ASTANA – Kazakhstan’s national robotics team has achieved a milestone on Nov. 1, claiming its fourth consecutive world championship title at the FIRST Global Challenge 2025 in Panama City.
Photo credit: gov.kz
Competing among teams from 190 countries, the Kazakh students not only secured first place but also swept the two most prestigious awards of the tournament. They include the Grand Challenge Award (gold), the competition’s top honor, reserved for the absolute champions who set record-breaking scores in the robot qualification rounds.
The team also earned the Albert Einstein Award (gold), the judges’ highest recognition for exceptional engineering design, technical mastery, teamwork, and leadership.
The theme of this year’s championship, Eco-Equilibrium, focused on solving global environmental challenges and preserving biodiversity.
The team from Kazakhstan presented an innovative engineering solution: a robot capable of removing barriers that hinder ecosystem regeneration, precisely placing biodiversity units across different zones of the playing field, and completing the complex final task, which yielded the highest possible score.
The robot impressed judges with its precision, ingenuity, and sustainability-focused design, a performance that reaffirmed Kazakhstan’s growing reputation for engineering excellence and disciplined teamwork, reports the Ministry of Education.
This year’s national team, selected through a competitive process among 40 teams across Kazakhstan, included Rashat Dosymzhan, Daulet Iliyas, Alikhan Orynbasarov, Madiar Asetuly, and Nurasyl Tursymbayev, all students of Nazarbayev Intellectual School (NIS) Almaty–Medeu. Training and guiding the students were Dulat Baytulenov, Nurdaulet Dosmagambet, and Asylbek Murzakhmetov.
With previous victories in Geneva (2022), Singapore (2023), Greece (2024), and now Panama, Kazakhstan has established itself as an emerging leader in STEM education and robotics innovation, a record unmatched in the history of the FIRST Global Challenge.
The national team’s participation was backed by the Daryn Scientific and Practical Center under the Ministry of Education, the USTEM Foundation, the Alem.AI International Artificial Intelligence Center, and Kazakh startup Cannect.AI.
“We have proven to the world that Kazakhstan is not only a country of rich resources, but also a country of intellectual potential and high technologies. It is important to note that the composition of the national team has never been repeated; every year, new participants represent our country,” said Asylbek Murzakhmetov, head of the USTEM foundation.
