Ultimate Robot Knock-out Legend

The first commercial free-combat league for full-size humanoid robots, launched by Shenzhen's EngineAI on 9 February 2026. Every team fights the same hardware — the EngineAI T800 — under hybrid control, where an operator issues commands and the robot executes them physically. Scoring is not knockouts alone: matches are judged on balance, power delivery, motion control, decision-making, perception and structural durability. Over 200 teams from 10 countries entered, including Stanford, Tsinghua and Zhejiang University; 32 came through the online qualifiers. The prize pool is 10 million yuan, about $1.44 million, and the champion takes a 10-kilogram solid gold belt.

The season runs in four stages: the 16 July opener in Shenzhen, an August physical play-in cutting the field from 32 to 16, a 16-team group stage in October, and a grand final reported for Dubai in late December 2026 or January 2027. No date has been announced for the final, and no complete bracket has been published.

The opening bout put White Eagle against Matador (斗牛士, sometimes translated Bullfighter). Chinese reporting — Huacheng and People's Daily — records Matador winning 3–2 over five rounds despite losing its head module to a flying kick early in the fight; English outlets that saw the kick and called it for White Eagle were wrong. The full result is in our records.