Texas Cup information for FTC Teams

The Texas Cup is an “umbrella” event this June that will house four separate competitions:
– FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) offseason and UIL Championship
– FIRST Tech Challenge Texas State Championship
– UIL FTC Championship
– FIRST Access competition

As you can see, for FTC this year the Texas Cup contains both the FTC state championship and the UIL championship, and they are two separate competitions. The UIL championship will take place on June 15, and the FTC state championship will take place on June 16-17. Matches for both competitions will take place at the Alamodome in San Antonio, with judging sessions conducted remotely.

The Texas State FTC Championship is now on the normal path to the FTC World Championship — teams advance from their regional championships to the Texas State FTC Championship and then to the FTC World Championship. Since FIRST has cancelled the 2021 World Championships, the Texas FTC Championship will be the highest-level competition for FTC teams in Texas this season. Advancements to this championship follow the normal guidelines for FTC advancement — based on teams’ performance at their regional championships.

The UIL FTC Championship is a separate competition for UIL school teams only, taking place the day before the Texas State FTC Championship. UIL will have separate divisions for 1A-4A and 5A-6A schools, as in the past few years. Schools receive an invitation to send a team to the UIL Championship based on their teams’ performance at their regional championship (or in some cases, in events leading up to the regional championship).

The only way to attend either FTC competition is by invitation, which is based on teams’ performance at their regional championship. And yes, it is possible (but not guaranteed) for some UIL school teams to end up with spots at both competitions.

The number of teams that each region can advance to the two competitions is based on the composition of teams/schools in the region relative to the total number of teams/schools in the entire state. Since North Texas is one of the larger regions in Texas, we generally get to advance quite a few teams to each competition.

In future years “The Texas Cup” is expected to continue as an offseason event in June. The UIL championship and Texas FTC championship in future seasons will be held in March, since the Texas FTC championship is on the advancement path to the FTC World Championships held each year in April.