The Costa Serena, a 114,500-ton cruise ship that will serve as the official athletes' village for the 2026 Aichi-Nagoya Asian Games, arrived at the Kinjo Pier of Nagoya Port on the 15th. It is the first time a cruise ship has been used to house thousands of athletes competing in multiple sports at an international multi-sport event.
The Costa Serena is an Italian-flagged passenger ship measuring 290.2 meters in length. The Games organizing committee chartered the vessel for 4.48 billion yen (about 39 billion won). During the 22 days it is berthed at Nagoya Port, it will house about 4,000 athletes from participating countries in roughly 1,500 cabins, including South Korean athletes in archery and table tennis.
The ship will normally remain docked at Nagoya Port but will move to open waters, where it is subject to less motion, if a typhoon or other severe weather approaches. The Costa Serena is equipped with a variety of restaurants, a theater and a fitness center.
To cut the cost of building a new athletes' village, the organizing committee took the unconventional approach of splitting delegations among downtown hotels (about 9,000 people), the cruise ship (about 4,000) and prefabricated container units (about 2,000).
Cruise ships have previously served as athlete accommodations only in exceptional cases, such as when the U.S. basketball team arranged its own vessel for the Olympics, or for a single sport held far from the main site, as with surfing at the 2024 Paris Olympics in Tahiti, French Polynesia.
Toyotomi Hideyoshi Appears at Arrival Ceremony
Meanwhile, the arrival of the cruise ship village, one of the Games' most ambitious plans, has brought a range of disputes over the event's operation to the surface. First, criticism emerged that it was a diplomatic breach of etiquette to feature Toyotomi Hideyoshi, the instigator of the Japanese invasions of Korea in the late 16th century, at the ceremony marking the ship's berthing.
The stage, attended by Aichi Gov. Hideaki Omura, who chairs the organizing committee, featured Toyotomi and the other two of Nagoya's "three heroes" from Japan's Warring States period. Critics said that even if the figures are symbols of local culture, their appearance was inappropriate at an event for the official accommodations of delegations from Asian countries including South Korea, which suffered from those invasions. The reaction contrasts with the 2021 Tokyo Olympics, when Japanese media and far-right groups strongly protested after the South Korean delegation hung a banner quoting Adm. Yi Sun-sin.
Prefabricated Container Housing Called Substandard
Compounding the problem, a shortage of athlete accommodations has also emerged. With 17,000 participants, more than initially expected, the container units set up on Nagoya Bay fell far short of the beds needed. South Korean delegations in five sports, including men's basketball and jiu-jitsu, have been assigned to the substandard prefabricated containers.
According to the Korean Sport & Olympic Committee, representatives of the 45 National Olympic Committees belonging to the Olympic Council of Asia raised concerted complaints about the accommodations at a recent meeting of delegation chiefs. As criticism mounted, the organizing committee acknowledged the shortage of beds in the container housing and belatedly began seeking additional rooms at downtown hotels.
