From August 29th to 31st, Krakow will once again host the European Rover Challenge (ERC), the largest international competition of Martian robots held on-site at AGH University of Krakow, Poland as well as remotely.
The event (founded by Lukasz Wilczynski) is organized by the European Space Foundation with the co-organizer AGH University of Krakow. It is free to the public and will once again bring together the international scientific, educational and business space rover communities. It will feature an interdisciplinary conference with experts from global space industry organizations, where I will be giving a keynote presentation about the opportunities the New Space economy provides.
‘The European Rover Challenge is first and foremost a platform that integrates science, technology and education on a practical level. Every year we see how much potential there is in young engineers from all over the world, and this is what we want to support. In each edition, we pay special attention to the realism of tasks inspired by real planetary missions, so that participants can compete while developing the competencies they will need in the future in the space sector. This year we will also introduce a new astrobiology competition. It will consist of detecting and verifying whether life and the chemical compounds necessary for its origin could have once existed in a given place’, explains Marcin Wygachiewicz, Chief Judge of the ERC competition
The on-site event will feature 25 rovers selected from 102 submitted teams. In addition, they will be joined by teams in the remote competition. Young engineers and scientists from Poland, Spain, Denmark, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, India, Egypt, and Turkiye, among others, will compete. The highest number of rover teams applications came from Turkiye with 18 out of 102. Two Turkish and five Polish teams made it into the final 25.
Finalists will present designs for autonomous Mars rovers capable of performing complex tasks inspired by real planetary missions. The competition will take place on a specially designed track – the Marsyard – with an area of nearly 900 m², whose topography faithfully reproduces the geological conditions of the Martian canyon Valles Marineris.
The ERC 2025 competition continues a long-standing mission to popularize science and support young talent in the discipline of space and robotics engineering. Over the past decade, the event has gained an international reputation and is recognized as one of the largest of its kind in the world. Hundreds of young engineers come to Poland every year to test their rover designs and gain experience at a global level. Beyond technical skills, participants discover pathways into the expanding NewSpace economy, where today’s rover innovations can become tomorrow’s commercial space ventures.
From Martian Rovers to New Space Ventures: Presenting Opportunities at the International Space Robotics Competition & Conference 2025
