Yuki Hashimoto wins 2026 Xiaoliu Drone Racing World Cup in Ningbo

Yuki Hashimoto won the Open Class at the 2026 Xiaoliu Drone Racing World Cup in Ningbo, China, after a four-day event that drew 130 pilots from multiple countries and regions. Wang Miao finished second and Minjae Kim took third, giving the podium a strong international finish at one of the season’s biggest FPV stages.

The FAI scheduled the Xiaoliu Drone Racing World Cup for May 28 to 31, 2026, and the competition ran over four days in Ningbo. That scale mattered from the start: a field of 130 pilots leaves little room for error, and every qualifying run and bracket heat carries more weight when the roster is this deep. The event was built as a world cup, not a regional stop, and the result table reflected that pressure.

Behind Hashimoto, the rest of the Open Class top eight stayed crowded with familiar names. Kim TaeYang placed fourth, Xu Yinhang was fifth, Liu Quanliang took sixth, Bai Xize finished seventh, and Li Ruichen came eighth. The top end of the field was heavy with Asian FPV talent, and the spread from first through eighth showed how tight the race stayed once the brackets narrowed.

The event also included a Junior division, adding another competitive layer to a meet that already had world-cup scale. Even without the junior podium in the visible results, the division points to the sport’s pipeline, with younger pilots getting a stage alongside the Open Class drivers fighting for the headline result.

Ningbo has become a significant stop in drone racing because it can handle the logistics and the field size that a world-class event demands. This year’s result added another marker for the current international pecking order: Hashimoto beat a podium that included Wang Miao and Minjae Kim, while the full top eight underscored how much depth the race brought to China’s FPV scene.