Every humanoid robot fighting league, compared

Eighteen months ago humanoid robot fighting was one exhibition in Hangzhou. As of 11 October 2026 this record tracks ten competitions across six countries. They are not variations on one sport. They disagree on almost everything that matters: who controls the robot, which machine it is, whether a human is ever in the cage, and whether you can watch it at all.

This is the field, compared on those four questions.

THE CHINESE LEAGUES: ONE MACHINE, MANY TEAMS

URKL, the Ultimate Robot Knock-out Legend, is run by EngineAI in Shenzhen and is the closest thing the sport has to a professional league. Every team fights on the same machine, EngineAI's 1.73-metre T800, under hybrid control: an operator issues commands, the robot executes them. Fights are judged on balance, power, motion control and durability, not knockouts alone. Thirty-two teams came through qualifying; the season opened in Shenzhen on 16 July 2026, toured Shanghai in September, and promises a group stage "from October" and a grand final in December or January. No group-stage fixture has been published yet. URKL's opener was streamed on Bilibili.

The CMG2026 Robot Mecha Fighting Competition belongs to China Media Group, the state broadcaster CCTV, and is built around Unitree's full-size H2. Its stated finale is full-size autonomous combat. Neither its date nor its venue has been published.

The World Humanoid Robot Games in Beijing are not a fighting league but include one: free combat in 40, 58 and 80 kg classes, fought this August alongside athletics and football, broadcast by CCTV. Two earlier one-off events complete the Chinese history: Unitree's Iron Fist King in Hangzhou in May 2025, the event that started the sport, and EngineAI's Mecha King in December 2025, whose winner has never been published.

THE AMERICAN PROMOTIONS: SHOWS, NOT RUBRICS

Ultimate Bots (UFB) is the largest American league. It fights on Unitree G1s and Booster T1s driven by game controllers — or from a browser, which makes it the one league you can enter without being in the room. Season 2 is a touring circuit of four permanent teams scored on fighting, dancing and an obstacle course, opening at TwitchCon San Diego on 12 November. It is also the only league with a dependable live channel: twitch.tv/ufb0ts.

REK, in San Francisco, is the opposite of a league: a ticketed show in a nightclub register, its pilots in VR headsets. It made the sport's biggest headline this autumn by putting a human boxer in the cage with a T800, and California's athletic commission ordered it to stop fights involving humans. Its next night, the bladed Deathmatch on 9 October, was robots only and deliberately not streamed; REK posts clips afterwards.

THE NEW SOUTHEAST ASIAN WAVE: THE PILOT'S BODY IS THE CONTROLLER

Shadow Combat League, in Malaysia, drives its robots by motion capture: the pilot moves and the machine mirrors the pilot. It has staged three events, most recently New Dawn MY in Kuala Lumpur on 3 October with three title belts, streamed in full on its own YouTube channel. Its next event is promised for the first quarter of 2027.

ARC, the Avatar Robotic Competition, run by Katena, uses the same idea with its own suit and software, in two weight classes: G1 lightweight, T800 heavyweight. After nights in New York and Chicago it brought the T800 to Singapore on 7 October. It names no champions yet.

RFC, the Robot Fighting Championship, previewed itself in the same Singapore theatre two days later with VR-piloted T800-class robots. It has a website and no launch date.

CyberHero, from Hero Esports, sits between the two worlds: T800 kickboxing staged as entertainment, launched in Riyadh on 9 September with a three-on-three team format and no live stream, and an eight-city circuit whose other seven cities have not been named.

WHAT THE COMPARISON SHOWS

Three ways to control a robot have emerged, and they are becoming the sport's real divide. Hybrid command-and-execute (URKL) tests the machine. Controllers and VR headsets (UFB, REK, RFC) test the operator's reflexes through a screen. Motion capture (SCL, ARC) puts the pilot's own body in the fight. Two machines dominate: the EngineAI T800 and the Unitree G1.

And for a viewer, one fact outweighs all the others: only a few of these leagues reliably stream. Most publish clips after the fact, and several publish nothing at all. That is why every league page on this record lists exactly where — and whether — its fights can be watched, and why the schedule lists every dated fight night across all ten.