Tanvi Patri, a 15-year-old from Odisha, will play for gold in the women’s singles badminton final at the Youth Olympic Games in Dakar, Senegal, on Thursday, 5 November, at around 11pm IST. She is the first Indian woman to reach a Youth Olympic badminton final, and her run has already guaranteed India’s first women’s singles badminton medal at the Games.
She is one of only 17 athletes in India’s team, the country’s smallest ever at a Youth Olympics. That small team already has medals in judo, swimming and wushu. This page tracks every Indian result, the medal tally and how Dakar compares with India’s earlier Youth Olympics. We update it as results come in.
Youth Olympics 2026: key facts
| Host | Dakar, Senegal, the first Olympic event held in Africa |
| Dates | 31 October to 13 November 2026 |
| India’s team | 17 athletes (11 women, 6 men) in 11 sports |
| Where to watch in India | Olympics.com, the Olympics app and the Olympics YouTube channel. No Indian TV channel is showing the Games live |
Tanvi Patri’s road to the final
Final: Tanvi Patri vs Zhang Yixin (China), Thursday, 5 November, around 11pm IST. Result to follow.
Tanvi beat Japan’s second seed, Yuzuno Watanabe, 21-14, 11-21, 21-19 in a 54-minute semi-final. She lost the second game heavily but held her nerve in a close decider. Earlier she beat Thailand’s Kakanik Kungkaew to become the first Indian woman to reach the semi-finals, after opening with a 21-8, 21-12 win over Mexico’s Sara Delgado.
The final is a big step up. Zhang Yixin is the reigning world junior champion, and she beat Tanvi 21-18, 21-16 in the quarter-finals of this year’s Asia Junior Championships, the only time they have met.
India’s best results in Youth Olympic badminton
| Games | Player | Result |
|---|---|---|
| 2010 Singapore | HS Prannoy | Boys’ singles silver |
| 2014 Nanjing | Aditya Joshi | Boys’ singles semi-finalist |
| 2018 Buenos Aires | Lakshya Sen | Finalist |
| 2026 Dakar | Tanvi Patri | Girls’ singles finalist, final on 5 November |
Both Prannoy and Lakshya Sen went on to become senior internationals. A gold for Tanvi would be India’s first in Youth Olympic singles badminton.
India’s medal tally at Dakar 2026
| Medal | Athlete | Sport and event |
|---|---|---|
| Silver | Khushbu Rajakbhai Darjada | Judo, women’s 63kg |
| Bronze | Dhinidhi Desinghu | Swimming, women’s 100m freestyle (56.27 seconds) |
| Bronze | Rajkumari Lanchenbi Chanu | Wushu, women’s changquan combined |
| Silver or gold | Tanvi Patri | Badminton, women’s singles (final on 5 November) |
Khushbu Darjada, 15, from Gujarat, reached the 63kg final and lost to Germany’s Jolina Reinhold, the cadet world champion, by ippon. She is only the second Indian judoka to win a Youth Olympic medal, after Thangjam Tababi Devi’s silver in 2018.
Dhinidhi Desinghu, 16, won bronze in the 100m freestyle in 56.27 seconds after qualifying third from the heats. She is the first Indian swimmer to win a Youth Olympic medal.
Rajkumari Lanchenbi Chanu of Manipur qualified second for the changquan final and won bronze on 3 November with a combined score of 18.039, as reported by The Sunday Guardian. Wushu is a medal sport at the Youth Olympics for the first time in Dakar, so she is India’s first Youth Olympic wushu medallist.
India’s full team at the Youth Olympics 2026
| Sport | Athlete | Event |
|---|---|---|
| Archery | Gatha Anandrao Khadake | Women’s individual |
| Athletics | Shourya Ambure | Women’s 100m hurdles |
| Badminton | Tanvi Patri | Women’s singles |
| Badminton | Dev Ruparelia | Men’s singles |
| Boxing | Gunjan | Women’s 48kg |
| Boxing | Ambekar Meetei Lairenlakpam | Men’s 50kg |
| Equestrian | Sresht Raju Mantena | Individual jumping |
| Judo | Khushbu Rajakbhai Darjada | Women’s 63kg |
| Sailing | Priyanshi Patil | Women’s windsurfing |
| Swimming | Dhinidhi Desinghu | Women’s 100m and 200m freestyle, 200m individual medley |
| Swimming | Tirthank Pegu | Men’s 100m and 200m butterfly |
| Table tennis | Syndrela Das | Women’s singles |
| Beach wrestling | Antra | Women’s 65kg |
| Beach wrestling | Taniya | Women’s 75kg |
| Beach wrestling | Anuj | Men’s 70kg |
| Beach wrestling | Deepanshu Khokhar | Men’s 80kg |
| Wushu | Rajkumari Lanchenbi Chanu | Women’s changquan combined |
Why India sent only 17 athletes
The Dakar programme is much smaller than earlier Youth Olympics. The IOC kept 25 sports in competition and moved 10 others to a non-medal engagement programme, and there are about 2,700 athlete places, compared with roughly 4,000 athletes in Buenos Aires in 2018. Shooting, weightlifting and hockey, which brought India seven of its 13 medals in 2018, are not on the programme at all.
How Dakar compares with India’s earlier Youth Olympics
We compared India’s team size and medals at every Summer Youth Olympics. Medals per athlete is a simple KhelGossip measure of how much each team delivered for its size.
| Games | Athletes | Medals | Gold | Medals per athlete |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2010 Singapore | 32 | 8 | 0 | 0.25 |
| 2014 Nanjing | 32 | 2 | 0 | 0.06 |
| 2018 Buenos Aires | 46 | 13 | 3 | 0.28 |
| 2026 Dakar (so far) | 17 | 4 | Final on 5 Nov | 0.24 |
The 2026 figure counts Tanvi’s guaranteed medal. With a week of the Games still to go, the smallest team India has ever sent is already close to the rate of its most successful one.
KhelGossip’s view: a small team with a big message
India’s medals in Dakar have come from judo, swimming, wushu and badminton, not from shooting, weightlifting or hockey, the sports that carried India in 2018. That is the real story. A 16-year-old swimmer and a 15-year-old judoka have won medals in sports where India rarely makes a final at any level.
In our view, the federations behind these athletes deserve as much attention as the medals. Swimming and judo rarely produce Indian medallists at senior Asian level, and a Youth Olympic podium is the clearest sign yet that their junior pathways are working. The test is whether these athletes are still competing, and improving, at the 2030 Asian Games and the 2032 Olympics.
Tanvi’s final is the headline tonight, but whatever the result, India’s best Youth Olympics story may be how much this small team has achieved.
Updated 5 November 2026, before the badminton final. Medals per athlete is a KhelGossip calculation. Main sources: Olympics.com, with reports from ANI.
