Robots, VR, and Future Goals: Year 9 at Rome Cup 2026

Year 9 students stepped out of the classroom and into the future during their visit to the Rome Cup 2026.

From the sidelines of robotic football matches to the front lines of VR simulations, students spent the day exploring, programming, and connecting with peers from across the country. The reflections below capture their excitement as they had a first-hand opportunity to explore the cutting edge of AI and robotics. 

The Rome Cup 2026 is the 19th edition of Italy’s premier innovation event dedicated to young people, robotics, and artificial intelligence. Promoted by the Fondazione Mondo Digitale since 2007, the event serves as a "vertical accelerator" for development, bringing together schools, universities, research centers, and businesses to foster skills for future employment.

From observing robotic competitions and interacting with future tech, virtual reality, and sumo robot workshops, here's what our students had to say about the experience:

"The people there explained to us that they are building these kinds of robots because in 2050, they hope to be able to play a match with robots against humans." Alice

"We saw a robot playing football and an AI snail that talked about the weather." Francesco

"My favourite thing was probably the visor games since we didn't just need to listen, but we could interact with the virtual reality and complete activities whilst learning new things." Elisabetta
"We had to create a program on a platform similar to Scratch and make our own robot 'fight' against the opponents." Costanza

"Programming Robots to Sumo Fight" was my favorite part of the day. Dylan

"We made many connections with people from a lot of different schools." Emmanuele 
"Today was a very fun day. It was both fun and interesting because we saw many things we hadn't ever seen before." Giada