Mahindra University hosts Indian National Open drone race at AEON 2026

Drone racing had the feel of a main-event sport at Mahindra University, where AEON 2026 wrapped an Indian National Open FPV race inside the campus’s flagship tech fest in Hyderabad. The energy came from the setup: a national-open field, a formal race window, and a crowd drawn from a festival billed as “built for creators, builders, and dreamers,” with 25-plus events, 8,000-plus footfall and more than 35 participating colleges feeding the noise around the course.

What made this more than a flashy exhibition was the structure around it. AEON 2026 ran from April 24 to April 26, and its schedule covered competitions, workshops, talks, showcases and special sessions, putting the drone race in the middle of a broader student-innovation weekend rather than off to the side as a novelty act. FPV India, which calls itself India’s premier FPV drone racing league, had Mahindra University on its calendar in March 2026, underscoring that this stop sat inside a national racing ecosystem, not an ad hoc campus demo.

The track itself told the sharpest story. FPV India’s race-track video said the course was a slightly modified version of the “griffin” track, adjusted to avoid mid-air collisions at the start. That matters in FPV, where the first few seconds often decide whether a heat stays clean or turns into a pileup. The live stream titled “Mahindra University - Marathon Race” identified the action as the Indian National Open drone race, and a second FPV India video labeled “Mahindra University - seeding” pointed to the same event, giving the weekend a real competitive backbone instead of a one-off show piece.

That is the bigger takeaway from AEON 2026. Mahindra University was not just renting out space for visiting pilots. It was giving the sport a stage, a timetable and a campus audience large enough to matter, while surrounding the race with the kind of engineering culture that can produce future pilots, builders and organizers. The precedent is already there: AEON ’25 was Mahindra University’s first tech fest, held April 4 to April 6, 2025, and it stretched across AI, robotics, blockchain, quantum computing, aerospace, gaming, motorsports and drone workshops. Add the 2026 race, and the pattern is clear. Mahindra University is starting to look less like a host and more like a base camp for Indian FPV’s next wave.