MultiGP Kicks Off 2026 With Global Events, From Local Whoops to International Open

The funnel runs from Thursday night whoop sessions in Denver to a five-day, seven-track championship in Muncie, Indiana, and MultiGP's 2026 calendar makes the entire developmental arc visible in a single events listing.

With 30,000 registered pilots across 500 active chapters worldwide, the league Chris Thomas founded in February 2015 out of Florida's Brevard Multirotor club has constructed a participation architecture that almost no amateur motorsports organization can replicate at scale. The 2025 Global Qualifier, which drew 1,113 pilots from 51 countries, was the clearest proof yet that the chapter-to-qualifier pipeline actually produces international depth.

The most immediate landmark on the 2026 slate is the Collegiate Drone Racing Championship, set for April 11-12 at the Skyway36 Droneport and Technology Innovation Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Saturday qualifying runs from 9:00 am to 8:00 pm. LeTourneau University Tech Flyers and the US Air Force Academy are confirmed schools, and a VelociDrone sim tournament runs concurrently for teams not yet competing in-person. Skyway36 is not an improvised venue: four droneports, a 114-nautical-mile perimeter, and a 1,200-square-mile testing environment make it one of the most capable drone facilities operating in the United States, and AMA serves as official partner for the event.

At the chapter level, the week of April 8 illustrated how reliably MultiGP's grassroots infrastructure generates competitive activity. The Rotormaniacs held a training session. Whoopville Denver anchors its Thursday nights. TinyClub and Los Dronistas hold regional races in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The Syndicate Sim Series adds a virtual competitive lane, now running as VRL Season XII, the 12th iteration of MultiGP's eSport league through VelociDrone. Across all formats, pilots accumulate leaderboard points through MultiGP's integrated timing, scoring, and registration tools, the same tools the organization licenses via its VRX framework for race directors who want broadcast-ready operations.

The season's apex is June 10-14 at AMA headquarters in Muncie, Indiana. The International Open 2026, which has anchored MultiGP's calendar at AMA Muncie continuously since at least 2017, this year adds the MultiGP World Cup, a team racing format making its first appearance in IO programming. Race classes span the full competitive spectrum: Pro Spec, Build & Race, Chapter Organizer Race, 7-inch Group Races, IO SPEC, Freedom Spec, 2 Pilots 1 Quad, Rookie Track, GQ Over-40, and GQ Over-50. Early-bird tickets went on sale November 24 with a $25 discount attached. Team BlackSheep, one of the most recognized hardware brands in the global FPV community, is confirmed as an official 2026 MultiGP sponsor, a commitment that signals commercial confidence in MultiGP's competitive calendar as the central organizing axis of the sport.

For chapter organizers reading the participation data, the format logic is clear: whoop sessions and sim leagues generate the highest-frequency touchpoints because the barrier is genuinely low, indoor spaces, micro hardware, and no regulatory waiver required for Tiny Whoops indoors. Denver and Buenos Aires both demonstrate that regular weekly sessions create the habit loop that converts casual fliers into chapter-level competitors. From there, MultiGP's leaderboard structure exerts a natural gravitational pull toward Global Qualifier events. Pilots who chase enough qualifier points end up in Muncie in June, which is precisely the design. The World Cup team format adds a new incentive layer for pilots who want to represent a region rather than race individually, and that collective stakes could be the format shift that finally converts spectators into participants at the chapter level.