Moldova All Time Leader FIRST Global Challenge Korea

FIRST Global Team Moldova is preparing to represent the Republic of Moldova at the FIRST Global Challenge 2026, scheduled for October 7–10 in Incheon, Republic of Korea, following the publication of FIRST Global’s all-time medal rankings, which placed Moldova first worldwide with eight gold medals. The national team will compete alongside students from more than 190 countries at the Olympics-style international robotics competition. FIRST Global has confirmed that this year’s edition will center on the theme “Igniting Innovation,” challenging teams to apply robotics and engineering to wildfire prevention, mitigation, and recovery.

Moldova is heading to Incheon with a major achievement already secured. Its Innovation Project, “Ember Mesh: Sensors for Early Wildfire Detection Beneath Canopies,” has advanced to the third and final phase of the competition’s New Technology Experience. Of the more than 190 national teams participating in the FIRST Global Challenge 2026, 81 entered the Innovation Project competition. Only 15 advanced to the second phase, and just five projects were selected for the final phase, including Moldova’s entry. The team is now intensively refining its solution and preparing for its final presentation in Incheon.

Moldova’s position at the top of the rankings reflects a record built over several generations of students. Since joining the competition, the country has earned eight FIRST Global gold medals: three in 2019, one in 2022, one in 2023, two in 2024, and one in 2025. Last year’s achievement also marked the fifth consecutive in-person edition in which Moldova won gold for Innovation in Engineering, with the international jury recognizing the creativity and technical ingenuity behind the team’s robot design.

“Eight gold medals are not the achievement of one exceptional team or one exceptional year. They are the cumulative result of years of building a system — giving students access to robotics, investing in teachers and mentors, creating national competitions and then giving the strongest teams the opportunity to test themselves against the best in the world. Moldova is a small country, but robotics has shown repeatedly that size does not limit what our young people can achieve when talent is given the right environment to grow. And our ambition is bigger than medals. The students building and programming robots today are the engineers, product developers, researchers and founders Moldova’s economy will need tomorrow. They are learning to experiment, fail, redesign, collaborate and solve difficult problems under pressure — exactly the capabilities that drive an innovation economy.”

— Veronica Eșanu, Coordinator of the National Educational Robotics Program and Mentor of FIRST Global Team Moldova

Moldova’s National Educational Robotics Program began in 2014, initially bringing hands-on robotics education to a small number of schools. It has since expanded from an extracurricular initiative into a nationwide platform for applied science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education. From just a handful of participating institutions in its early years, the program has grown to reach approximately 270 educational institutions nationwide, more than 700 trained teachers, and over 60,000 students who have participated in robotics activities, around 40% of whom are girls. More than 60,000 hours of robotics activities have been delivered, with schools and clubs extending the program beyond Chișinău to communities throughout the country.

Robotics has also moved beyond extracurricular education. As the program expanded, the Ministry of Education and Research of the Republic of Moldova incorporated Robotics as a module in the national Technological Education curriculum beginning in Grade 4. This provides schools with a formal framework for integrating practical engineering, programming, and problem-solving into classroom learning.

The 2026 FIRST Global Challenge will give a new generation of Moldovan students the opportunity to build on this record. Teams will design and program robots using a standardized kit of parts to respond to a simulated environment inspired by wildfire prevention and recovery. The challenge combines engineering performance with teamwork and international collaboration.

Moldova’s participation in Incheon is supported through cooperation among the Ministry of Education and Research, through the National Agency for Curriculum and Evaluation; the Innovate Moldova Programme, funded by Sweden and the United Kingdom; and Premier Energy Distribution. The Technical University of Moldova and FabLab Chișinău are also contributing technical infrastructure and expertise. This partnership continues a model that has supported successive generations of Moldova’s national robotics teams, helping transform a school-level educational initiative into sustained international achievement.