Eleven Pacific Island nations will be represented at the Glasgow Commonwealth Games scheduled to officially open on Friday (New Zealand time).

Cook Islands, Fiji, Kiribati, Nauru, Niue, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu and Vanuatu have all sent teams to the event.

While majority of the athletes will be using the Glasgow Games to measure their growth in their respective sport, there are some who will be genuine medal contenders against the best in the Commonwealth.

There are 74 nations and territories represented at this year's Commonwealth Games, which includes separate teams for the four home nations of the United Kingdom - England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland.

There are also various overseas territories, and debutants, with Togo and Gabon making their first appearances.

For the Pacific, there have been different hurdles as the respective countries worked on assembling their best for the Games.

Finance has always topped the list of challenges island teams faced, particularly with the change in hosting venue.

But that is now behind the teams as their focus shifts to participating and competing at the 23rd Commonwealth Games.

The event was originally planned to be held in Victoria, Australia, but moved to Glasgow following the initial hosts' inability to get their hosting in order.

Victoria cancelled hosting the 2026 Commonwealth Games due to massive cost blowouts, following an increase in projected costs from the originally budgeted AU$2.6 billion to around AU$7 billion.

The increased budget came from the decentralised model that was to be used, which would see the Games' events hosted across four regional hubs in Geelong, Ballarat, Bendigo and Gippsland.

The Victoria State government withdrew their hosting rights and paid AU$380 million in compensation to the Commonwealth Games Federation (CGF) and Commonwealth Games Australia (CGA).

Glasgow put its hand up and agreed to host, but with a reduced competition format, settling for only 10 sports from the usual 20, as was the case at the 2022 Commonwealth Games.

So, to Glasgow the Pacific island teams have flown, with a lot more to pay for the exercise.

The majority of Pacific Island contingents have arrived at the host city.

It includes Team Vanuatu members, who were unable to leave Port Vila on Monday, but are now on their way to Glasgow because of flight cancellations.

With the popular sevens rugby competition not part of the event this time around, Pacific Island teams would be banking on their weightlifters, bowlers and judokas to lead their campaigns for medals.

Weightlifting will see 10 of the 11 Pacific Island nations competing and should be the sport that will win the most medals for them.