Back in October, we announced that this year’s FIRST® Championship will host at least 600 FIRST® Robotics Competition teams in 8 divisions. We also announced the 30 teams that will pre-qualify for the 2023 FIRST Championship.
I wanted to share additional information about how teams will qualify for the FIRST Championship during the season. This information will be kept up to date on the Championship Eligibility Criteria page on the FIRST website.
Regional Events
- Regional Events initially qualify the FIRST Impact Award winner, Engineering Inspiration Award winner, Captain of the winning alliance, and first and second pick of the winning alliance.
- Regional Event Rookie-All-Star Award winners and winning alliance backup teams (if a backup team joined the winning alliance) are placed on a Priority Waitlist.
- A Wildcard is generated if a team that has already qualified for the FIRST Championship qualifies again at a Regional Event. A Wildcard is also generated if a team from a District is one of the teams who initially qualifies at the Regional Event. (District teams cannot advance to the FIRST Championship from a Regional Event.) Wildcards are issued in this order:
- Rookie All-Star Award winner
- Winning alliance backup robot (if participating)
- Finalist alliance captain
- Finalist alliance first pick
- Finalist alliance second pick
- Finalist alliance backup robot (if participating)
District Events
Each district is allocated a number of slots proportional to their population of teams. Each District determines the number of Dean’s List Finalists, FIRST Impact, Rookie All Star, and Engineering Inspiration Awards to present at their Championship, within a range established by FIRST. For the awards, ranges are developed by using ratios agreed upon by FIRST and District Leadership. These ranges allow each District to represent their own community as they see fit. The specific number of each award at each District Championship will be posted on the Championship Eligibility page. District representation at the FIRST Championship will be:
District | Allocation |
FIRST Chesapeake | 19 |
FIRST in Michigan | 82 |
FIRST in Texas | 30 |
FIRST Indiana Robotics | 10 |
FIRST Israel | 11 |
FIRST Mid-Atlantic | 23 |
FIRST North Carolina | 14 |
New England FIRST | 32 |
Ontario | 23 |
Pacific Northwest | 22 |
Peachtree | 17 |
The following teams competing in the District model earn a Merit-Based Qualifying slot:
- District Championship:
- as many teams in District-points total order to fill the Allocated FIRST Championship slots granted per the table above.
Priority Waitlist
- Open FIRST Championship slots are filled using the Priority Waitlist until it is exhausted. At that point, slots are filled using the normal open Waitlist
- In addition to Rookie All-Star and winning alliance backup teams, the remaining Hall of Fame teams who were not pre-qualified and the Original and Sustaining teams will be added to the Priority Waitlist for Week 1.
- The process for selecting teams from the Priority Waitlist is mostly the same as 2022. The only change is that teams qualifying during the season are given a higher chance than pre-qualifying teams.
Open Waitlist
Teams can sign up for the Open Waitlist through their FIRST Dashboard. In order to sign up, a team’s Lead Mentor 1 or 2 must
- log in to the Dashboard,
- in the Team Events section, click the “Event Options” drop-down menu,
- select View Team Events,
- click the Find An Event button,
- locate the FIRST Championship Event in the event list, and
- click the Waitlist button.