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FIRST Robotics Competition: Complete Guide for Students and Teams

Published · Subject: Robotics & Engineering · Grades: 9–12

FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) is the high school program in the FIRST progression (FIRST LEGO League for younger students, FIRST Tech Challenge for middle/high school, FRC for high school). It is also the hardest of them — the robots are larger, the game is more complex, the teams are larger, and the engineering requirements are more serious. A competitive FRC team is doing work that resembles an engineering project team in a professional context, not a school club project.

The six-week build season

Every January, FIRST hosts a kickoff event at which the new game for the year is revealed simultaneously to all teams worldwide. At that moment, the six-week build season begins. Teams have exactly six weeks to design, build, program, and test a robot that can compete in the new game. At the end of the six weeks, robots are bagged and transported to competitions (the rules on post-bag access vary by year; confirm current rules on the FIRST website).

The six-week constraint is real and demanding. Teams that have been building practice bots and testing mechanisms in the fall, that have a well-organized build workflow, and that can make fast design decisions under uncertainty will outcompete teams that start from scratch at kickoff. This is one reason why the off-season (fall semester) matters for teams that want to be competitive in the spring.

The game format

Each FRC season introduces a new game with its own rules, scoring structures, and robot requirements. Games involve two alliances of three robots each competing in matches of roughly two to three minutes. Matches begin with an autonomous period (robots run pre-programmed routines without driver input) followed by a teleoperated period (drivers control robots remotely). An end-game phase with distinct scoring opportunities often features prominently.

The game design means that teams must decide how to allocate their engineering resources: do you build a robot optimized for one aspect of the game (a specialist) or a general-purpose robot that can contribute across multiple scoring opportunities? Alliance selection at competitions rewards different robot archetypes depending on the game design. This strategic dimension is part of what makes FRC intellectually interesting beyond the engineering itself.

Competition structure: districts vs. regionals

FRC runs two parallel competition structures:

Whether your team uses the district or regional model depends on your geographic location. Teams in Michigan, for example, are in the Michigan district system and cannot participate in regionals. Check the FIRST website to determine which system applies to your region.

FIRST Championship

The FIRST Championship is the final event of the FRC season, held in spring (Houston and Detroit have served as host cities in recent years). Qualifying teams from district and regional competitions advance to the Championship, which draws thousands of students from hundreds of countries.

The Championship is organized into two events held on the same days in two cities, with the world champion determined at each. This dual-city structure was introduced to handle the large number of qualifying teams; check current FIRST Championship structure on the FIRST website as this has evolved.

Team structure and mentorship

FRC teams typically have 20–50 students and are supported by adult mentors with engineering, programming, or operational expertise. Unlike MATHCOUNTS or AMC, where individual student preparation is the core activity, FRC is genuinely a team program: the robot is too large and complex for any individual student to build or program alone. Students typically specialize in mechanical design, electrical systems, programming, or drive team, while others handle logistics, outreach, or media.

Mentor quality matters significantly for team success. Teams affiliated with engineering companies that provide mentors with professional robotics experience have a structural advantage. This is one reason why FIRST actively recruits corporate sponsors and engineer mentors.

How to find a team

The FIRST website includes a team finder that shows every registered FRC team by location. Search for teams near you; most teams welcome students from any high school, not just the school that officially sponsors the team.

If there is no team in your area and you want to start one, FIRST provides a team registration and startup toolkit. Starting a team requires a school or community organization to sponsor it, at least two adult mentors, and the registration fee (several thousand dollars, partially offset by rookie grants that FIRST provides). Corporate sponsors often cover a significant portion of team costs; outreach to local engineering companies is part of how most teams sustain their budgets.

FIRST Tech Challenge — the middle step

Students who participated in FIRST LEGO League in middle school and are now in high school have an intermediate option: FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC). FTC uses a smaller robot build kit (REV Robotics hardware) and a field roughly one-third the size of FRC. It is less demanding in budget and mentor requirements, which makes it more accessible for schools that cannot sustain a full FRC program. Many students do both FTC and FRC simultaneously if their school offers both.

About this profile: Meli Review publishes independent contest profiles for students and families. FIRST competition rules, championship structure, and district boundaries change annually; always verify current information on the official FIRST Inspires website. See also: Middle school robotics & coding contests.