Iceland is joining the World Robot Olympiad (WRO), one of the world’s largest international robotics and STEM competitions for students in elementary schools, high schools and universities. The first Icelandic WRO season will be in spring 2027, with the aim of building a strong annual competition where young people can take on creative challenges in programming, engineering, innovation and robotics.
WRO is an international robotics and STEM competition founded in 2004. Its activities have reached more than 175,000 young people worldwide, with 32,100 teams across more than 100 active member countries.
The competition is based on students working together in teams to design, build, and program robots, and to develop solutions to a wide range of challenges. The emphasis is not only on technical skills, but also on creativity, problem-solving, collaboration and innovation.
Building on more than two decades of experience
The University of Iceland has organised FIRST LEGO League in Iceland for more than two decades, giving generations of elementary school students the opportunity to explore programming, engineering and science through hands-on and creative learning.
The World Robot Olympiad represents the next step in this work. It offers a wider range of age-appropriate robotics challenges, allows the use of more varied robotics equipment, and reaches a broader age group, including upper-secondary school students who have so far had fewer opportunities to participate in this type of competition in Iceland.
The long-term goal is to build a major annual event for young people across different age groups and create a clear pathway from their first experiences with programming and robotics to increasingly advanced projects in engineering and innovation.
