The 2026–27 FIRST® Tech Challenge season is here. On Saturday, September 12, FIRST revealed this year’s game, BIOBUZZ™, and the Octobots got to work.
The game
BIOBUZZ is all about bees. Two alliances of two robots each collect Pollen and Nectar, launch them into their Hive, and place them into Flowers. Fill a Hive cell and it tips, which scores points and unlocks more Nectar. In the final stretch, alliances race to claim Flowers with their own Nectar.
Each match is two and a half minutes. The first 30 seconds are autonomous, so the robot runs on code the students wrote with no driver input. Then two drivers take over for the last two minutes.
What happens now
Kickoff weekend is for reading the rules, watching the reveal, and sketching first ideas. This week the team starts strategy and CAD. Over the next few weeks we will prototype intakes for grabbing Pollen, figure out how to launch into the Hive, and get a drive base rolling so the programmers can start on autonomous.
We practice Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays at our practice facility. Our first look at the real field comes at a scrimmage in Norwalk on October 31, and Daisy League play starts November 7 in Martensdale.
Students in grades 9–12: the start of a season is the best time to join. No experience needed. There is a job for everyone, from building and coding to driving, outreach, and the engineering notebook.