NDSU to host Fenworks 2026 Drone Regional Tournament across school levels

North Dakota State University put Fenworks’ regional drone race on a bigger stage, and the lineup said a lot about where school FPV racing is headed. The three-day Fenworks 2026 Drone Regional Tournament ran Friday through Sunday, May 1-3, with middle schools, high schools and colleges all competing under the same roof in what Fenworks calls its “best-of-Fenworks” event.

That matters because Fenworks has spent the last several years building more than a one-off competition. The company says students learn to operate and fix their own drones, then race other schools in a season-long format designed to spark curiosity, foster creativity and point students toward drone-industry careers. When middle schoolers, high school pilots and college teams all show up to the same regional, the sport starts to look less like an after-school novelty and more like a structured pipeline.

The scale backs that up. Fenworks says it was founded in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic and has grown since 2021 to more than 150 schools across North Dakota, Minnesota, South Dakota and Wyoming. By 2023, it was active in 50 schools in North Dakota alone, and the company has said it was pushing its competitive drone racing program across six states. In other words, the regional at NDSU was not a local showcase; it was the latest checkpoint in a system that has spread across the Upper Midwest.

NDSU had already played host to the regional before. In 2025, top student pilots from North Dakota, South Dakota and Minnesota gathered at the NDSU Memorial Union for FPV and simulator races, and North Dakota State College of Science listed those dates as May 2-4 at NDSU. That kind of repeat appearance gives the event real weight. Schools are not just sending a club team to try something new. They are returning to a circuit that now has set dates, set formats and a clear competitive ladder.

Fenworks also has built the support structure that usually separates a real sport from a casual activity. Its materials include simulator guides, obstacle setup instructions, drone and transmitter guides, racer checklists and onboarding guides for students and coaches. It also supplies drone kits, accessories and extra repair parts. That is the quiet detail that makes the whole model work: success is not only about raw speed, but about maintenance, preparation and keeping pilots engaged from one meet to the next.

The 2026 regional showed why school drone racing keeps gaining ground. With university backing, multi-level fields and a season-long framework already in place, Fenworks is helping turn FPV racing into an institutionalized scholastic sport, one where the next generation of pilots can move from middle school brackets to college competition without leaving the ecosystem.