Global STEM Challenges are a path to the VEX Robotics World Championship built around what a team can explain, not just what it can score. Registered teams enter online, on their own schedule, and winning entries earn a spot at the VEX Robotics World Championships! Any VEX IQ or VEX V5 team registered for the current season can enter.
The VEXcode VR Autonomous Skills Global STEM Challenge honors and celebrates coding knowledge learned through Virtual Skills. Teams build and iterate on autonomous projects in VEXcode VR, submit scores to the Virtual Skills leaderboard, then submit a challenge entry explaining how their code works and why they built it that way.
Teams are rewarded for their thinking. Reviewers score whether coding concepts do real work, whether the team made creative strategic choices, whether the run holds up from one attempt to the next, and what the team took from Virtual Skills into the rest of their season.
Teams compete in the VEX Robotics Competition program they are registered in:
- VEX IQ Elementary School
- VEX IQ Middle School
- VEX V5 Middle School
- VEX V5 High School
The top team in each program earns a spot at the VEX Robotics World Championship!
How to Enter
- Submit your score to the global leaderboard from inside VEXcode VR.
- Submit your entry using the Google Form linked below.
Submissions open September 3, 2026. Submissions close on February 1, 2027.
Teams may resubmit before the deadline. Only the most recent submission is reviewed after submissions close.
What You Submit
The Google Form submission asks for the following:
- A Code Summary of your VEXcode VR project — a one-page overview of what your code does, in what order, and how decisions are made in the project. See Season, Code, and Credit Summaries for Judging for more information about the Code Summary.
- A Credit Summary — If outside sources are used, credit all outside code, tutorials, mentors, other teams, or generative AI tools your team learned from or built on, and note what you used each one for. See Season, Code, and Credit Summaries for Judging for more information about the Credit Summary.
- A written response about your project — the creative choices your team made, and why you made them.
- A written response about your season — what your team learned from Virtual Skills, and how that learning applied to your season beyond Virtual Skills.
How Entries are Judged
All entries are scored with the VEXcode VR Autonomous Skills Rubric after the submission deadline:
The rubric scores two things:
Your project — whether coding concepts do real work in it, whether it reflects creative strategic choices, and whether it runs reliably from one run to the next.
Your documentation — the comments in your project, how clearly your Code Summary explains your code, and how your written responses are reflected in your project.
Note: The coding language does not affect your score. Blocks and text are scored the same. Use the tool your team codes in best.
The VEXcode VR Autonomous Skills Global STEM Challenge follows the same policies as every other part of VEX Robotics Competitions, including the Student-Centered Policy and the Code of Conduct. The work you submit must be your team's own, and outside help belongs in your Credit Summary.
VEX Education staff determine awardees at their sole discretion.