2025 World Humanoid Robot Games open in Beijing

Opening

The 2025 World Humanoid Robot Games opened on the evening of 14 August 2025 at the National Speed Skating Oval in Beijing, the venue known as the Ice Ribbon ^[2]. Competition ran from 15 to 17 August 2025 ^[1][2].

Who took part

Science and Technology Daily reported that 280 teams took part, 192 of them from universities and 88 from companies ^[1]. Xinhua reported that teams came from 16 countries and regions, while Science and Technology Daily reported international teams from 15 countries ^[2][1]. Science and Technology Daily also reported 127 brands taking part, with more than 500 humanoid robots involved ^[1].

The corporate teams named by Science and Technology Daily included Tiangong, Unitree, Booster Robotics, Songyan Power, Fourier and Galbot ^[1].

What was contested

Xinhua reported 26 events and 487 matches, covering competitive, performance, scenario and peripheral categories ^[2]. The scenario events set robots tasks drawn from ordinary workplaces: material handling in a factory, sorting and packing medicines in a hospital, and cleaning in a hotel ^[2].

Why the format is telling

A humanoid robot is built to roughly the shape and size of a person. The point of that shape is compatibility. Stairs, doorways, shelves, hand tools and control panels are already designed around human bodies, so a machine that can use them does not require a workplace to be rebuilt around it. The scenario events follow that logic, and the tasks on the list come from a factory floor, a hospital and a hotel rather than a laboratory ^[2].

The programme also separates two kinds of ability. The competitive and performance categories are contests of movement and display, while the scenario category asks whether a robot can finish a piece of work ^[2]. Putting both in one event means a machine that walks or runs well is not automatically the machine that sorts medicines or carries boxes reliably.

The scale of the field

The numbers give a rough measure of how many groups now work on humanoid robots. Over three days, 280 teams brought machines from 127 brands into a single venue, and the entrants included both university laboratories and companies ^[1]. The two news accounts differ slightly on the international count, with Xinhua reporting 16 countries and regions and Science and Technology Daily reporting international teams from 15 countries, but both describe an international field ^[2][1].

What the event produced

What the Games offered, according to the two reports, was a shared test bed: a fixed list of events and several hundred matches, run under competition conditions over three days, in which university teams and manufacturers were measured against the same tasks ^[1][2]. Because the scenario events were copied from factory, hospital and hotel work, the results speak to something more concrete than whether a robot can stay upright: they speak to whether it can complete a job that would otherwise be done by a person ^[2]. The list of corporate participants — Tiangong, Unitree, Booster Robotics, Songyan Power, Fourier and Galbot — shows that the companies building these machines saw the event as a place worth being seen ^[1].