Bengaluru techfest stages full-day FPV drone racing challenge for students

Pilots will have to bring their own drones, thread an obstacle-filled FPV course, and stay sharp through three rounds spread across an 11-hour window if they want to contend at Bengaluru’s student race. The format, set for April 24 at S-VYASA University in Sattva Global City Tech Park, turns the challenge into more than a campus demo: it is a test of build quality, flight control, and consistency under pressure.

That is what gives the FPV Drone Racing Challenge its real edge. Teams can have one to three members, and the field is open far beyond one narrow engineering lane, with engineering students, postgraduates, undergraduates, management students, and entrants from arts, commerce, sciences, and other backgrounds all eligible. In other words, this is a talent-pipeline event, not a closed technical showcase. Students who can design, tune, and fly their own aircraft will get a direct bridge from classroom tinkering to live competition.

The schedule reinforces that seriousness. All three rounds run from 10:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m., giving competitors time for qualifiers, adjustments, and a final push for the top spots. The prize pool is listed at ₹70,000, enough to pull in ambitious student pilots looking for more than a one-off exhibition run. The broader AAYAM 2026 festival, hosted at NST S-VYASA University in Bengaluru on April 24 and 25, lists the drone segment as Drone Hurdle Racing and includes 6-plus competitions and 3,000-plus participants, placing the FPV race inside a much larger technology festival built around hands-on competition.

The venue matters too. S-VYASA University identifies itself as a UGC-recognized deemed university, and the campus setting in Sattva Global City Tech Park adds an industry-facing backdrop to a sport that already depends on engineering skill. For a student racer, the hardware is not supplied by the event. The drone has to be brought in, maintained, and trusted in flight, which pushes participants to understand battery behavior, frame setup, control response, and crash recovery before they ever enter the lane.

The event also lands in a larger national push around drone racing. Indian Drone Racing League calls itself India’s first and largest FPV drone racing league and says it has 15,000-plus pilots, while FPV India says its goal is to popularize drone racing across the country and prepare pilots for international competition. That makes Bengaluru’s full-day race look less like an isolated campus attraction and more like another entry point into a growing sporting and technical ecosystem, one where the next generation of pilots is learning to compete by building first and flying second.