FIRST^® and LEGO^® Education have released materials and details for the 2020-2021 FIRST^® LEGO^® League season challenges:

• PLAYMAKERS^SM  (grades PreK-4) for FIRST LEGO League Discover and FIRST LEGO League Explore students.
  
• RePLAY^SM (grades 4-8) for FIRST LEGO League Challenge students.

FIRST collaborated with experts in the fields of child development, engineering, occupational therapy, and playground design to create a theme and challenge missions that reflect what it takes to motivate people to become more active, and to turn inactive spaces into active ones. Read more about the challenges and the FIRST Remove Event Hub in the press release.

Are you ready to play? Team registration for all FIRST LEGO League divisions is now open in the FIRST Dashboard. Thank you to our global sponsors LEGO Education, the LEGO Foundation, and Rockwell Automation. PLAYMAKERS and RePLAY are part of the FIRST^® GAME CHANGERS^SM, powered by Star Wars: Force for Change, season.

Students from Ohio-based FIRST LEGO League team and Global Innovation Award runner-up "8 to Automate" identified a big problem: 4,000 flat roofs collapse every year in North America under the weight of snow. They researched and created a prototype for an innovative solution called REST (Roof Evaluating Strain Tool). The team’s solution was recently featured in an article on Forbes.com.

Building special spaces takes a village of many talents. In a special segment that aired during the 2020 FIRST LEGO League Global Innovation Award broadcast, FIRST alum and mentor Libby Kamen and Disney Imagineers Scott Trowbridge and Margaret Kerrison discussed the creation of Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge and their design, planning, teamwork and processes. You can now watch the segment on the FIRST YouTube channel.

Champion every sport and every team with exclusive FIRST GAME CHANGERS, powered by Star Wars: Force for Change, gear available now in the FIRST Store.

The FIRST STEM Equity Community Innovation Grant was launched in 2016 to provide students from diverse communities with hands-on learning opportunities and outlets to creative problem solving. We're excited to announce several new grant recipients for 2020 in the coming months, but in the meantime, we’re taking a look back at our past recipients.

2016 grantee S.A.Y. Detroit Play Center wanted to fill the critical gap left by the Detroit school system and sought quality STEM programs to excite and engage its students. With the grant money, S.A.Y. Play added a robotics room, formed FIRST LEGO League and FIRST Tech Challenge teams, and began hosting tournaments.

While most 2020 FIRST Scholarship deadlines have passed, there are still a few left for next semester in the portal. We’re gearing up to launch the 2021 FIRST Scholarship Program in September, and we expect more scholarship opportunities than ever before. To be sure FIRST participants and alumni are ready to #applyapplyapply, check out our Frequently Asked Questions and familiarize yourself with the portal.