Event Preferencing is now open for the DECODE Season – Pick your favorite Premier Events!

Where will FIRST^® take your team?

Expanding on a very successful pilot season last year, FIRST^® Tech Challenge Premier Events are back! If you missed the announcement last year, Premier Events are a parallel capstone experience to the FIRST^® Championship, offering even more opportunities for teams to compete, connect, celebrate their achievements, and develop their robotics experience on a global scale.

2024-2025 European Premier Event

Most importantly, teams get to choose their own adventure by selecting the season capstone experience that is best for them. Premier Events occur across a wide range of dates and locations and many offer new or unique event experiences you won’t find anywhere else in FIRST.

A complete list of Premier Events with event experience descriptions can be found on the FIRST Website, and you can track which teams are going to which event on the FIRST Tech Challenge Event page.

These events are designed to celebrate the spirit of FIRST Tech Challenge: innovation, teamwork, and global collaboration. Our goal is to expand competition capacity and give students more opportunities to engage in high-energy, world-class competition environments.

Have you talked about where your team wants to go?

How Regional Championship Advancement Works

Regional Championship Events are the events at the highest level of play within a region. (These events are sometimes called State or Country Championships). Each of these events has been assigned an advancement allocation. In a previous blog we explained more about how advancement is allocated between events and you can check your region’s allocation on this Advancement Page.

As we've noted, the way we talk about "advancement slots" has changed from previous years. In previous years each region was given a specific FIRST Championship Advancement number. Last year, for the 24-25 season we “added on” the Premier Event Advancement number. Starting this year, each region gets a total amount of advancement slots, and a maximum reserved allocation for the FIRST Championship.

Some new and emerging regions will follow a similar process but may not have a Regional Championship Event type yet.

NEW - Event Preferencing System

Since teams advancing from a Regional Championship now have multiple capstone event options, in addition to the FIRST Championship, we need to know where teams want to go. Based on schedule, location, or experience, teams may rank Premier Events over the FIRST Championship in some cases. We have added a new "Event Preferencing" feature to the FTC Scoring system so teams can specify their preferred events before FIRST makes assignments. 

After teams compete in their Regional Championship event and the results have been certified by FIRST, emails will be sent to the Lead Coach 1 and Lead Coach 2 contacts of all advancing teams directing them to submit the team’s Event Preferencing List by logging into FTC Scoring. Each team must submit a list to be considered for event placement. In order to be placed in any capstone event, including FIRST Championship, a team must submit an Event Preferencing List. There are no "automatic" placements. 

Starting now, a team’s Lead Coach 1 or Lead Coach 2 can log into FTC Scoring with their FIRST dashboard account and see an option in the left-hand menu for “Event Preferencing”. On the Event Preferences page the Coach can decline advancement or enter a ranked list of events. There are also options at the bottom of the page to provide more information. Be sure to save your list before leaving the page.

Video demonstrating the Event Preferencing Interface for Lead Coaches

Teams can open and edit their list as many times as they want. Whatever list is saved when the assignment algorithm is run is what FIRST will use.

Teams should build their list from most to least preferred event. As your team considers their ranked list, we encourage you to review:

• Event dates
• Event fees and payment deadlines
• Location and travel considerations
• Unique event-specific features and activities
• Whether the event will use the standard DECODE presented by RTX gameplay or an alternate tournament structure

If your team’s list is very short, it will be harder to receive a match during the first round of assignments. We encourage every team to include at least 4 or 5 events, but teams should only include events they’re actually interested in attending. Teams will be assigned in order based on their advancement order, so ranking higher will give you a better chance at being assigned to your team’s #1 preference. We will have a follow-up blog with more of the technical details behind this algorithm before we do the first round of event assignments.

The first round of event assignments will be done in mid-January and subsequent assignment dates will be published by then as well.

Lead Coaches: Preferencing System is Open

Coaches! Great news, you don’t have to wait for your Regional Championship to be completed to start your preference list. The Event Preferencing System is live now on FTC Scoring and it is accepting lists from all teams, regardless of where they are in their season.

If you think your team has a good chance to earn advancement you can go ahead and have a team meeting to discuss your options and submit your list now. Even if you don’t think your team will advance you should still submit a list if you’re hoping for an opportunity to extend your season!

Each year we have a number of teams that can’t accept their invitations or need to drop out, and we will be using submitted preference lists to help fill open event capacity. If you still want to play DECODE and your team is willing to travel, submit your list to be considered for waitlist opportunities.

What Teams Can Expect at a Premier Event?

Premier Events offer a wide variety of experiences. Some are high production, some employ novel game play, and some offer thematic flair. This is intentional because we know our teams are all different, and value and enjoy different things. Take some time to pick the events which appeal to your team.

Everyone at FIRST is very excited about Premier Events. One of the biggest reasons is because of the direct feedback we received from teams who were able to attend Premier Events last season. Surveys from last year’s participants represented students, mentors, and coaches from teams who were both new and established with FIRST and a spread of teams who have never been to FIRST Championship, have been recently, or haven’t been in many years.

• 87% of respondents said they were satisfied or very satisfied with the Premier Event they attended
• 92% of respondents said they would recommend the Premier Event they attended to another team
• The majority of teams who attended an event with modified game play or judging enjoyed the modifications

Here’s a few more things that teams had to say about their experience:

• “I highly recommend this event to other teams. It provided a fantastic opportunity to connect with teams from around the world, and the atmosphere was incredible warm and welcoming.”
• “The game changes were super unpredictable which turned out the be the best part.”
• “It was a great experience overall, especially for a team that has always been close to getting to the FIRST Championship, but never quite making it. We got to experience a major international competition and it nice to see the way different teams operate yet the spirit of FIRST lives on in all teams.”

We appreciate everyone who took the time to provide both positive and constructive feedback from our pilot season. While the feedback was extremely positive, there were also many suggestions on how to improve. All our event hosts have reviewed detailed feedback from the previous season and are excited to implement many of the suggestions from the community, expand on what teams loved, and ultimately make their events even better this year.

Additionally, while most teams will attend a Premier Event based on performance during their season, some teams will be invited from the FIRST waitlist or directly invited by the Event Host. Each Premier Event Host retains a percentage of their event capacity so they may invite teams directly to their event based on their own process. Each event’s direct invite process is different, with different event experience goals in mind. Some events have an application process but some work directly with other Program Delivery Partners to improve local or regional team representation—check each event website for more details.

A Map of FIRST Championship and FIRST Premier Events Around the World

This year we are excited to add two more events outside of the United States and new events in California and Texas. A summary of each Premier Event is available on the Premier Event webpage, with more detailed information posted on individual event pages.

List of 2025-2026 Premier Events

A huge thank-you goes out to our amazing event hosts for creating exciting and creative events and their continued dedication to helping us elevate the FIRST Tech Challenge experience for teams around the world!