Welcome to BBB Beetle Brawl 2025!

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Thank you so much for coming to spectate our event, we hope you have a blast! To help explain a little of the carnage down in the arena, we’ve put together this guide as a little assistant..

Today’s live stream: bbb.gd/stream
Today’s tournament bracket: bbb.gd/fight

What are combat robots?

The first sentence of the ‘Robot Combat’ Wikipedia entry sums it up quite succinctly; ‘Robot combat is a mode of robot competition in which custom-built machines fight using various methods to incapacitate each other’. You’ll see various weapons in use today, but there are a few (largely safety based) restrictions: No fire, no liquids, no explosives, and no electrical-based (eg: EMP) weapons.

Some of the bots fighting today:

How do fights work?

Robots will be loaded into the box for their fight in different areas of the arena, and from the start of the fight will have 2 minutes to beat their opponent. They can do this in two ways:

1) Immobilise their opponent: Any method that stops the opposing machine from moving outside of their circle for 10 seconds (not including being pinned). Usually these will be the most destructive of outcomes, although can also be achieved by lifters and flippers if the opponent can’t get their wheels on the ground any more.

2) Put their opponent out of bounds: The 2 ways you can do this are via the out-of-the-arena section behind the corner wall, or by putting your opponent in the pit. The pit can be activated after 30 seconds of the fight, using the button on the corner wall. If the robot hits the floor of the pit or ‘OOTA’ area, they are immediately eliminated – regardless of any bouncing!

If the fight goes the full 2 minutes, the fight is decided by our panel of judges. They’ll judge on 3 equally-weighted criteria – weapon effectiveness, control and aggression.

What’s the format of the tournament?

There’s over 50 robots competing today from across the UK and Europe, they’ll fight in:

• Round 1 – 3-way melees
• Redemption – 1v1s for the losers of the melees, shuffled.
• Round 2 onwards – straight knockout 1v1s for winners of Round 1 and Redemptions.

You’ll be able to follow along with the tournament bracket using this link during fights!
Some of the teams today are from various universities. They’ll fight in their own part of the bracket. The university winning bots will join the national teams in either the quarter or semi finals.

What are beetles?

Beetleweight robots are much smaller and lighter than their 110kg brethren you see on Robot Wars or Battlebots! Beetles are limited to 1.5kg, which makes them much more compact, cheaper and easier to work on while still packing a punch, with big hits that span the whole box!

While you’ll see intricately designed beetleweights making the most of technology like 3D printing or CNC machining, there is just as much a place for more simplistic builds, with one of the most common materials for beetleweight building being sheets of HDPE; the same material as your plastic chopping boards, and workable with simple tools!

How do I get involved?

If you’ve got the bug, why not try building yourself? On our site, you can find various build guides for different weight classes with recommended parts lists as well as our own parts shop, which includes drive kits. We also have a super supportive Facebook group and Forum where roboteers from around the world support each other with their questions and queries. We run events almost every month and hope to see you at one of our future events!

Our upcoming events:

This is just BBB events, to see all UK & EU events robot combat events click here. TBA = To Be Announced. TBC = To Be Confirmed.