Robot Competition for Children Nationwide, WRO Japan 2026 Season Opens!

"WRO® (World Robot Olympiad)" is an international robot competition where children compete in creativity and problem-solving skills through robot building and programming. Official qualifying tournaments for the RoboMission category, which has the most participating teams among the four competition categories, will be held in 31 districts nationwide starting Saturday, July 11th. Additionally, in 4 of these districts, qualifying tournaments for RoboSports, a competitive category with the second-highest number of participating teams, will also be held.

Teams selected in each district will advance to the "WRO 2026 Japan National Finals" (Saturday, August 22nd and Sunday, August 23rd / Tokyo Metropolitan Industrial Trade Center Hamamatsucho Hall), which will serve as the selection event for the Japan national team. The winning teams will earn the right to participate in the WRO International Competition to be held in Puerto Rico in December.

WRO is not just a competition focused on winning or losing. Children are required to challenge the competition with robots they have built and programmed themselves, and to repeatedly experiment and refine their solutions within a limited time. The objective is for children to foster creativity, problem-solving skills, teamwork, and a challenging spirit through robot building, and it is held as an international educational program where children from around the world tackle common themes and learn from each other.

WRO 2026 Theme https://youtu.be/Bu17JjopElY

WRO Japan 2026 Official Qualifying Tournament Host Districts

【Hokkaido District】Hokkaido

【Tohoku District】Miyagi/Akita (2 locations)/ Yamagata

【Kanto District】Tochigi/Gunma/Chiba/Tokyo/Kanagawa

【Hokuriku/Tokai District】Niigata/Toyama/Ishikawa/Fukui/Nagano/Gifu/Shizuoka/Aichi (2 locations)/Mie

【Kansai District】Kyoto/Osaka/Hyogo/Nara/Wakayama

【Chugoku/Shikoku District】Okayama/Ehime

【Kyushu District】Fukuoka/Kumamoto/Miyazaki

【Okinawa District】Okinawa

Total: 31 locations

For details on each official qualifying tournament, please refer to the "Qualifying Tournament Information" below.

https://www.wroj.org/news/wro-japan-2026-yosenkai

WRO 2026 Japan National Finals

*Details will be announced again in mid-August.

Competition Name: WRO 2026 Japan National Finals

Dates: August 22nd and 23rd, 2026 (Saturday and Sunday) (Saturday, August 22nd: Preliminary Rounds etc., Sunday, August 23rd: Finals)

Venue: Tokyo Metropolitan Industrial Trade Center Hamamatsucho Hall (Minato-ku, Tokyo)

Organizer: NPO WRO Japan

Admission: Free

*About WRO® (World Robot OlympiadTM)

WRO® is an international competition for autonomous robots in which over 100,000 children from more than 100 countries participate. It is a competition where children build robots and compete in the technology of automatically controlling them through programming, providing a venue to experience science and technology, as well as promoting international exchange.

https://wro-association.org/