#RoboCup2026 – humanoid league knockout stages

RoboCup 2026 concluded its humanoid league competitions in Incheon, South Korea, during the weekend, determining the top three teams in the small, middle, and large humanoid divisions. In the small division, the recognized teams were Invic of Wuhan University in China, Hamburg Bit-Bots of Universität Hamburg in Germany, and GeoHBots from the School of Artificial Intelligence at China University of Geosciences in China.

The middle division’s top three included B-Human, representing Universität Bremen and the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence, HTWK Robots of Leipzig University of Applied Sciences, and Rhoban of the University of Bordeaux in France. A featured middle-division semifinal matched HTWK against Rhoban, while the division final saw HTWK face B-Human.

In the large division, Tsinghua Hephaestus of Tsinghua University, CAU Mountain&Sea of China Agricultural University, and Water of Beijing Information Science & Technology University were named among the top three. The article also included comments from Team Hephaestus, which won the large division.

Five awards spanning the league were announced in addition to the competition results. HERoEHS received the Best Customized Humanoid Award for its ALICE fourth version. B-Human earned the Best Humanoid Software Award for its Game Controller. Ruhrbot Devils won the Open Research Challenge for an AI Camera Platform for Embedded 2D/3D Game Analysis in RoboCup HSL. Bahia Robotics Team received the Best Innovation Award, and Anastasia Prisacaru of Berlin United received the Best Referee Award.

Although the league contests had ended, RoboCup 2026 continued with a symposium bringing together researchers and practitioners from around the world to present and discuss robotics and artificial-intelligence research.