Brisbane 2032: An Opportunity to Build a Lasting Australia–India Partnership

Beyond the Games: A Shared Opportunity

When Brisbane welcomes the world for the 2032 Olympic and Paralympic Games, Australia will have an opportunity to showcase more than its sporting facilities, landscapes and organisational capabilities. It can also demonstrate the strength of its international relationships and its willingness to build partnerships that deliver benefits long after the final medals have been awarded.

For Australia and India, that opportunity is particularly significant.

The two countries have developed a broad relationship spanning trade, education, technology, tourism, culture and strategic cooperation. Their Comprehensive Strategic Partnership, established in 2020, provides an important foundation for this engagement. In July 2026, the Australian and Indian prime ministers held their third Australia–India Annual Leaders’ Summit, with outcomes covering areas including education, culture, technology, energy and sport.

India is also home to a growing number of Australians with Indian heritage. According to the Australian Government’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT), 976,000 people reported Indian heritage in the 2021 Census, including 673,000 people born in India. These communities contribute to Australian society while maintaining personal, professional and cultural connections with India.

This relationship gives both countries an opportunity to approach Brisbane 2032 as more than a sporting milestone. It can become a catalyst for deeper cooperation, stronger institutional relationships and new opportunities for people in both countries.

The challenge is to begin building those connections well before the Games arrive.

Sources: DFAT India Country Brief; DFAT: Bolstering Australia’s ties with India.

Why Brisbane 2032 Matters

The Olympic Games will take place from 23 July to 8 August 2032, followed by the Paralympic Games from 24 August to 5 September. The event will involve Brisbane and a wider network of locations across Queensland.

The significance of hosting the Games, however, extends beyond the competition period. Queensland’s legacy planning identifies opportunities across the economy, connectivity, the environment, health and wellbeing. The broader ambition is to create lasting benefits for communities throughout the state and the wider region.

For Australia, that means considering how the investment, international attention and relationships associated with the Games can generate enduring value. For India, it creates an opportunity to explore cooperation with Australian organisations that have experience in areas such as sports management, athlete development, event delivery, accessibility and sports science.

There is also a broader diplomatic dimension. Major international sporting events bring together governments, institutions, businesses, communities and sporting organisations around a shared purpose. They create opportunities for conversations and relationships that might otherwise take years to develop.

But the benefits do not happen automatically. Infrastructure must be useful beyond the event, partnerships need clear objectives, and international engagement must lead to practical outcomes rather than remain confined to announcements and ceremonial meetings.

Brisbane 2032 therefore presents an important question for both countries: what should the Australia–India relationship look like after the Games, and what can be done now to help build it?

Source: Queensland Government — About the Games.

Sport as a Bridge Between Countries

Sport is an obvious starting point because Australia and India already share a strong sporting connection. Cricket has long been an important part of their relationship, creating shared experiences for professional athletes, grassroots participants and supporters across both countries.

Yet the opportunity is much broader than cricket.

Sport can support cooperation in coaching, high-performance development, sports administration, research, athlete wellbeing, technology, disability inclusion and community participation. It can also provide opportunities for young people to meet, learn from one another and develop friendships that extend beyond the playing field.

Importantly, this is not simply a future aspiration without a policy foundation. In 2026, Australia and India established a Roadmap for Sports Collaboration, building on their 2023 Memorandum of Understanding on Cooperation in Sports.

The roadmap identifies areas for potential cooperation, including coach development, high-performance centres, sports science and technology research, major-event management, women's participation and collaboration between sporting organisations and universities. It also identifies opportunities to explore reciprocal arrangements connected with major sporting events, including Ahmedabad 2030 and Brisbane 2032.

These priorities provide a practical starting point. Relevant organisations could explore joint workshops, knowledge-sharing programmes, research collaborations and exchanges of expertise, with each initiative developed according to the partners' capabilities, resources and needs.

The roadmap does not mean that every proposed activity is funded or guaranteed to proceed. Its implementation is intended to be pragmatic, outcomes-focused and dependent on available resources and arrangements agreed by the participating organisations.

That distinction matters. Strong international partnerships are built not by assuming opportunities exist, but by bringing the right people together to determine which opportunities are viable and worthwhile.

Source: DFAT — India–Australia Roadmap for Sports Collaboration.

Beyond Competition: Business, Education and Innovation

Brisbane 2032 can also provide a platform for broader collaboration between Australian and Indian organisations.

The preparation and delivery of a major international event involve complex capabilities: logistics, infrastructure, event technology, broadcasting, hospitality, transport, accessibility, communications, sustainability and workforce development. These areas offer potential opportunities for businesses, universities and specialist organisations to exchange knowledge and explore commercial relationships.

For Australian businesses, India offers a large and evolving market, as well as opportunities to develop relationships with Indian companies and institutions. For Indian businesses, engagement with Australia can provide opportunities to explore Australian expertise, establish professional connections and investigate new markets.

However, participation in the Games' supply chains or procurement processes should never be assumed. Businesses will need to meet applicable requirements, compete where procurement processes demand it and demonstrate that their capabilities match genuine needs.

Education and research offer another important avenue. Australian and Indian universities can explore collaboration in fields relevant to major events and long-term development, including sports science, engineering, digital technology, public health, tourism, sustainability and event management.

Australia's education relationship with India is already substantial. DFAT reports that education was Australia's largest service export to India in 2025, valued at $9.4 billion, with more than 140,000 Indian students studying in Australia that year.

Brisbane 2032 could give some of these existing relationships a practical focus through research projects, professional development, institutional exchanges and the sharing of specialist knowledge. The objective should be to create value for both countries, rather than treating the Games as a one-off commercial opportunity.

Sources: DFAT India Country Brief; DFAT — A New Roadmap for Australia's Economic Engagement with India.

Culture, Community and the Human Connection

International partnerships are often discussed through the language of governments, investment and institutions. Yet their long-term strength also depends on whether ordinary people feel connected to them.

Australia's Indian-Australian communities have a distinctive role to play. They include entrepreneurs, students, professionals, artists, educators, volunteers, community leaders and families with connections across both countries. They can help organisations understand different cultural contexts, build trust and create opportunities for meaningful engagement.

Brisbane 2032 could provide opportunities to showcase this contribution through cultural programmes, community events, educational activities and exchanges that bring people together around shared interests.

Such engagement should not reduce Indian culture to food, dance or festivals, important as those expressions may be. It should recognise the diversity of India's languages, regions, traditions, contemporary creative industries and communities, alongside the varied experiences of Indian Australians.

It should also recognise Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and cultures as central to Australia's identity and to the story Australia shares with the world. International engagement around Brisbane 2032 should respect First Nations leadership, histories and cultural protocols rather than treating Indigenous culture as a decorative element of an international event.

The strongest people-to-people initiatives are those in which communities participate as contributors and partners, not simply as audiences.

For organisations working across Australia and India, this presents an opportunity to create experiences that encourage mutual understanding, develop relationships between generations and give people a genuine stake in the partnership.

Inclusion and a Legacy That Lasts

A meaningful legacy must reach beyond elite competition and major commercial interests.

The Paralympic Games place athletes with disability at the centre of global attention, while the wider Olympic movement creates opportunities to consider participation, access and the role of sport in society. Brisbane 2032 can encourage further discussion about accessible environments, inclusive programmes and the removal of barriers that prevent people from participating fully.

Australia and India could explore cooperation in areas such as accessible event design, disability sport, inclusive community programmes and the exchange of expertise among relevant organisations. The sports collaboration roadmap explicitly identifies para sport as an area for potential cooperation, including expertise in classification, coaching and performance support.

There are also opportunities to consider the role of women and girls, young people and communities with limited access to sporting or cultural opportunities. Such initiatives require careful design, appropriate partners and realistic measures of success.

The ultimate test of a major event's legacy is not simply the scale of the event itself. It is whether the capabilities, relationships and opportunities created around it continue to deliver benefits in the years that follow.

That requires a long-term perspective. Partnerships should have clear objectives, appropriate governance, realistic funding arrangements and ways to evaluate their outcomes. They should also be designed to continue when public attention moves elsewhere.

For Australia and India, this is an opportunity to make international cooperation more practical, inclusive and enduring.

Turning the Opportunity into Action: The Role of PlayForward

Brisbane 2032 provides a shared horizon, but turning that horizon into meaningful collaboration requires more than ambition. It requires connections between people and organisations, a clear understanding of opportunities and a practical way to move from conversations to action.

PlayForward Australia–India is being developed with this broader opportunity in mind.

Its vision is to help strengthen the connections between Australia and India through sport and the wider ecosystem of people, institutions, knowledge and opportunities surrounding it. Rather than treating international engagement as a series of isolated events, PlayForward aims to support a more connected approach to identifying opportunities, facilitating relevant introductions and encouraging collaboration between organisations in both countries.

Over time, this could include helping stakeholders discover relevant initiatives, explore institutional relationships, identify areas for knowledge-sharing and bring potential partners together around clearly defined objectives. Any such activity will depend on establishing credible relationships, confirming partner commitments and developing appropriate operating arrangements.

PlayForward's ambition should be measured by the quality of the connections it helps create and the practical value those connections deliver—not simply by the number of events held or organisations listed.

As Brisbane 2032 approaches, the opportunity is to help ensure that the growing Australia–India relationship translates into purposeful collaboration that can continue well beyond 2032.

The Games will have a defined opening and closing date. The relationships built around them do not need to.

The real legacy of Brisbane 2032 could be a stronger, more connected Australia–India partnership—one that creates opportunities for people, communities and institutions in both countries long after the world has left the stadiums. PlayForward hopes to contribute to that future by helping turn shared ambition into meaningful connections and practical collaboration.