2025-2026 FTC Challenge

This Year’s Challenge: DECODE™

In DECODE™, teams explore the world of ancient artifacts, hidden systems and unknown mysteries. The game invites you to interpret clues, assemble relics, and unlock hidden mechanisms — all while competing under pressure, collaborating with alliance partners, and managing robot performance.

What Makes DECODE™ Especially Challenging

• Multiple types of objectives: You’re not just scoring pieces — you’re analysing, assembling, and deploying them in complex ways.
  
  

• Strategy + adaptability: Since the game is new, many teams will still be testing what works — so you’ll need to pivot fast and try new ideas, and you have to watch and learn from other teams to see what you can change to be even faster and better.
  
  

• Advanced automation & sensing: To excel, you’ll likely need to integrate sensors, advanced programming, and precision movements.  The robot has to be able to line up perfectly without human input during autonomous. It has to be able to scan a code, know what that code is, and be able to place the artifacts in the right order because of that code.
  
  

• Mechanical demands: Handling artifacts and mystery elements will test your manipulators, mechanisms, and robot design choices.  The Artifacts are large, round spheres, so they are hard to pick up and move. The organizer is a couple of feet off the ground, so your robot has to be able to launch artifacts into the air accurately. 
  
  

• Team coordination: Success depends not just on your robot’s power, but on alliance strategy, timing, and consistent execution. You need to be able to fit into an 18" by 18" box with another robot. If your robot is able to expand over another robot, it might not even work if the robot is too tall, so you need a lot of cooperation and communication. 

How we decided to accept these challenges.