So at some point, the Worlds allocation spots has been updated and the numbers have shrunk. Doing the math, it looks like there will be about a little less than 300 spots for each IQ division once you role in signature events. VRC has about 450 spots listed, that once you role in signature events, it’ll likely be about 600 total spots, which would equal up to the two IQ divisions.
Maybe this was shared at the recent EP event or is about to be announced in an upcoming webinar, but I’m really shocked the numbers are going down. No wonder they said there won’t be a cap on opening and closing ceremony tickets now…
If you did watch worlds ther was a announcement that worlds would be moved to st Louis making the event center smaller than Dallas. I believe this is probably the reason for the amount of teams getting smaller.
The ceremony will be taking place at the Dome at America’s Center. A former NFL football stadium that holds 67,000 people. Even with a fraction of the stadium available (assuming this is on one end of the stadium) there’s more than enough room.
Spot allocations are issued the same way each year. The intial allocation comes out in August followed by additional spots being issued in January for new regions or for existing regions may have seen exponential growth. Because of this process, the full allocation is never issued in August. When January comes around, the math will not add to the full capacity either. Spots have to be held in reserve for Signature Events, Online Challenges, Community Awards, and other instances like these that may fluctuate a few spots here and there.
To our knowledge, the VEX Robotics World Championship will remain the same size in 2026 as it has the previous 2 seasons. The main differences this year compared to last year is 1) the high school event will be 4 days and 2) JROTC will no longer be a part. They will have their own National Championship event outside of the VEX Robotics World Championship.
@ryanosweiler - Thanks for the follow up! I’m glad to hear size isn’t dropping from around 420 for each IQ age group and 800 for HS V5RC. Hopefully whenever the RECF posts the official details of Worlds, hopefully it will mention the size of 26 will mirror that of 25 for confirmation (or we just wait for the events to be created in robotevents as well to confirm).
I’ve followed the spot allocation in years past and it felt like the January updates were usually very minor adjustments with the numbers, which was why it was concerning with the initial pool of spots assigned out seemed really low. I get there are spots held back for sigs, online, some reserve from the overall numbers so it’s never a 1+1=2 scenario, but the sum of numbers posted out the gate seemed a lot lower than in years past, especially when I started looking at spots assigned out in regions.
But if you say all is good, then that’s good enough for us and we can be done. Thanks!