Challenges & Competitions

ASPIRE is the official Local Delivery Authority for the Games of the Future 2025 in Abu Dhabi. As the driving force behind grand challenges and innovation-led initiatives in the UAE, ASPIRE is leading the coordination and execution of the event locally—ensuring seamless delivery, strategic alignment, and an exceptional experience that reflects Abu Dhabi’s vision as a global hub for future-focused sport and technology. The Games of the Future is a international event that merges traditional sports with esports in a new ‘phygital’ format—blending physical skill with digital gameplay to redefine global competition.

The Games cement Abu Dhabi’s reputation as a playground for frontier innovation and give start-ups a live arena to road-test immersive hardware.

ASPIRE’s Al Miyah Challenge rallies technologists to “grow more crop per drop.” Participants must devise breakthroughs that slash agricultural water use without denting yields - vital work for regions where every litre counts. The competition sits under the Mohamed bin Zayed Water Initiative, linking prize money with pathways to scale so that successful prototypes can irrigate fields from Al Ain to Accra. By turning water stress into a solvable engineering brief, the challenge seeds a future where food security is not hostage to rainfall.

The Abu Dhabi Autonomous Racing League (A2RL) is the world’s largest autonomous racing league, designed to accelerate breakthroughs in autonomy, robotics, and mobility. A2RL brings together elite global teams to compete using fully autonomous systems across two thrilling platforms: Cars and Drones.

Launched in 2024 with Super Formula SF23 cars, capable of reaching speeds up to 300 km/h, A2RL challenges AI algorithms, not drivers, to navigate the track at speed and under pressure. Each team codes its own AI brain, making every lap a battle of strategy, data, and machine learning. Building on this success, A2RL expanded into autonomous drone racing, offering a 3D racing spectacle where drones execute complex manoeuvres at high velocity, guided solely by AI.

With live telemetry, and global testing campaigns across Italy, Japan, and the UAE, A2RL is shaping the future of autonomous systems—on the road, in the air, and beyond.

The Mohamed Bin Zayed International Robotics Challenge (MBZIRC) aims to be one of the world’s most prestigious international robotics competitions. Held every two years in Abu Dhabi MBZIRC convenes universities, research centres, companies and individual innovators from all over the world, to solve critical problem statements that inspire the development of solutions in autonomous robotic aerial and surface vehicle technologies.

The MBZIRC Maritime Grand Challenge concluded in 2024 tasked autonomous air-sea robots with finding and stopping threats in open water - no GPS, no infrastructure, just sensor fusion and grit. The contest pushed navigation, perception and manipulation to the limit, turning the Arabian Gulf into a living laboratory for marine autonomy.

In 2021 ASPIRE partnered with XPRIZE on the $15M Feed the Next Billion challenge, which called on global innovators to develop sustainable alternatives to chicken and fish. The initiative aimed to deliver protein solutions that matched or exceeded conventional meat in taste, texture, and nutrition—while reducing environmental impact. The prize accelerated a market shift that could make sustainable protein as mainstream as smartphones. Through this collaboration, ASPIRE reinforced its commitment to advancing breakthrough solutions in food security and sustainability.