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Decode (FIRST)

Decode, stylized as DECODE, or officially referred to as DECODE presented by RTX is the First Tech Challenge game for the 2025-2026 season. The Decode season kickoff was on September 6th, 2025 and was broadcast through YouTube and occurred at many local kickoff events.

01Field

In Decode, two alliances of two teams each compete on a 12 foot by 12 foot arena made up of 36 interlocking tiles by scoring green and purple balls called artifacts into their alliance-specific goal, create patterns, and park at the end of the match. At opposite sides of the Decode field, in the front corners, there are two goals that artifacts are scored into, one for each alliance. There are white tape lines called launch lines that are parallel to the front face of each goal and additional launch lines that go perpendicularly from each goal to meet in the center of the field. There are also two more launch lines at the rear-end of the field, forming a triangle shape, starting from one tile from the middle on each side and meeting one tile from the edge.

Triple Base Zone Park at the Chicago Robotics Invitation for the FTC Decode Season
Triple Base Zone Park at the Chicago Robotics Invitation for the FTC Decode Season

02Scoring

There are three parts in an FTC Decode Game: Autonomous, TeleOp, and End Game.

03Advancement

Advancement points are used to rank FTC teams for advancing to the next level of play. Teams with the highest rank not already advanced will move up. The table below indicates how advancement points are awarded.

Type Advancement Points Earned
Qualification Matches A normal distribution of 2 to 16 points are awarded based on the rankings of teams at the completion of qualification matches with the highest ranking team getting 16 points and the lowest ranking team getting 2 points.
Playoff Alliance 21-α advancement points are given to each team on the playoff alliance where α is the alliance number.
Playoff Rankings Points are awarded based on overall playoff alliance ranking.
Ranking Advancement Points
1st 40
2nd 20
3rd 10
4th 5
Judged Awards Points are awarded based on award placement.
Award Place Advancement Points
Inspire 1st 60
2nd 30
3rd 15
Generic 1st 12
2nd 6
3rd 3

04World Championship

The FTC World Championship occurred form April 29th, 2026 to May 2nd, 2026, bringing 338 together teams from around the world. The overall awards from the FTC World Championship are listed below.

Award Name Team or Person Name Team Number Location
Inspire Award Amigos Droids 17792 Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, Brazil
Winning Alliance Captain Exodus 30030 Austin, Texas, USA
Winning Alliance 1st Pick Velocity 21087 Brǎila, Brǎila, Romania
Winning Alliance 2nd Pick OverClucked Bots 11228 Zeeland, Michigan, USA
Finalist Alliance Captain RoboPlayers 18270 Irving, Texas, USA
Finalist Alliance 1st Pick Heart of RoBots 20265 Buzău, Buzău, Romania
Finalist Alliance 2nd Pick Technical Difficulties 7172 Plano, Texas, USA
Compass Award Burçin Gündüz 25171 İzmir, Turkey
FIRST Leadership Award Arjun Dasari 252 Providence, Rhode Island, USA
Anya Arun 21351 Charlotte, North Carolina, USA
Kuek Kuek 16010 Omaha, Nebraska, USA
Karime Lopez 5470 El Paso, Texas, USA
Ananya Purohit 25742 Folsom, California, USA
Chris Zheng 23280 San Diego, California, USA
Arnav Gaddamanugu 16290 Sanford, Florida, USA
Arhaan Jafri 20240 Austin, Texas, USA
Sofia Lana 17792 Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, Brazil
Abigail Fenrick 22526 Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, USA

05Premier Events

Following a regional championship, teams may advance to a premier event or in some premier events can separately apply. There were 12 premier events in the FTC Decode season. Information about each one is listed in the table below.

Watch videos about Decode (FIRST)Explainers and documentaries on YouTube (opens in a new tab)

Sources and credits

This article is adapted from the Wikipedia article Decode (FIRST), written by its contributors and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Fathomly has changed the layout, removed citation markers, navigation and maintenance notices, and adjusted punctuation. This adapted version is shared under the same license. For references, see the original article.

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