 points, 34 goals scored and five conceded. Adding the semi-final and the final gives 46 goals for and seven against over the seven matches. Japan reached the final by beating Malaysia 5-3 in a shootout after a goalless semi-final, and Malaysia took bronze with a 5-2 win over South Korea, Hockey India reports.

Harmanpreet’s 10 goals and the 250th

Harmanpreet scored two against Bangladesh, two against China, one against Japan, three against Malaysia (two from penalty corners and one from a penalty stroke, a one-on-one shot taken from a spot close to the goal) and one against Korea in the league, which made nine, then one in the semi-final. The FIH statistics table lists him on 10 goals, nine from penalty corners and one from a penalty stroke. He scored his 250th senior international goal for India in the 8-1 semi-final against Korea, a penalty-corner drag-flick in the ninth minute, and Hockey India marked it on 4 November. ANI’s report of the semi-final adds that the top scorer in Indian men’s hockey is Dhyan Chand, with 570 goals, a figure given in that report. The tuput profile of Dhyan Chand’s Olympic record shows how counts of his goals differ between sources.

Hockey India named Harmanpreet Hero of the Tournament and goalkeeper Krishan Bahadur Pathak Goalkeeper of the Tournament.

Hockey in the state that supplies the players

The International Hockey Federation described the event as international hockey returning to Punjab, and The Hindu called it Jalandhar’s first international tournament. The Olympian Surjit Singh Hockey Stadium in Jalandhar, formerly Burlton Park, hosted the league matches, and the semi-final against Korea was India’s first international match at the Mohali stadium, Hockey India says. Hockey India made entry free at both venues. More than half the Indian squad comes from Punjab, The Indian Express reported, and The Hindu reported that five members of the India team for the opening match first learned the sport on the Jalandhar ground.

Two milestones fell in the knockout games. Midfielder Hardik Singh played his 200th senior international match in the final, at the Mohali ground where he began as a trainee and was a ball boy at the 2013 Hockey India League, Hockey India says. Midfielder Nilakanta Sharma played his last match for India in the final, having announced that this would be his last tournament in the national jersey, per Hockey India’s final report.

Where the title sits in India’s run

India’s six titles came in 2011, 2016, 2018 (shared with Pakistan), 2023, 2024 and 2026, and the 2026 event was the ninth edition, Hockey India and the FIH state. India won the 2023 edition in Chennai and the 2024 edition in Hulunbuir, China, where Jugraj Singh scored the only goal of the final against the hosts. Japan have now lost three finals, in 2013, 2021 and 2026. The win follows India’s two Asian Games hockey golds in October, covered in India’s double at Aichi-Nagoya, and the back-to-back Olympic medals described in India’s bronze medals at Tokyo and Paris.

The Hindu published a column midway through the tournament on how wide the gap between India and the other teams had become, in a field where India, ranked eighth in that column, was the only Asian side in the world top 10. Fulton, quoted in the same column, said it was hard to give the event meaning when the teams had just met at the Asian Games, and described it as a building phase for some sides. As of 6 November 2026, Hockey India lists the women’s Asian Champions Trophy in Bhopal for 19 to 28 November.