Technical Challenges of the Small Size League are intended to encourage teams to develop solutions to specific problems that will advance the quality of gameplay within the league. Teams are evaluated for their completion of the challenge during a designated time at RoboCup each year.

Rules

Below are the rules for the different RoboCup 2026 technical challenges. Source code associated with these challenges can be found on GitHub.

SSL RCJ Soccer Junior Cooperation Challenge

For an first time experiment this year, we will be hosting a joint Technical Challenge in collaboration with RoboCup Junior Soccer. For this challenge, participating teams will be randomly paired, combining one Major and one Junior team. Both teams will then need to work together to complete the challenge. 

Due to the nature of Technical Challenges in RCJ, the task and its ruleset will only be published at the start of the tournament. Therefore the evaluation will take place on Saturday. Although this is a normal competition day with matches taking place, we will do our best to ensure that the time of your evaluation slot does not conflict with any matches or the preparation time beforehand.

If you would like to participate in the challenge, please fill out the participation intent here: https://forms.gle/az63vys8jpErBj9e6

Filling out the form is not binding, but helps us optimize this year’s schedule and the details of the challenge.

Once the rules are published, they can be found here:
SSL RCJ Soccer Junior Cooperation Challenge Rules (HTML)
SSL RCJ Soccer Junior Cooperation Challenge Rules (PDF)

Radio Communications Challenge

To reduce the entry barrier for new teams, we want to provide a list of known good radio solutions. Therefore we want to encourage teams to open-source their solution and offer quantitative metrics on which the different solutions can be compared.
The goal of this is not to seek one mandated solution, but rather help teams develop and implement reliable radio solutions to reduce the complexity and enhance the gameplay.

To get to know more about the challenge and how to participate, please take a look at the rules for the challenge:

Radio Communications Challenge Rules (HTML)
Radio Communications Challenge Rules (PDF)