Photo: Courtesy of organizers

The finals of the 2025 RoboCup Humanoid League, part of the world's most prestigious robot competition, concluded on Sunday in Brazil, with Tsinghua University's Hephaestus team beating China Agricultural University's Mountain & Sea team 5:3 to clinch the title. China has made history by winning the gold for the first time in the 28-year history of the tournament's Humanoid AdultSize Soccer Competition.

Three other Chinese teams also delivered impressive results, with Tsinghua's TH-MOS team taking second place in the KidSize category.

Unlike in previous editions, Chinese teams showed dominant form from the group stage onward. Hephaestus, powered by the domestically developed T1 humanoid robots with an accelerated evolution design, overwhelmed opponents with multiple clean-sheet victories, including 16:0, 9:0, and 12:0 triumphs over UT Austin Villa from the US. 

One highlight of the tournament came during the group stage, when a Hephaestus robot scored the tournament's "best goal." In a moment reminiscent of Dutch footballer Robin van Persie's iconic diving header, the robot read the ball's trajectory at the goalmouth and launched forward to head the ball into the net. The dramatic goal was dubbed the "robot Van Persie dive." 

The runner-up team, CAU Mountain & Sea, expressed satisfaction with their debut performance and congratulated the champions. Team leader Yang Shaoshuai told the Global Times that such header goals were not random occurrences. 

"These actions reflect actual model training and decision-making by the robot," he said.

"It wasn't just Tsinghua - we also defeated traditional powerhouse UT Austin Villa 9-0 in the semifinals. That result was due to our advantages in visual positioning, navigation, and decision-making, which stemmed from solid preparation. But Tsinghua had an even more advanced decision-making algorithm - they deserve the win."

Notably, both Chinese and international teams, including those from Germany and the US, chose to use China-made humanoid robots such as the T1 and K1, underscoring the growing global influence of Chinese robotics.

In the KidSize soccer competition, both the German champions Boosted HTWK and China's TH-MOS team relied on the K1 robot. TH-MOS finished as runners-up after a 0:11 defeat in the finals.

Yang praised the performance of the K1 robots, noting their significant advantages in speed, power, and stability. "Some teams had no issues with recognition or visual localization, but when it came to movement speed, K1 robots were three to five times faster. It was like watching a fifth-generation fighter jet against a fourth-gen."

Cheng Hao, founder of Booster Robotics, the official hardware supplier for the event, told the Global Times that the tournament marked a turning point. "For the first time, a Chinese hardware platform, thanks to its performance and developer-friendly tools, became the go-to equipment for a top-tier global competition. China's robots have now become a core force on the world's competitive stage," he said.

Founded in 1997, RoboCup is the world's leading robotics competition, known for its scale, prestige, and technological rigor. Among its many leagues, the Humanoid category attracts the most attention. 

In its signature 3v3 team format, robots are required to integrate agile and durable physical designs with advanced real-time perception, decision-making, motion control, and multi-agent tactical coordination all based on AI-driven strategies with no human intervention, making it the ultimate all-around test of full-stack robotics engineering.

"Football, as a representative scenario of both confrontation and collaboration, provides the public with an intuitive understanding of the real-world application potential of humanoid robotics," Chen said.

Several of the teams that participated in RoboCup 2025 are also expected to compete at the upcoming first World Humanoid Sports Games to be held in August in Beijing, where the world's first 5v5 AI robotic soccer will be introduced. Back in June, China hosted its first-ever domestic 3v3 AI robotic soccer tournament, drawing widespread attention and signaling a growing national interest in intelligent robotic competitions.