Hi ,

Program Updates, Deadlines, & Reminders

Today! FIRST^® Event Registration, First Preference: The first round of event preferencing is open. Teams must be “event ready” (no outstanding tasks on your FIRST Dashboard) in order to preference events. Be sure to review our Event Preference User Guide for step-by-step instructions and an FAQ. Teams will have until Thursday, September 28 at 12:00 p.m. ET to select their first event preferences; it is not a first-come, first-serve registration system.

2024 Event Information: Please visit the FIRST^® Robotics Competition Blog for updates on 2024 events including some that are tentative and new.

Kit & Kickoff Opening: The Kit and Kickoff registration also opens today, Thursday, September 21, at 12:00 noon ET and closes Monday, November 13, at 12:00 noon ET. Every event ready FIRST Robotics Competition team must select a local Kickoff location to pick up their Kickoff Kit or provide a Kickoff Kit shipment address. We highly recommend teams pickup their Kickoff Kit at a local Kickoff in order to receive it on Kickoff Day. If a team opts to have their Kickoff Kit shipped, it will ship after Kickoff and only once a team has secured their registration fee. There is no guaranteed delivery date, but it will be after Kickoff. Visit our Kickoff Selection Instructions for help.

Grant Season: It’s already grant season! Read about some of our available grant opportunities, including the New Team Grant, in this FIRST^® Robotics Competition blog post.

FIRST Updates

Introducing Express Enrollment Youth Registration (U.S. & Canada teams): Lead mentors, we invite you to take advantage of our new youth registration process as you work on adding youth participants to your team roster in the FIRST Dashboard!  

This mobile and web friendly process allows you to generate web links or QR codes in the FIRST Dashboard for easy sharing with parents and guardians of your youth. Parents and guardians use the link to access Express Enrollment and register their youth for FIRST as well as apply to join your team roster in just a couple of minutes following a few simple steps. Learn more about Express Enrollment and how to get started with youth registration on the Youth Registration System Walkthrough page. 

To access the team roster and Express Enrollment application, two team lead coaches/mentors need to have completed and passed the FIRST Youth Protection Screening. 

Don’t forget, you can also re-invite youth members from a previous season. See instructions.  

Please note that some regions may have additional steps outside of Express Enrollment to complete youth registration. If this is the case, your local Delivery Organization will contact you with further instructions. 

Community Engagement 

Introduce and Engage with Kahoot! As you get ready for the new season of CRESCENDO^SM presented by Haas, get your students excited about the year with our many Kahoot! games. We have a set of quizzes on FIRST Robotics Competition which are great for understanding the different parts of the program.