TEKNOFEST posts drone championship preliminary results as competition advances

TEKNOFEST’s drone championship moved into a results phase on May 7, when the festival posted its preliminary standings and shifted the competition closer to elimination rounds. The update landed just three days after the FPV Drone Tracking Competition released its preliminary design report results, signaling that drone racing inside TEKNOFEST is advancing on more than one front at once.

The cadence matters because TEKNOFEST is treating drones as a structured competition program, not a one-off showcase. The 2026 Drone Championship is an individual event built around FPV cameras and UAVs tuned to specific frequencies, with aircraft required to measure between 180 mm and 250 mm. Under TEKNOFEST’s format, the highest-ranked pilots from the ranking rounds advance into elimination heats, so the preliminary results are the first real sorting line before the field narrows.

That structure also points to the scale of the broader 2026 festival. TEKNOFEST says this year’s edition will be held in Şanlıurfa, and its technology competitions are backed by 75 million TRY in prizes and more than 100 million TRY in financial support. The drone events sit inside that larger calendar of contests, where official notices are doing the work of ranking teams, validating designs, and setting the next stage of competition.

The drone championship also carries the weight of a growing TEKNOFEST lineage. TEKNOFEST and STM Savunma Teknolojileri Mühendislik ve Ticaret A.Ş. say the World Drone Cup began in 2018 within TEKNOFEST, and the event has been used to showcase the festival’s international reach. TEKNOFEST’s 2025 notice said the World Drone Cup would feature 32 athletes from 32 countries, while STM later said the final included 32 competitors from 26 countries and was won by South Korea’s Minjae Kim. That history gives the preliminary results in May a sharper edge: they are not just an administrative update, but the first measurable step in a competition track TEKNOFEST has spent years building into a global reference point.

With the latest postings now in place, the field is moving from paperwork and technical review toward the stage where laps, timing, and elimination pressure decide who keeps racing. In TEKNOFEST’s drone program, the next notice can matter as much as the last flight.