The first-ever World Humanoid Robot Games in Beijing offered a peak into a robot-run future that China intends to dominate.
The three-day spectacle served as a geopolitical theater, positioning the Chinese capital city as the global hub for synthetic humans. It followed another unprecedented display at the 2025 World Robot Conference (WRC), which featured more than 500 exhibits and 100 new product debuts, as well as the grand opening of Beijing’s robot superstore.
Massive Turnout
According to Chinese state media, the 2025 World Humanoid Robot Games hosted more than 500 bots and 280 teams from universities, private enterprises, and even a few middle and high school groups. Amid an intensifying international technological arms race, the Olympics for fake humans acted as a calculated display of capabilities that have leapt far beyond what was possible just a year ago.
The games were held at the National Speed Skating Oval, which was built for the 2022 Winter Olympics and seats up to 12,000 spectators. Attendees who paid between $18 and $80 for tickets laughed when robots stumbled and cheered during triumphs with emotional investment rivaling traditional sports spectators.
Opening Ceremony
The games kicked off with a vibrant opening ceremony during which China’s growing army of robotic humanoids showed off a mix of artistic and athletic feats. Beijing-based Booster Robotics’ short humanoids were featured prominently throughout the presentation dancing with Chinese pop star Liu Yuxin alongside cyberpunk-inspired robots from Shenzhen-based EngineAI. Booster Robotics supplied its T1 robots for all 46 teams competing in humanoid robot soccer matches.
Another Chinese robotics leader, UBTECH, brought its robotic bipedal panda named YouYou, which demonstrated its Tai Chi abilities, followed by an all-robot rock band with humanoids playing keyboard, guitar, and drums. The night also featured a runway segment during which robots dawn fashionable hats and clothing alongside human models. One robot fell and became disabled during the showcase and had to be carried off stage by human handlers.
As apparent in broadcast footage, most of the robot’s actions throughout the games were executed by remote control, but participants said they’re working toward greater autonomy for future events.
Unitree Rules Track and Field
The leading Chinese robotics firm, Unitree, dominated track and field events throughout the games, capturing four gold medals. Hangzhou-based Unitree Robotics, launched in 2016 by hardware engineer Wang Xingxing, brought its flagship full-sized humanoid the H1 and its shorter robots to compete in athletic and combat events.
The Unitree H1 robot started off strong, easily securing first place in a 1500-meter race, finishing in 6 minutes and 34 seconds and closed the games with a strong win in a 4×100-meter relay race. According to Unitree, the H1 robots that competed are the same model that was seen by a billion viewers during China’s spring festival gala earlier in 2025.
A Unitree subsidiary, Beijing Lingyi Technology, operated the first-place H1 humanoid during the classic middle-distance race. The speed, averaging at 3.8 m/s, is significantly lower than human runners and pales in comparison to the controlled demo footage that Unitree released on the eve of the robot games event. That video doesn’t disclose the exact speed, but Unitree says its internal record exceeds 5 m/s. It’s a significant improvement from its 2024 record of 3.3 m/s.
Unitree’s H1 also won the gold medal in a 400-meter race, setting a competitive humanoid world record with a time of 1 minute and 28 seconds. For comparison, the human record is 43 seconds.
In post-race comments, Unitree’s founder lamented lost points due to a serious mistake from physical exhaustion among the team. He said he plans to rely less on remote control during future competitions for ultimate speed.
One viral moment from the day highlighted the potential dangers of robots in public arenas. During the 1,500-meter race, a Unitree H1 robot is seen running into a person operating a much smaller robot and knocking him down. Though the fallen operator gets up quickly and was apparently not seriously hurt, it could have been a lot worse.
The H1, which is priced starting at $90,000, weighs 47 kg (100+ lbs), which is hefty enough to crack bones or cause head injuries at top speeds. Unitree’s official terms and policies acknowledge the risks of damage caused by collisions between robots and people in complex environments.
During the first day of the humanoid robot games, Unitree’s shorter G1 robots participated in one-on-one bouts. Those robots, which are priced starting around $16K, are becoming increasingly common outside China.
A Unitree G1 robot also took the gold medal in the 100-meter obstacle course event designed to test balance, agility, and quick recovery on uneven terrain. The robot made it through the series of obstacles in about 2 and half minutes. The remote-controlled G1 breezed through the course with relative ease, while the open-source Tiangong humanoid had a particularly nasty spill.
PNDbotics’ Takes Cold in Kung Fu
In a martial arts performance event, the PNDbotics team won gold with a score of 31, determined by a panel judging choreograph kung fu forms.
Adam, the rising Chinese startup’s flagship humanoid, recently made headlines rocking the stage playing keytar during China’s VoyageX Music Festival. PNDbotics’ robot was also the only full-sized humanoid to successfully finish the 100-meter obstacle course.
Dancing Robots
In a group dance competition, robots teamed up with humans performing synchronized routines.
The gold went to a performance called Qin Terra Cotta Soul by the Beijing Dance Academy and Hubei Optics Valley OnSight Tech. Nine life-sized humanoid robots, donning 3D-printed terracotta army-style armor, danced alongside a human performer, scoring 92 points to win first place.
Shenzhen based Lumos Robotics came in second place with its trio of full-sized dancing humanoids.
RobotEra L7’s Jumps New Record
Humanoid robots also competed in jumping challenges. In the standing high jump, Beijing-based RobotEra’s L7 leaped 95 cm to win gold and set a new world record for bipedal humanoids.
At nearly a full meter, the performance is out of reach for most real people, who can typically only manage between 30 and 50 cm without a running start. The L7 has a bit more training to do to beat the record set by Canadian athlete Evan Unger, who jumped 1.6 meters straight up back in 2016, verified by Guiness World Records.
RobotEra, which was spun from Tsinghua University in 2023, recently secured nearly $70 million, bringing its total publicized funding for 2024 and 2025 to more than $125 million.
The L7 robot boasts 55 degrees of freedom (DoF) across its body and joints that deliver a reported 400 Nm of torque for fast and powerful limb movements. It can lift and carry up to 20 kg using both arms and maintains 360-degree spatial awareness with its multi-sensor fusion system that combines panoramic vision, depth sensing, and real-time positional feedback.
In the solid robot dance competition, a team from the Beijing Academy of General AI was crowned champion with its G1 Dancing King that won 95 points. The three-minute medley mixed martial arts moves, ballroom steps, and street dance. The margin of victory was slim, finishing a tenth of a percentage point ahead of the second-place winner, which wowed the crowd with a backflip.
Real-World Tasks
The games also evaluated humanoids on task-based challenges.
For industrial applications, humanoids were tested in simulated factory jobs. A material handling event challenged robots to lift bins from various heights and load them onto carts. Team Lingzhi from Dongguan Lingzhi Robotics took the gold with 313 points.
In a contest based on hospital pharmacy tasks, robots sorted and dispensed medicine, reflecting real hospital needs. A team from the Jianghuai Frontier Tech Center won with a total score of 1,389 points. Their humanoid robot demonstrated the ability to identify different medications, deafly manipulate a pill package, and accurately sort meds into containers.
Wheeled humanoids from Shanghai based UniXAI swept hospitality-themed competitions, winning the gold medal in a room cleaning challenge by completing the task in just 8 minutes and 21 seconds. The startup, launched in 2024, recently started mass producing its general-purpose humanoid robot called Wanda 2.0, with a starting price around $12K. The Wanda robot has an adjustable height of up to 170 cm and dual arms with a reported 8 DoF each and adaptive two-finger grippers with touch sensing.
During the finale, organizers officially confirmed that the second World Humanoid Games will be held in Beijing in August 2026. To stay up-to-date as humanoid robotics evolves until then, make sure to subscribe to my YouTube channel first updates.