About 200 people and 30 teams from more than 12 countries attended this year’s competition, making it the largest ever held. The competition was embedded in the program of the 2026 IEEE International Conference on Robotics & Automation, which provided a very vibrant environment for further discussions with robotics researchers and scientists beyond the race itself.
Novel advancements at this year’s race
This year did not only bring a new record in the number of participants, but also some novel advancements for the RoboRacer community:
- A bridge as a new track feature to push teams advancing their algorithm to also work in non-flat environments.
- Open track borders to challenge algorithms and incentivize more complex approaches.
- Split into Classic Cup and Master Cup, to push advanced teams even further to their top performance on a more complicated track that stays unknown until raceday.
- Dedicated workshop on Friday for better exchange within the RoboRacer community.
Testing and practice days
The competition week began on Monday with practice and mapping sessions, giving teams the opportunity to inspect their model race cars after international travel and transport, and to prepare them for racing. On the track, teams had time to record maps and subsequently fine-tune their racing strategies based on the specific track layout. This year’s novelty was that the organizers provided two tracks of identical track features – this enabled parallel testing sessions and therefore effectively more time for teams to tune their autonomous algorithms.
Time-trials and Classic Cup races
After the thorough hardware inspection of all the cars and more testing time on Tuesday, it got exciting on Wednesday, when teams started for their time-trial runs. Teams had to aim for two metrics: The fastest lap time and the largest number of consecutive laps without crashing. These two metrics aim for performance as well as reliability, demonstrating that the autonomous cars are not only able to race fast, but also in a safe manner. The teams showed really good performance on this day, even newcomers who attended for their first time, and did a very good job, completing several fast laps. In the afternoon, it was time for head-to-head races of the Classic Cup. Spectators could experience very thrilling racing as two cars on the track raced for the win in a double-elimination format. Team ‘VAUL 2’ from Canada could secure the 1st place, the 2nd place was taken by ‘Brake Check Buddies’ from Austria and the 3rd place went to ‘tron racing’ from Germany.
Master Cup and Award ceremony
For the newly introduced Master Cup, the track was completely changed to give the teams an even more challenging environment on Thursday, when they only had very limited time for mapping and training. Additionally, with the introduction of a bridge on the track for the first time, the optimal raceline became non-flat and included an intersection, presenting an additional challenge for the teams and their autonomous algorithms. This effort paid off, as teams were very excited and eager to master these new technical difficulties. From the first head-to-head confrontations on, spectators could watch very close overtaking maneuvers and nerve-wracking photo finishes. The cars were even fast enough to momentarily lift off the ground when driving at full speed over the bridge. The atmosphere during the final races was truly remarkable: the crowd cheered at every turn as the top teams demonstrated exceptional autonomous racing performance. Ultimately, the winners of the Master Cup were ‘UNICORN_Racing’ from the Republic of Korea in first place, followed by ‘UBM-Atlas’ from Italy in second place and ‘UBM-Tom’ from Italy in third place.
In the evening, the RoboRacer teams gathered for the award ceremony at TU Wien, where trophies were presented to all teams. Two special prices were awarded as well: The ‘KNAPP performance award’ for the highest acceleration overall was presented to ‘LAMARRacing’ from Germany. The ‘Qualisys awards’ were presented to Felix Resch and Team ‘Arcus’ from Canada.
Special thanks are due to all organizers, Felix Resch, Andreas Brandstätter, Jaroslav Klapalek, and Moritz Christamentl, as well as all volunteers from TU Wien and Team Scuderia Segfault, who dedicated countless hours to the planning and preparation of the race, as well as to its excellent execution.
This year’s race marked a special occasion, where, thanks to the support of TU Wien Informatics, all our students of the Autonomous Racing Cars lecture had the unique opportunity to participate in the international race. It was not only great to see the outstanding performance of TU Wien’s students, but also their motivation and drive to interact with the international robotics research community!
Thanks to our supporting partners
Special thanks to our great partners to make this event possible: KNAPP, Technische Universität Wien, TU Wien Informatics, HTU Wien, Qualisys, Magna International, FFG Österreichische Forschungsförderungsgesellschaft mbH, Bundesministerium für Innovation, Mobilität und Infrastruktur
Resources/Links
- All race results can be found at: https://icra2026-race.roboracer.ai/
- News report on TU Wien Informatics webpage.
