FAI 2026 Drone Racing World Cup spans 13 countries, 15 events

The FAI has put 15 Drone Racing World Cup events into 13 countries for 2026, and that scale changes the sport immediately: pilots are no longer chasing isolated showcases, they are fighting through a genuine global points race.

The calendar is built around the F9U class, or Radio Control Multi-rotor Drone Racing, and the FAI describes the World Cup as an open international series rather than a national-team competition. Eligibility runs through a valid FAI Sporting Licence or FAI Drone Permission, and the final annual ranking carries CIAM medals and diplomas for the top three. That structure makes every stop count, because there is no country-versus-country cushion and no team title to soften a bad result.

For pilots, the biggest shift is practical. A season that runs from the Philippines in February through a late-year stretch across Germany, China, Korea, Hong Kong, Belgium, France, Italy, Serbia, Israel, Slovakia, Türkiye and other hosts forces real decisions about budget, travel and points strategy. Flying one or two events is no longer enough if a pilot wants to stay in the mix. The calendar rewards the athletes and teams that can absorb flights, spares, battery logistics and recovery time while still staying sharp from stop to stop.

That breadth also makes the 2026 season feel broader than the recent pandemic-era calendars, even if it still sits below the pre-COVID highs. The FAI says the World Cup format was implemented in 2019, while a 2022 report notes the F9U World Cup had been introduced in 2016. That same 2022 season initially listed 14 events from 11 countries, compared with 24 events from 19 countries in 2019 and 22 events from 17 countries in 2018. The 2025 report showed how fragile the circuit can be when two events were cancelled, leaving 12 events from 11 countries effectively counted for ranking.

The geography matters as much as the number. FAI allows a country to host up to two World Cup competitions per year, or up to four when geography across more than three time zones makes that necessary, a rule that underlines how international the circuit has become. The event documents also matter: each stop comes with an information bulletin, detailed results and a FAI Jury President report available for download, giving the series a formal, document-driven edge that looks more like a mature world tour than a loose collection of races.

The broader FAI drone-sport ecosystem keeps expanding around it. Drone racing returned to The World Games in Chengdu from 13 to 16 August 2025, the first FAI e-Drone Racing World Cup launched in 2024, and the 2024 world championship in Hangzhou drew more than 100 pilots from 33 nations onto a triple-level, 650-meter course with 55 obstacles. Against that backdrop, the 2026 World Cup is more than a calendar update. It is a map of where drone racing now stands: global, formalized and increasingly expensive to win.