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For the fifth time in a row, we secured the world championship title in robot football in the Small Size League at RoboCup 2025 in Salvador da Bahia, Brazil. In addition to our glorious victory in the Passing Challenge and in the final, we were also awarded the ‘Excellence Award’ and the ‘Most Helpful Team Award’.

We had spent months meticulously preparing for the World Cup, playing successful tournaments in Germany and Japan, and optimising our software and hardware. On Sunday, 13 July, the time had finally come: we flew to Salvador da Bahia for the highlight of the year, where more than 250 teams, 1,500 participants from 37 countries and around 150,000 visitors were expected.

Immediately after our arrival, we got started at the Centro de Convenções Salvador congress centre on the coast. Setting up the playing fields, fine-tuning the robots, optimising the vision technology – a camera system that captures all objects on the playing field – and programming were all on the agenda to ensure we were well prepared for the World Cup. After intensive field tests on Tuesday and Wednesday, we presented our new vision processor as part of the open source presentation, a new development in vision technology that is expected to significantly reduce setup times for the league in the future through automated calibration. We also successfully completed the passing challenge, in which the robots had to pass the ball to each other as many times as possible.

Things got really serious on Thursday, 17 July: we were able to show what we were capable of in the group stage and won all four games with ease. Among others, we beat ER-Force (Germany) and the RoboDragons (Japan) 10-0 each, and RobôCin (Brazil) 8-0. On Friday, we secured the group victory with a 7-0 win against ZJUNlict (China).

Then it was on to the knockout stage. With two consecutive victories – a 5-0 win against ER-Force and another 3-0 win against ZJUNlict – we secured our place in the grand final. Even the breaks were spent on the pitch – in cooperation with the A-Team (USA), we played as the ‘TIGA Team’ against a juniors team (U19), giving the young players the opportunity to prove their skills. The highlight was Sunday’s final against the strong ZJUNlict team – the same team we beat in last year’s final. In a thrilling match, we prevailed with an outstanding 5:0 victory, celebrating our fifth consecutive world title and second place in the Small Size League Hall of Fame.

After a final scientific symposium on Monday, we will already begin preparations to defend our title again next year. The goal is clear: we want to be back on top of the podium in Incheon, South Korea, in 2026.