The inaugural 2025 World Humanoid Robot Games wrapped up in Beijing on Sunday, featuring finals and a closing ceremony that showcased the world’s first integrated humanoid robotics competition combining sports, arts, and applied scenarios. From sprint tracks to football fields, international teams demonstrated breakthroughs in athletic performance, while cross-disciplinary collaboration highlighted the growing potential of human-robot symbiosis and advanced embodied intelligence.
Standout performances included Unitree Robotics, which claimed gold in the 1,500 meters, 400 meters, 4×100 meters relay, and 100-meter hurdles. China’s Tiangong Ultra robot, developed by the Beijing Innovation Center of Humanoid Robots, won the 100-meter sprint with a remarkable 21.50-second finish. In the 5v5 football final, Tsinghua University’s Hephaestus team defeated Germany’s HTWK Robotics + Nao Devils 1-0, while China Agricultural University’s Mountain & Sea team secured the 3v3 football championship.
During the 5v5 final, Hephaestus’ No.1 “player” scored with a rare long-range strike midway through the first half, leveraging an end-to-end algorithm to gain a decisive edge in a tournament where most goals came from gentle pushes near the net. Tsinghua coach Zhao Mingguo acknowledged the challenge posed by Germany’s experienced team, while HTWK team member Max Polter emphasized the spirit of global collaboration, sharing insights and code after tournaments to drive collective progress in humanoid robotics.
Teams from around the world praised the Games as a platform for innovation and learning. Portugal’s University of Minho team competed with humanoid robots for the first time, finding them slower and less precise than wheeled models, yet offering valuable experience for software and strategy development. The Dutch Nao Team highlighted the advantage of larger, AI-enabled Booster robots for testing advanced vision, walking, and kicking algorithms, with efficient passing emerging as a key tactic for competitive play.
Chinese teams also demonstrated remarkable progress. High Torque Robotics deployed “Xiaohai” and “Xiaopai,” showing the potential of both smaller companion robots and larger industrial models. Unitree Robotics CEO Wang Xingxing noted that while competition algorithms don’t translate directly to real-world applications, sports events serve as a rigorous testbed for robot hardware and software, ensuring reliability in daily-life scenarios.
Zhao Dongwei, head of market development for the Games, emphasized that the event highlights global advances in humanoid robotics while fostering international cooperation. “With 280 teams from 16 countries competing across 487 matches in 26 events, the Games demonstrate the world’s growing focus on embodied intelligence,” he said. Zhao added that the goal is to establish the Humanoid Robot Games as a recurring international event—potentially becoming a “third Olympics” that blends technology with sport, driving continuous innovation in the robotics industry.
The 2025 World Humanoid Robot Games, held from August 14–17 at Beijing’s National Speed Skating Oval, offered a striking glimpse into the future of robotics, where machines not only perform in controlled environments but increasingly mirror human agility, decision-making, and teamwork.
