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FC Portugal successfully reached the 2nd place at the RoboCup Portugal Open 2026 that took place in Barcelos, Portugal, from April 23 to 25. FC Portugal competes in the Soccer Simulation 3D league, where simulated humanoid robots play 7 vs 7 soccer. The simulated robots are entirely autonomous. This means the human participants are merely spectators; no human intervention is allowed during the matches. Robot decisions and behaviors are based solely on information sent by the simulator—acting as visual and auditory sensors—which is then processed by control software according to a predefined strategy developed by each team.

The FC Portugal project is the result of a partnership between the University of Aveiro (UA) and the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto (FEUP). Founded in 2000. The project uses RoboCup competitions to advance research in multi-robot team coordination, intelligent robotics and artificial intelligence.

The Soccer Simulation 3D league is using this year a new, more realistic, simulator. Hence, all teams must start developing their agent skills from scratch. At RoboCup Portugal Open the competing teams were from Brazil, China, Germany and Portugal. The winners were the magmaOffenburg team from Germany.

FC Portugal has already been crowned world champion six times at the RoboCup Simulation League. Following this success, the team will now prepare for the World RoboCup 2026, that will take place in South Korea, June 30-July 6, where they hope to translate their technical prowess into a new global title.