FIRST Tech Challenge INTO THE DEEP Premier Events

We’re excited to be announcing our INTO THE DEEP^SM presented by RTX season Premier Events! We want to thank all of our incredible event hosts for their outstanding applications and their willingness to dive in and help us build something new for our community together. As announced in this November blog, Premier Events are a new event type this season and will be a parallel capstone experience to the FIRST Championship.

Teams may earn advancement to a Premier Event of their choice from their Regional Championship Event. Each Premier Event host will also have a limited number of additional spots to extend direct invitations to teams outside of the formal advancement process.

These FIRST Tech Challenge events will celebrate the spirit of our program and give our students more opportunities to compete around the globe with students from a variety of regions. Our goal is to help increase competition capacity, while giving students a once-in-a-lifetime robotics competition experience. We’re thrilled with the uniqueness of our events, world-wide locations, and the schedule options that we’re providing teams.

As teams compete at their Regional Championship events, they will qualify for advancement to the FIRST Championship and to Premier Events. Teams can view their region’s FIRST Championship allocations on our events site. We are still finalizing Premier advancement numbers for each region (details coming soon!) but we’re confident that each region will get an equal or greater number of Premier Event Advancement slots to the Championship Slots they received this season. That's more than 2x the advancement opportunities! 🎉🏆

Teams who earn Premier Event Advancement invitations will follow the process outlined on the Premier Event webpage. Teams will receive an email with a deadline to provide a ranked choice list of the teams preferred Premier Events. Teams will be assigned to a Premier Event based on their ranked list, contingent on open event capacity. Premier Event fees and payment deadlines are set by the event hosts. For this season the Premier Event fees range from $350 to $2000 and may include benefits beyond competition entry fees.

When considering how to rank their Premier Event request list we encourage teams to consider date, location and specific event features and activities. Not all Premier Events will be playing the standard INTO THE DEEP game or tournament structure. A summary of event details will be listed on the Premier Event webpage, with additional details listed directly on the individual event pages.

And now, we’re excited to announce the inaugural FIRST Tech Challenge Premier Events will be…