With this message we announce that LEGO® Education has decided to not continue as sponsor of World Robot Olympiad™ (WRO®) when the current agreement expires on 31 December 2024. LEGO Education will continue as a sponsor and support WRO through the 2023 and 2024 seasons. 

Since the start of our partnership in 2004, WRO has reached an estimated 1 million young students with our hands-on robots’ competitions around the world. During this time, WRO has grown from 12 to nearly 100 countries in 2023.

Claus Ditlev Christensen, Secretary General, WRO, says:

“After more than 20 years of collaboration with LEGO Education, WRO is in a strong position to continue our mission of inspiring young people all over the world to take an interest in STEM. We will continue developing our competition programs and work to include new and exciting technologies that will make our competitions even more accessible. We thank LEGO Education for their support through all these years”.

Camilla Bottke, Head of Competitions, LEGO Education, says:

“We look forward to the exciting opportunities ahead for WRO and the impact you will continue to have on students all over the world. We thank you and the entire WRO organisation for the many years of collaboration and wish you the best for the future. The decision to not renew the agreement was not an easy one to make, but we believe it will enable us to focus fully on our core initiatives and owned competitions programs.”

For our international competition community we want to share the following key information about the competition activities that will be impacted by this announcement:

  • WRO Association will initiate a work group comprising experts from our worldwide community to explore opportunities and potential changes to the RoboMission game field, rules and allowed platforms after 2024.
  • For the RoboMission game field, the LEGO Education 45811 & 45819 WRO Brick Sets will be used in the seasons 2024 and 2025.
  • LEGO robotic equipment such as LEGO SPIKE PRIME and EV3 will continue to be allowed in all competition categories in 2024 and 2025 – with no current plans to change this.

National Organisers in our countries will receive further information in the next weeks on organisational and logistical matters relating to this message.

For any questions on this matter, you can contact our team at: robots@wro-association.org