All about NHRL Pro Tour 2026

2026 marks the debut of the NHRL Pro Tour. This will be 3 standalone events that will feature the best bots from the NHRL Open, plus our NHRL Pro World Championships in December.

Here's how it will all work.

GETTING INTO THE PRO TOUR

The Pro Tour will feature our regular 3 weight classes: 3lb, 12lb, and 30lb.

Our first Pro Tour event will be in May. To earn an invite for this event, a bot must make Prime Time—in other words, make it to the top 8/Quarterfinal round—in the February, March, and/or April events. Likewise, a bot that makes Prime Time in May, June, and/or July will compete in the July Pro Tour event. And a bot that makes Prime Time in September or October will compete in the November Pro tour event, accompanying by special wild-card competitors that we will invite.

If a bot makes it to more than one Prime Time that feeds a single Pro Tour event, we will consider that a wild card slot that we will fill closer to the event.

This gives us a field of 24 bots per weight class.

THE TOURNAMENT FORMAT

There will be two stages: a group stage, and a knockout stage.

GROUP STAGE

For each weight class, we will split the bots into 6 groups of 4. Rankings will be spread evenly throughout each group, so the highest-ranked competitors will not be in the same group.

Each bot fights each other bot in their group once. This means every bot will get 3 fights in the group stage.

Each fight is worth points to the winner—4 points for a win by knockout or tapout, and 3 points for a win by judges' decision.

At the end of the group stage, the top 2 bots in each group by point total will advance to the knockout stage, and the bottom 2 bots will be eliminated. If there's a tie, we will break the tie by the highest stage a bot reached in the Open events that fed this Pro Tour event, then by fastest KO time in its group stage fights, then by highest average judges' score in its group stage fights.

KNOCKOUT STAGE

12 bots per weight class will advance to the Knockout stage, which consists of a play-in round and a bracket, both single-elimination. The top 4 bots from the group stage bypass the play-in and go straight into the bracket, where they await the winners of the play-in round.

The top 4 bots in each weight class qualify for the Pro World Championships, if they haven't already. If one of these bots is already qualified for the Pro World Championships, we will consider that a wild card slot that we will fill closer to the event.

The bot that wins the bracket final wins the Pro Tour for that weight class!