BEIJING — The second World Humanoid Robot Games wrapped up this week at the National Speed Skating Oval — the “Ice Ribbon” built for the 2022 Winter Olympics — and the numbers tell the story of how fast this field is moving. Organizers reported 666 teams from 16 countries fielding 2,056 humanoid robots across 51 events, up from roughly 280 teams and 500 robots at the inaugural games in August 2025. That’s a 138% jump in participation in a single year.
Less spectacle, more work
The 100m dash, football and boxing bouts that went viral last year were all back. But the bigger change was the addition of 21 scenario-based events designed to test skills companies will actually pay for: industrial assembly, hotel service, emergency rescue and warehouse logistics. Thirty events remained pure competition; in total the games ran 1,301 individual matches.
Of the 666 teams, 641 were Chinese and 25 came from overseas — a reminder that while the event bills itself as a world championship, it is first and foremost a showcase for China’s domestic humanoid industry, which now counts Unitree, UBTech, AgiBot and dozens of smaller players.
Open benchmarks to follow
Organizers say full performance datasets from the games will be released as open benchmarks, which would give researchers outside China a rare, standardized look at how these machines perform under identical conditions.
One claim we’re not repeating: a secondary site reported a sub-Bolt 9.32-second 100m. We couldn’t corroborate it with a primary source, so treat it as unconfirmed.
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