2025 World Humanoid Robot Games (WHRG) will be held in Beijing with 280 teams participating

From August 14 to 17, 2025, the Beijing National Speed Skating Oval “Ice Ribbon” will host an unprecedented technological extravaganza—the 2025 World Humanoid Robot Games (WHRG). Jointly organized by the WHRG Organizing Committee, the Chinese Institute of Electronics, and the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Economy and Information Technology, the event will bring together 280 top robot R&D teams from around the globe, setting a world record for the largest humanoid robot competition.

After rigorous review, the 2025 World Humanoid Robot Games has finalized 280 participating teams, far exceeding the 156 teams at the inaugural 2023 event and making it the largest humanoid robot competition ever. According to official WHRG statistics, the teams mainly come from three sectors:

China’s national and corporate lineup is strong, including well-known robotics companies such as Unitree Robotics, StarSea, Tiangong Intelligence, EvoX Dynamics, Songyan Power, and Fourier Intelligence, as well as research teams from top universities such as Tsinghua University, Peking University, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, and Wuhan University. The international contingent represents 15 countries, including Boston Dynamics from the United States, the Technical University of Munich from Germany, Waseda University from Japan, and KAIST from South Korea, demonstrating the growing global influence of the World Humanoid Robot Games.

Notably, this edition introduces an innovative “hardware + algorithm” collaboration model. StarSea’s R1Pro and R1Lite are designated as the official robots for scenario challenges, while Unitree Robotics opens its hardware platform, allowing multiple teams to enter with self-developed algorithms. This model ensures fairness while promoting technological innovation and has received high praise from the IFR Technical Committee.

The 2025 World Humanoid Robot Games are divided into two major categories—traditional sports and scenario challenges—comprising 23 subdivided events, five more than the previous edition.

In traditional sports, 19 competitive events will test robots’ fundamental locomotion capabilities. The most anticipated is the 100-meter “sprint,” with 90 teams already registered and expected to break the current 9.58-second humanoid robot record. Another historic milestone is the world’s first humanoid robot half-marathon, the ultimate test of endurance and motion-control systems. Ball-sport events include soccer, basketball, badminton, and table tennis, with soccer adopting the international RoboCup standard rules. Combat events now add free-fighting and martial-arts demonstrations, while artistic events include group dance and free gymnastics, showcasing the highest level of robotic artistry.

Scenario challenges represent the biggest innovation of the 2025 World Humanoid Robot Games, directly targeting commercial applications. All four scenario events originate from real industrial needs: hotel cleaning requires robots to complete the entire workflow of opening doors, identifying trash, and precise disposal; factory material handling tests payload capacity and path planning; hospital drug sorting sets the technical challenge of recognizing highly reflective aluminum-foil blister packs; mixed-item warehouse sorting simulates the actual environment of e-commerce warehouses. According to the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Economy and Information Technology, the winning solutions from these scenario challenges will be directly applied to Beijing’s smart-city construction in 2026.

Technical standards for the 2025 World Humanoid Robot Games have improved significantly. All competing robots must achieve fully autonomous AI control, including advanced functions such as “self-recovery after falling,” with any form of remote control strictly prohibited. Li Wei, Chair of the Event Technical Committee and Director of the Robotics Branch of the Chinese Institute of Electronics, stated, “Full autonomy is a prerequisite for practical robots; we hope the competition will drive breakthroughs in this key technology.”

Addressing the special needs of scenario challenges, teams have developed dedicated vision systems. For hospital drug sorting, the StarSea team uses multispectral imaging to solve blister-pack reflection issues, while the Tsinghua team has developed a deep-learning-based wrinkled-box recognition algorithm achieving 99.3 % accuracy, 12 % higher than the industry average.

The referee system has also been fully upgraded. The new system employs multi-sensor fusion technology combined with Huawei Cloud’s real-time data analytics platform, reducing referee response time to within 0.3 seconds to ensure smooth competition. The WHRG Organizing Committee revealed that this system has filed seven international patents.

IFR Secretary-General Susanne Bieller commented, “The 2025 World Humanoid Robot Games is not just a competition but a global compass for humanoid robot development. Through such international events, China is propelling the entire humanoid robot industry toward rapid practicalization and commercialization.”

As this technological spectacle about to unfold at Beijing’s “Ice Ribbon,” 280 top teams will demonstrate speed, strength, and intelligence to the world, proving that humanoid robots are no longer lab concepts but practical partners about to enter our daily lives. With the competition approaching, the global tech community’s eyes are on Beijing, waiting to witness new breakthroughs in humanoid robot technology.