How to Watch the World Humanoid Robot Games 2026: Full Schedule and Session Times (Aug 22–26)

The 2nd World Humanoid Robot Games run August 22–26, 2026 at Beijing's National Speed Skating Oval, and the shape of the week is simple: nine competition units over five days, two a day, one in the afternoon and one in the evening, about three hours each. Where to watch is the harder question. No US broadcaster has bought the rights, so for almost everyone outside China this is a streaming event — and the free English feed comes from CGTN, the international arm of co-host China Media Group.

This is the practical guide: the five days in order, session times converted to your clock, the streams country by country, what a ticket costs if you are actually in Beijing, which manufacturers are entered, and who is likely to win. For the format itself and how the Games came about, read our World Humanoid Robot Games 2026 preview.

The five days, in order

Organizers have confirmed the structure and the marquee slots rather than a full event-by-event clock. Here is what is fixed:

The per-session timetable lives on the official site, whrgoc.com, and it is the only place that publishes start times unit by unit. Nothing in the English-language releases gives a clock time for each event, so if you are planning a specific wake-up, check the official schedule the night before.

What time that is where you live

Beijing runs on UTC+8 with no daylight saving. The table below uses a 2 p.m. and a 7 p.m. Beijing start as reference points for the afternoon and evening units; shift by the same offset once the official times are out.

The move from morning sessions in 2025 to afternoon and evening ones in 2026 was made for the Chinese prime-time audience, and it happens to work in Europe's favour: the evening unit lands at lunchtime in London and early afternoon in Madrid. North America gets the raw end. An evening session is a breakfast watch on the East Coast and a 4 a.m. alarm on the West Coast, while the afternoon unit is the middle of the night either way. Asia-Pacific viewers barely have to adjust at all.

Where to stream it, country by country

One thing to be clear about: as of August 19 there is no announced rights deal in the US, the UK, Europe or Australia. That is not a gap in our research, it is the state of the event. Humanoid sport has no broadcast market outside China yet, which is why the co-host is a state broadcaster and the international feed is free.

The 2025 precedent is the best guide to what the 2026 stream will look like. CGTN carried the opening ceremony live, ran a live show for finals day, and cut a highlight package afterwards, all free and without a login. Expect commentary in Mandarin on the domestic feed and English on the CGTN one. If you only care about the sprint and the football final, the reels will serve you better than five days of three-hour blocks.

Tickets, if you are going to Beijing

Competition-day tickets start at ¥98 (roughly $14) and ceremony tickets at ¥128, with the top categories reaching about ¥670. Two- and three-person packages are sold as well. Inside mainland China more than ten platforms carry them, including the Chaopiao Saiyan WeChat mini-program, Damai, Maoyan, Piaoxingqiu and Hongguozi. From abroad, Damai International is the route. It is deliberately cheap for an Olympic venue, which tells you the point of the exercise: Beijing wants humanoids to feel like a spectator sport rather than a lab demo.

The 51 events, in plain terms

The competitive half, 30 events, is a track meet with combat sports bolted on. Athletics covers the 100m, 400m, 1,500m, hurdles, the 4×100m relay and a new long jump. Football is split into 5v5 large and medium classes plus a 3v3 U19 bracket. Then come table tennis, weightlifting, tug-of-war, freestyle fighting in 40 kg, 58 kg and 80 kg classes, wushu, gymnastics, and dance across street, ballroom and cheerleading formats. Dance is the growth story: 108 teams entered, up from 29 last year.

The other 21 events are the ones industry people actually watch. Scenario tasks are staged in nine real settings: households, hotels, industrial workshops, emergency rescue, logistics, libraries, retail, office services and vehicle charging. Robots no longer compete alone in them either — pairs and groups of four share the floor. Two new challenges are the hardest tests on the programme:

The rulebook changed more than the programme did. Finishing times were cut hard: 100m from three minutes to one, 400m from 15 minutes to five, 1,500m from 40 to 15. Every track and competitive event must now be completed fully autonomously, with only the 100m and 400m obstacle races exempt. In scenario events an autonomous run scores at a weight of 1.0 against 0.5 for teleoperation. Football got a rule aimed squarely at hero robots: a goal counts only if at least two teammates touched the ball in the build-up. There are 223 referees this year, 100 more than last, and a beefed-up arbitration committee to settle protests quickly.

Who is entered: 666 teams, 2,056 robots

The field is four times the size of 2025 by robot count and 138% bigger by team count. It is also overwhelmingly Chinese: 641 of the 666 teams and 1,975 of the 2,056 robots, drawn from 157 companies and 200 universities and research institutes, including 27 major Chinese universities across 30 provinces and regions. International entries come from 16 countries on six continents, with teams from the United States, Germany and Japan, and a Brazilian national squad assembled from five RoboCup championship teams.

Organizers say every first-tier domestic manufacturer is present but have not published a company-by-company roster, so treat brand lists elsewhere with suspicion. Two entries are confirmed in detail. X-Humanoid, the Beijing Humanoid Robot Innovation Center, is fielding four machines: TienKung Ultra, TienKung 3.0, TienKung Omni and TianYi 2.0, all trained on its HuiSi KaiWu platform. Booster Robotics is in as well, and its T1 platform is the hardware under Tsinghua University's THU Huoshen team, which won a second straight RoboCup Humanoid League title earlier this year.

The favourites, and the rule that could reshuffle them

The autonomy requirement is the storyline. In 2025 a robot could win on the track with an operator trotting alongside; in 2026 that is disqualifying everywhere except two obstacle races. Any team whose 2025 result leaned on a human in the loop has to rebuild the run, and the teams that were already autonomous only have to get faster. Weightlifting and freestyle fighting are the other two to watch, because load and contact are where balance controllers fail publicly.

What the first Games actually produced

The 2025 edition ran August 14–17 at the same venue with 280 teams from 16 countries and more than 500 robots. Unitree finished on top of the medal count with 11, X-Humanoid second with 10. The results worth remembering:

Put 21.50 seconds next to Usain Bolt's 9.58 and the gap is embarrassing. Put it next to what a full-size electric biped could do in 2023 and it is remarkable. That is the value of a scored competition over a launch video, and it is the same argument we make for making robots race and compete rather than pose. Five days of this tells you more about the state of the field than a year of keynotes, which is why we will be watching the boring scenario blocks as closely as the sprint.

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