Robot Olympics, Round Two: Why the 2026 Humanoid Games in Beijing Actually Matter

Last August, the world laughed as humanoid robots stumbled, collided and occasionally sprinted their way through the first World Humanoid Robot Games in Beijing. This August, from the 22nd to the 26th, the second edition returns to the National Speed Skating Oval, and the organisers are making an ambitious claim: the toddler phase is over.

From spectacle to benchmark

The 2025 edition drew 280 teams from 16 countries across 26 sports, according to organisers. Hangzhou-based Unitree dominated the track, taking four golds in the 400 metres, the 1,500 metres, the 100-metre hurdles and the 4x100 relay; its H1 robot was reported to have run the 1,500 metres in 6 minutes 34 seconds. Entertaining, certainly. But most runners were still guided by human operators trailing behind with controllers.

That is the headline change for 2026. The 100-metre race becomes a fully autonomous event for the first time: no joysticks, no trailing humans, just perception, balance and planning at speed. Football players can reportedly now dribble on the move and make diving saves, a level organisers describe as progressing from preschoolers to youths. The programme spans more than 30 events in nine disciplines, from weightlifting and martial arts to tug of war and pitch-pot, a precision game derived from ancient Chinese archery rituals.

The events that matter are not on the track

The most telling category is the least flashy one. Six scenario-based contests move out of simulated arenas and into real environments: factories, hotels, model homes, emergency sites, hospitals and shops. Robots will sort laundry, prepare food, fight fires and handle logistics tasks, with fine manipulation explicitly scored. Organisers frame the shift as pushing humanoids from demonstration tools toward practical productivity, and that framing is exactly right. A robot that wins the 400 metres proves a lab milestone; a robot that folds towels in a real hotel room proves a business case.

There is, of course, an industrial-policy subtext. The Games are co-hosted by the Beijing municipal government and China Media Group, and they double as a showcase for China's humanoid champions at a moment when Western rivals such as Tesla and Figure publish far fewer public benchmarks. Whatever one thinks of the geopolitics, the format is working: an annual, public, repeatable stress test that the whole industry can watch.

Our advice: enjoy the tug of war, but watch the hotel room. That is where the next decade of robotics will be decided.