MultiGP sets two-day Tulsa finals for 2026 college drone championship

With more than 30,000 registered pilots and 500 active chapters worldwide, MultiGP brought collegiate FPV to Skyway36 in Tulsa with a format that looked built for the next rung up. The April 11-12 finals used one track released in September, with gates capped at 7 feet wide and 6 feet tall, a standardized rule set that made lap speed comparable across campuses.

The weekend was designed as a team travel event, not a lone-pilot stop. Each school could enter eight flying pilots and bring as many support staff as it wanted, while support crews did not need tickets and could not swap in for a pilot who had already bought one. Admission, a T-shirt and Saturday lunch were bundled into the ticket, a small detail that underscored how much the championship depended on logistics, from battery charging and tuning help to spares and repair work between heats.

Skyway36 fit the moment. The Osage Nation’s aerospace technology innovation zone and droneport sits just outside downtown Tulsa, less than 5 miles away and about 10 miles from Tulsa International Airport. The site includes a renovated hangar, office space, a 3,000-foot runway and helipad space for unmanned aerial systems and eVTOL work, plus access to Skyway Range, a 1,200-square-mile UAS flight test range. Tribal Business News said the Skyway36 Droneport and Technology Innovation Center opened in May 2025, was built from a former airplane hangar, received a $2 million Economic Development Administration grant and launched with WindShape as its first tenant.

That setting helped explain why the championship felt less like a club meetup and more like a pipeline event. MultiGP’s collegiate series now runs on a clearly defined national structure, with one track for all schools and a championship path that rewards organization as much as reflexes. The field has widened to include programs such as Virginia Tech, Northeastern, Alabama, Boston University, Missouri S&T, UCF, Duke, Oregon State, Georgia Tech, ÉTS, LeTourneau, Tech Flyers and the U.S. Air Force Academy.

The scale has changed quickly. Championship materials described 12 schools and more than 50 pilots ready to battle in 2026, while UNC said the 2025 event at Horace Williams Airport brought 15 universities into qualifying and marked the first time Chapel Hill hosted the championship. A 2024 championship video described that field as the top 64 pilots in the U.S. collegiate circuit. Taken together, those markers show collegiate drone racing maturing into a structured talent-development system, with Tulsa serving as the clearest sign yet that the road from campus club to elite FPV is becoming a real ladder.