Dear West Tennessee FIRST LEGO League Community,
I hope this message finds you well. I’m reaching out today with some significant news about the future of FIRST LEGO League that affects all of our teams, volunteers, and supporters across the region.
This morning, FIRST released an official announcement that LEGO Education has chosen not to renew their partnership with FIRST. This means that the 2026-2027 season will be the final season of FIRST LEGO League. You can read the full announcement from FIRST here:
https://community.firstinspires.org/first-lego-education-partnership-update
I know many of you will remember that at our events this past season, we announced that FIRST LEGO League would be transitioning to a new “Future Edition” program built around the new LEGO Education Computer Science & AI platform. At the time, our plan was to run both programs simultaneously during the transition period. This news came as a shock to us as well, and we are still processing what it means for our region.
At this time, we are not planning to run the FIRST LEGO League Future Edition competition in West Tennessee next season. However, that is subject to change as we receive additional information from FIRST. We know the pre-order window for the new LEGO Education Computer Science & AI kits is coming up soon, and we wanted to get this announcement out to you as quickly as possible so you can make informed decisions.
With that in mind, we strongly recommend that you DO NOT purchase or pre-order the new LEGO Education Computer Science & AI kits for competition purposes. We do not want our teams to invest their resources in equipment that may become obsolete. These kits are not compatible with the “Foundation” SPIKE Prime platform, and the future of the program is uncertain.
For the 2026-2027 season, we are planning to continue running the program using the “Foundation” LEGO Education SPIKE Prime kits that our teams already own and know well.
FIRST has stated that they are actively developing their own next generation of K-8 program experiences to continue serving students after FIRST LEGO League concludes. We don’t have details on what that will look like yet, but we will share information as it becomes available.
We will continue to send updates via email as things develop and we learn more. For nearly 30 years, FIRST LEGO League has inspired millions of young people through hands-on STEM learning, and our West Tennessee community has been a wonderful part of that story. This is certainly bittersweet news, but we are committed to making the 2026-2027 season a great one and will continue working to make sure there is a path forward for robotics and STEM programming for our students.
NoBox has reached out to other robotics organizations in the area to explore options for teams that may be interested in trying a different program, or for teams that want to start something new next season but may not be able to get ahold of SPIKE Prime hardware. At the end of the day, our goal at NoBox has always been to get kids involved in STEM and robotics, and that isn’t changing. Whatever the path forward looks like, we want your students to have a place to learn, build, and compete. We’re figuring this out alongside you, and we’ll share what we learn along the way.
Thank you for everything you do for the kids in our community,
NoBox, Patrick McGinnis, and West Tennessee FIRST LEGO League
