RoboMaster 2026: Why Last Year’s Champion Lost
Field notes from Shenzhen on changing rules, autonomous robots, and why RoboMaster keeps forcing even its strongest teams to rebuild. On August 4, I was watching RoboMaster 2026 at Shenzhen Bay Sports Center when something unexpected happened quite early in the competition. Shanghai Jiao Tong University’s Jiao Long team lost to Harbin Institute of Technology, Shenzhen. Shanghai Jiao Tong is one of the dominant teams in RoboMaster. It won the national championship in 2021, 2023, 2024, and 2025. I already knew it had been eliminated in the quarterfinals of this year’s South China regional, but I still expected the team to be extremely strong once the national competition started. ...