The Most Popular Sports in Mongolia
The Most Popular Sports in Mongolia: What Sports Do Mongolians Play, Watch and Win?
Mongolia’s sports culture has two strong currents running side by side. One is ancient and tied to nomadic life: wrestling, horse racing and archery, celebrated nationwide during Naadam every July.
The other is modern and youth-led: football, 3x3 basketball, esports and breaking, which have grown fast through schools, leagues and international competitions.
Horse racing is popular with Mongolians of all ages. Image credits: Ayan Travel Mongolia (Pinterest)
We take a look at the most popular sports in Mongolia, using evidence to balance tradition, participation signals and results on some of the world’s biggest stages.
1. Mongolian Wrestling (Bökh)
Wrestling sits at the centre of Mongolia’s biggest national festival, Naadam. UNESCO describes Naadam as a nationwide celebration focused on three traditional games: wrestling, horse racing and archery. Wrestling is one of the festival’s key pillars.
A key reason why wrestling stays so prestigious is its scale and visibility at the National Naadam tournament. It features 512 wrestlers in a single-elimination format. In a country where Naadam is a shared annual moment across the nation, that kind of headline tournament keeps wrestling culturally dominant.
2. Horse Racing
Horse culture is a national identity marker in Mongolia - and the numbers prove it. In a UN-related report cited by AP, Mongolia was described as having about 3.4 million horses vs about 3.3 million people, illustrating just how common horses remain in everyday life.
As well as the sheer number of horses in Mongolia, youth participation is a driving factor for horse racing’s popularity in the country. ABC News reports that during Naadam season, more than 10,000 children take part in 395 races across Mongolia. Distances range from roughly 10km to 30km, depending on the horse’s age class.
That combination of tradition, scale and youth involvement shows that horse racing isn’t just a historic sport - it’s a very popular one, too.
3. Archery
Archery completes Naadam’s “three games”, and UNESCO includes it in the festival’s core. Archery has clearly formalised rules, which help keep it alive as a sport, not just a ceremony.
A Mongolia-focused tourism information site explains the standard competition format. Archery competitions involve teams of five to seven archers and a fixed target set, with shooting distances of 75m for men and 60m for women.
When a national archery association structure was first formed in the mid-20th century, 60 archers were part of its early institutional growth. This shows that the sport has had organised roots in Mongolia for decades.
Looking for more? Read our article about the greatest archers in mythology!
4. Football (Soccer)
Football’s popularity looks very different from the three Naadam sports: it shows up through leagues, development projects and school participation.
Mongolia launched a 10-team semi-professional league in 2016, an important marker of football’s popularity, as a stable league structure tends to pull in fans, sponsors and youth pipelines.
Read more on our football blog!
On the participation side, a recent interview with a Mongolian Football Federation official described a nationwide push for football in schools. This reached 400 schools and 30,000 players in a year, with an aim to expand further.
Despite Mongolia’s growing interest in the sport, however, there’s currently only one football stadium in the country.
5. Judo
In Mongolia, combat sports don’t just exist; they win. That matters for popularity because medals drive funding, enrollment and media attention.
Olympics.com notes that Mongolia has won two gold, 10 silver and 14 bronze Olympic medals across judo, boxing, shooting and wrestling.
At the continental level, the Olympic Council of Asia (OCA) profile for Mongolia says that more than half of the country’s Asian Games medals come from freestyle wrestling and judo combined. With that kind of repeat success, judo stays highly visible and widely practised across Mongolia.
6. Boxing
Boxing is a long-running medal contributor for Mongolia. This helps it stay popular beyond a small hardcore audience. As well as Mongolia’s Olympic success, boxing has shown up in recent multi-sport events.
Mongolia won a gold medal in boxing at the 2023 Asian Games (men’s 57-63.5 kg category), a headline result that sparked new interest in the sport at home.
When a sport keeps producing top-tier results over decades, it typically remains visible in gyms, schools and TV coverage.
7. 3x3 Basketball
3x3 basketball has become a popular “new wave” sport in Mongolia, especially among young people. A clear signal of this popularity is the country’s performance at a major Asian multi-sport event.
According to AP, Mongolia’s 3x3 teams won a silver (women) and a bronze (men) at the 2023 Asian Games. The men’s game was decided at a nail-biting 21-20.
Medals in a fast, watchable format like 3x3 often translate quickly into local pickup play, leagues and school interest.
8. Esports and Breaking
Mongolia’s sports identity is expanding beyond “the three games”. AP reports that Mongolia earned a silver medal in esports (Dota 2), and describes a growing youth interest in breaking. This dance sport, with its roots in Mongolia’s post-1990 cultural opening, now appears in major competition pathways.
Even if participation numbers are harder to standardise across esports and dance-based sports, medals and national team representation are strong markers that these are no longer just fringe activities.
9. Olympic-Style Wrestling (Freestyle and Greco-Roman)
Separate from Bökh (traditional Mongolian wrestling), Mongolia is also a serious force in Olympic-style wrestling, especially freestyle.
The OCA explicitly calls wrestling the most popular sport in Mongolia, noting that Mongolian wrestlers won the country’s first four Olympic medals at Mexico 1968. The sport later collected eight Olympic medals in total (at the time of the report).
Mongolia’s most successful sports in the Asian Games are freestyle wrestling and judo, with more than half of the country’s Asian Games medals coming from those two sports combined.
The Most Popular Sports in Mongolia - Key Takeaways
Mongolia’s most popular sports are rooted in history and tradition, with nationwide support for the Naadam trio: wrestling, horse racing and archery. However, modern sports like esports, football and 3x3 basketball are becoming more and more popular with Mongolians of all ages.
One thing is clear: sports play a huge role in Mongolia’s national and cultural identity.
What sports do you associate with Mongolia? Have you ever watched or participated in these sports? Tell us in the comments!
