The competition is a yearly event. The most intense participation occurs in the first few months of the year, although on many teams activities occur continuously throughout the academic year. In early January, FIRST announces the details of a game to all participating teams. The game changes very much from year to year, with only a few rules such as the size of the robot staying the same.
For the next six weeks, often called the "build season," the teams begin to design a robot to play the game, essentially from scratch. This period's intensity makes FIRST the program what it is, and gives it personality. Team members spend the time designing strategies to play the game, drawing up ideas for robot parts, working with size and weight constraints, and finally, building and assembling their robot. Often, mistakes are discovered late into the build season, and teams must start over close to the beginning. Other challenges include gaining driver experience, building the electronics for the robot, and programming it. After the build season has ended, teams must ship their robot to where their first competition is.
Competitions for FIRST consist of 33 regional competitions, and one championship event. Regional's typically involve around 40 - 65 teams. Teams are randomly paired into qualification matches, where they are ranked. Matches are relatively short, and only involve 4-6 robots (depending on the game). The game changes every year, but for the most part, they involve some autonomous (computer controlled) robot operation for 10-15 seconds at the beginning of a match, followed by a much longer period (usually 2 minutes) of remote control. Teams use scoring objects on the field to get points, which are evaluated only after the match has completely ended. In between matches, teams spend the time desperately trying to fix broken parts, and sometimes even add new ones right at competition. After the qualification matches have ended, the top 8 teams will pick partners from the remaining ones, and they resulting alliances will compete for a regional winner. The championship event is essentially a very large regional event, with four fields simultaneously playing matches. Teams must qualify through a number of means to be able to attend the championship