By Zoey SUN
Hong Kong's first five-year plan and the latest Policy Address were unveiled on Sept. 16, offering, for the first time, a more comprehensive medium- and long-term roadmap for where the city is headed—and how that direction can be translated into concrete policies. One particularly revealing lens is Hong Kong's ambition to become the "Events Capital of Asia."
In recent years, Hong Kong has steadily built a year-round calendar of major events. The city welcomed 49.9 million visitors in 2025, up 12 percent year on year, while visitor-related spending is expected to reach HK$238.1 billion this year. Since the Kai Tak Sports Park opened, it has hosted more than 170 international and local sports, cultural and entertainment events, drawing more than 2.6 million spectators. In 2025, the Kai Tak Stadium ranked first in Asia in both ticket sales and box-office revenue.
These figures show that Hong Kong has the infrastructure, connectivity and market appeal to host major international events. But having the capacity to stage events is not the same as building an events economy.
A major sporting event generates far more than ticket sales. It can drive spending on hotels, restaurants, retail, transport and sponsorship, while creating demand for professional services ranging from event planning and venue management to broadcasting and media production. More importantly, when athletes, spectators, businesses and media from around the world converge in Hong Kong, an event becomes more than a show. It becomes a platform for international exchange.
That is where the next test lies. Hong Kong should not measure its success simply by how many events it can host, but by how much lasting value each event can generate—economically, industrially and internationally.
This shift is already reflected in the first five-year plan. Rather than treating mega-events simply as a tourism tool, the plan places them within a broader framework of sports industrialization and closer integration among sports, culture and tourism. It calls for the development of sports through "elite development, mega-events, professionalization and industrialization", making full use of Kai Tak Sports Park and the "M" Mark system to attract more international sporting events across a wider range of disciplines and at a higher level.
It also supports the establishment of Asian and international sports federations in Hong Kong and seeks to use "sports plus mega-events" to drive the development of related industries and professional venue services.
More significantly, the plan sets measurable targets. Cumulative sports development resources are to increase by 20 percent over the next five years, while the value added of sports and related activities is targeted to rise by 10 percent.
That signals an important change in ambition: from simply being able to host major events to ensuring that those events leave something behind.
The objective is not merely to bring spectators to Hong Kong for a tournament, but to use repeated international events to build expertise in event operations, venue management, sports marketing and other professional services. In other words, the event itself should be temporary, but the capabilities developed around it should endure.
The Policy Address takes this thinking a step further. The government proposes to structure the year around an "International Arts Season", a "Chinese Arts Season" and a "Festive Mega Events Season", while regularizing funding for flagship events so that the Hong Kong Tourism Board can plan more sustained and forward-looking promotion.
It is also introducing a "ticket stub economy", with event schedules to be announced earlier and the Tourism Board serving as a one-stop bridge between event organizers and the retail, catering and tourism sectors. The aim is to channel event-driven crowds beyond the venue and into local communities.
The significance of this approach is that it moves Hong Kong from a collection of individual events toward a year-round events strategy. A mature events economy should not mean that a city becomes crowded for one weekend and quiet again after the final whistle. It should give airlines, hotels, restaurants, retailers and tourism operators enough visibility to plan ahead, allowing the economic impact of an event to extend beyond a few days and beyond a single venue.
The five-year plan provides the longer-term direction of industrialization and greater integration among sports, culture and tourism, while the Policy Address begins to put in place the mechanisms for annual implementation and market coordination. Together, they point towards a more coherent policy framework for turning events into an industry.
But infrastructure and government support alone will not create that industry. The harder question is whether Hong Kong's local businesses and professionals can become active participants in the event value chain.
An international sporting event involves a wide range of capabilities, from event planning and venue operations to ticketing systems, sports marketing, broadcasting, legal services and insurance. If more of these capabilities can be developed locally, Hong Kong will gain more than a temporary influx of visitors. It will build a pool of expertise that can serve the next event—and potentially the next market.
This is where the idea of industrial upgrading becomes important. Public support for major events could increasingly be linked to local business participation, talent development and the use of Hong Kong-based professional services. The objective would not be to localize every part of an international event, but to ensure that local companies and professionals have opportunities to participate in its planning, production, marketing, broadcasting and other supporting functions.
That would turn public support for an event into an investment in capabilities that can be reused and, eventually, exported.
There is another dimension that should not be overlooked: international communication.
Hong Kong's advantage is not simply that it can bring people in. It is that it can bring together people, capital and information in a city with an international aviation network, sophisticated financial and professional services, a mature convention and hotel sector, and a distinctive position at the intersection of China and the world.
A major international event can therefore serve as a gateway through which sports organizations, cultural institutions, businesses and overseas media engage with Hong Kong. But its communication value should not be measured only by the number of international visitors or media reports it generates. The more meaningful question is what those visitors, athletes, business leaders and journalists take away from Hong Kong—and whether those encounters lead to longer-term cooperation.
Over the next five years, Hong Kong has an opportunity to connect individual mega-events into a broader ecosystem: to turn repeated international encounters into lasting professional capabilities, to convert event-driven footfall into longer-term consumption and business opportunities, and to turn international exposure into deeper connections with global markets.
The goal, ultimately, should not be to become a city that simply hosts more events. It should be to become a city in which every major event leaves behind something that can be built upon—a stronger industry, more experienced professionals, new business connections, greater international visibility, or a wider network of cooperation.
That is the real test of Hong Kong's "Events Capital of Asia" ambition: how much lasting competitiveness each event can help build, and how far Hong Kong's story can travel from the shores of Victoria Harbour to the rest of the world.
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