0.2 Awards and the road to the world championship

Qualifying for the world championship

To qualify for the FIRST Championship we talked about in the last lesson, you need to earn enough points at the Türkiye Championship. When the tournament ends, each team gets a score based on what it earned at that event, and teams are ranked by this score. The top teams move up to the next event, up to the number of slots set aside for it. The score a team earns at an event is called its advancement points.

This calculation only looks at what happens at that one event. Points earned at one tournament do not carry over to the next. At a new event, everyone's points are calculated again from the start.

In Türkiye, the road starts with regional tournaments. According to FTC Türkiye's registration guide for the 2026-27 season, each tournament held in Türkiye sends up to six teams to the Türkiye Championship, and the exact number can change with the number of teams at the tournament. How many teams go from the Türkiye Championship to the world championship is decided by FIRST and announced during the season.

The score you make in a match and your advancement points are different things. The match score decides which alliance wins that match. Advancement points are calculated at the end of the tournament to rank who goes to the next event.

Your advancement points come from two sides. What you do on the field and the team award the judges give you are added to the same total.

How advancement points come from the field

In the first part of the tournament, all teams play matches in turn. These are called qualification matches. When they are over, the teams are ranked, and your place in this ranking adds to your advancement points. The higher you rank, the bigger the contribution.

After the qualification matches, the top-ranked teams form their own alliances. A team that forms its alliance and picks its partner is called an alliance captain. Being a captain and being picked by a captain both bring advancement points, but a team gets only one of these.

The alliances then face each other in elimination matches in the last part of the tournament. This part is called the playoff. Teams in the alliances that finish the playoff in the top four also get advancement points.

These three contributions combine in the same total. A robot that works on the field and good driving help you finish the qualification matches near the top. Teams that finish near the top become captains in alliance selection. What happens in the playoff depends on how the alliances play on the day.

What work the awards evaluate

Judged awards evaluate the work a team did across the season. Some of them look at the robot's design and control, and some look at how the team works. To be considered for judged awards, a team must take part in the judging interview. Some awards also require the team to have submitted a portfolio.

The award that brings the most advancement points is Inspire. Here the judges do not look at one single piece of work. They look at how strong the robot, the engineering thinking and the team's work are all together. A team that submitted a portfolio, did well in all of these areas, built an inclusive way of working as a team and shared its experience with other teams is considered for this award.

Each of the other team awards looks at one specific kind of work.

Think evaluates how well the team can document its engineering journey. If the portfolio shows the ideas you tried, the options you compared, your measurements and why you dropped a certain approach, you can be considered for this award.

Connect looks at the relationships the team builds with people who work in science and engineering in order to grow its own skills. Working regularly with an engineer and applying the feedback you get to your robot or the way your team works is what this award is about.

Reach, on the other hand, works outward. This award recognizes efforts that bring people and teams who have never taken part in FIRST into the program. Helping a new team get started or bringing in new mentors and volunteers are examples. Connect looks at the team's own growth. Reach looks at people who are new to the program.

Sustain evaluates the plan that keeps the team going in future seasons. Making a budget and resource plan, handing tasks over to new members and tracking how much of this plan actually happens are what this award is about.

Innovate recognizes an original solution to the game's problem. A creative idea is not enough: the judges look for a solution developed through the engineering process that works reliably in most matches.

Control looks at the hardware and software control that makes the robot better at its job. Using data from a sensor to make a task more repeatable, and explaining this in the portfolio, is what this award is about.

Design is an award that looks at the robot as a whole. Form, function, efficiency and how easy the robot is to maintain are judged together, and the team is expected to be able to explain these choices.

Judges' Choice is given, if the judges see fit, to recognize an effort that does not quite fit the other categories but catches the judges' attention.

At the same event, a team can receive at most one judged award or a finalist placing for one. The points for the award you win are added to your contributions from the field.

Field and individual awards

There are also awards that recognize match results. The award for the alliance that wins the playoff final is called Winning Alliance, and the award for the other alliance in the final is called Finalist Alliance. These awards are not added to advancement points separately, because the playoff result is already part of the calculation.

Some awards go to a person, not a team. The individual award that recognizes a student's leadership and what they bring to their team is called FIRST Leadership. Students can also nominate their mentor by making a short video about how the mentor guides them. This award for an adult mentor is called Compass. Individual awards are not added to advancement points.

Advancement points in numbers

The numbers below come from the pre-season rules document for the 2026-27 season, the BIOBUZZ Competition Manual V0, sections 4 and 6. These numbers will be checked again in the full Manual released on Kickoff day.

Second and third place are an award's finalist placings. Not every award and placing is given at every event. At small tournaments only some of the awards are given out, and as the number of teams grows, so does the number of awards and placings.

Let's look at an example. Say a team finishes the qualification matches around the middle of the tournament ranking and gets 10 points for that rank. In alliance selection, it joins an alliance as the third team picked and gets 18 points for that. When its alliance finishes the playoff in second place, 20 points are added, and when the judges give the team the Think award, 12 more points are added. The team's total at that event is 60 points.

The team's total is compared with the totals of the other teams at the same event. As many teams as there are slots move up to the next event.

What this work needs

A robot that earns points on the field needs development and testing. The awards on the judging side want the team's work to be visible. These two sides go hand in hand all season. We will cover preparing the portfolio and the judging interview in the 0.11 From Kickoff to competition lesson.

Parts, a place to work on your robot and entering tournaments all need a budget. In the 0.3 Budget, sponsors and presenting your team lesson, we will look at these costs and the kinds of support you can use to cover them.

Extras

• Awards quick table and other resources
• 2026-27 BIOBUZZ Competition Manual
• FTC Türkiye team registration guide
• 0.14 Alliance selection, playoffs and advancement how alliance selection and playoff matches work