World Humanoid Robot Games

The World Humanoid Robot Games is an international competition designed to test humanoid robots through sports, physical challenges, dexterous manipulation and real-world tasks.

First held in Beijing in August 2025, the Games were created as a new platform where humanoid robots could be evaluated not only as technological demonstrations, but as machines capable of moving, competing, cooperating and performing useful work.

The inaugural Games brought together 280 teams from 16 countries and regions, competing across 26 events.

The second edition, held from August 22–26, 2026, expanded dramatically to 666 teams and 2,056 robots from 16 countries, competing in 51 events and 1,301 matches at Beijing's National Speed Skating Oval ("Ice Ribbon").

More than a robot sports competition, the Games are becoming a public testing ground for the rapidly developing field of humanoid robotics and embodied intelligence.

The World Humanoid Robot Games combine the structure of a major sporting event with the technological challenges of robotics.

Instead of human athletes, the competitors are humanoid robots developed by companies, universities, research institutions and robotics teams.

The competitions are designed around a simple but increasingly important question:

The answer cannot be measured by a single specification.

A robot may need to demonstrate:

• Speed
• Balance
• Strength
• Agility
• Whole-body control
• Dexterous manipulation
• Perception
• Coordination
• Autonomous decision-making
• Task execution
• Human-environment interaction

This makes the Games an unusual combination of robotics competition, engineering benchmark and technology showcase.

The first edition in 2025 focused heavily on demonstrating the physical and coordination capabilities of humanoid robots.

Running, jumping, football, gymnastics, dancing and other events gave robots a familiar competitive framework while exposing the engineering challenges of bipedal movement and whole-body control.

The 2026 Games significantly expanded this concept.

Rather than asking only:

the competition increasingly asks:

The 2026 program introduced a much stronger emphasis on scenario-based competitions, including tasks related to factories, retail, hospitality, homes, emergency response and other real-world environments.

This shift reflects a broader transition in humanoid robotics:

The goal is no longer simply to make robots look impressive.

It is to determine whether they can perform useful tasks repeatedly, accurately and reliably.

The second World Humanoid Robot Games took place in Beijing from August 22 to 26, 2026.

The scale of the event increased dramatically compared with the inaugural Games.

The number of participating teams increased by 138%, while the number of robots more than quadrupled compared with the first edition.

The expansion reflects both the rapid growth of humanoid robotics and the organizers' effort to make the Games a broader benchmark for the industry.

The scenario competitions represent one of the most important developments of the 2026 Games.

Instead of competing only on a traditional sports field, robots are asked to perform tasks inspired by actual human work.

The 2026 competition included scenarios related to:

• Retail services
• Food preparation and service
• Packing and warehousing
• Assembly and material handling
• Emergency response
• Fire and rescue
• Office services
• Home services
• Hotel services
• Library organization
• Landscaping
• Smart EV charging

The competitions also included specialized dexterous-hand tasks involving operations such as tool assembly, powder weighing, block building, nail fixing, bottle opening, box unpacking, picking objects with tweezers and cable connection.

These tasks test capabilities that are much harder to demonstrate through simple walking or running.

A robot must be able to:

That makes scenario competitions particularly relevant to the future commercialization of humanoid robots.

One of the most interesting additions to the 2026 Games is the emphasis on dexterous manipulation.

Running requires powerful actuators and sophisticated balance control.

But picking up a small object with tweezers, connecting a cable or assembling a tool requires something different:

The dexterous-hand events therefore explore another fundamental question:

This is particularly important because many potential applications for humanoid robots involve manipulating objects designed for human hands.

Factories, warehouses, kitchens, hotels and homes all contain tools, containers, switches, cables and objects that assume a human-shaped body and human-like hands.

The World Humanoid Robot Games are not based on a single technology metric.

Different events expose different layers of robotic capability.

Together, these capabilities form a much broader picture of humanoid-robot performance than conventional laboratory demonstrations.

One of the key themes of the Games is the transition from teleoperation toward autonomous operation.

The competition rules allow different control approaches depending on the event, while some events place stronger requirements on autonomous operation.

The inaugural Games already included autonomous demonstrations and competitions. For example, the 2025 football competition featured a fully AI-controlled 5v5 format. ([news.cctv.com][3])

By 2026, autonomy became even more important, particularly in scenario-based tasks.

This reflects a fundamental challenge for humanoid robotics.

A robot that can perform a spectacular movement under carefully controlled conditions is impressive.

A robot that can:

is much closer to becoming a useful machine.

Although the 2026 Games were held in Beijing, the competition attracted teams from 16 countries and regions across six continents. ([北京市文化和旅游局][4])

Participants included:

• Robotics companies
• Universities
• Research institutions
• Student teams
• International robotics teams
• Technology organizations
• Collaborative research teams

The international participation gives the Games a role beyond domestic robotics competition.

They provide a common physical environment where different approaches to:

• robot hardware
• actuators
• control systems
• artificial intelligence
• perception
• locomotion
• manipulation

can be tested against one another.

The main venue of the World Humanoid Robot Games is Beijing's National Speed Skating Oval (国家速滑馆), widely known as the Ice Ribbon.

The venue was built for the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics and provides a distinctive Olympic-scale setting for the robot competition.

In 2025, the Ice Ribbon hosted the inaugural Games, establishing the venue as the symbolic home of the event. ([北京政府外国人服务网站][5])

The choice of an Olympic venue is significant.

Human athletes traditionally compete at iconic sporting venues.

The World Humanoid Robot Games place robots into a similar environment, creating a visual and conceptual connection between:

The 2026 opening ceremony, themed “Intelligence Competing Toward the Future” (智竞向未来), brought hundreds of robots into the Ice Ribbon.

The ceremony itself demonstrated technologies beyond conventional competition.

36 Linkerbot dexterous-hand humanoid robots performed with human musicians using instruments including wind instruments, piano, drums, marimba and guitar. Meanwhile, 80 T2 humanoid robots from Accelerated Evolution (加速进化) autonomously performed coordinated formations and created the Games' emblem. ([北京市经济和信息化局][2])

The performances illustrated two capabilities that are central to humanoid robotics:

The most visible aspect of the 2026 Games was the rapid improvement in athletic performance.

Several events produced dramatic gains compared with the inaugural Games.

Among the most notable results:

Several of these results represented dramatic improvements over the previous edition. The 400m, for example, improved from 1:28.03 in 2025 to 38.15 seconds in the 2026 large-size category, while the 1,500m improved from 6:34.40 to 2:21.64. ([新华网][6])

For detailed podiums and official recorded performances, see our 2026 World Humanoid Robot Games Results page.

The most important contribution of the Games may not be any individual record.

The competition creates a physical environment in which humanoid robots must demonstrate what their hardware and software can actually do.

That creates several benefits.

The evolution of the World Humanoid Robot Games can be summarized in three stages:

A humanoid robot does not ultimately need to win a 100-meter race to be useful.

It needs to be able to:

That is the larger challenge behind the Games.

As humanoid robots continue to improve, future editions of the Games are likely to place greater emphasis on capabilities that are difficult to fake and difficult to achieve:

• Longer autonomous operation
• More complex environments
• Multi-step tasks
• Human-robot collaboration
• Multi-robot cooperation
• Dexterous manipulation
• Error recovery
• Navigation
• Safety
• Energy efficiency
• Real-world productivity

The competition may gradually move from asking whether a robot can perform a specific movement to whether it can complete an entire task independently.

That would transform the Games from a showcase of robotic athleticism into something much more significant:

The 2026 Games concluded on August 26, 2026, after five days of competition. ([新华网][6])