Team Magma has arrived safely in South Korea

Preparations are largely complete, and the first group opponents have been determined.

01.07.2026 · RoboCup · Editorial Office: jd

A group of people is standing in front of an Asian palace
During their stopover in Seoul, the team also had the opportunity to take a look at Changdeokgung Palace, one of the “Five Great Palaces” built by the kings of the Joseon Dynasty (1392–1897) and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Team leader Prof. Klaus Dorer, Communication and Media Engineering student Madhurshalini Mahalingam, Angewandte Künstliche Intelligenz students Mike Benz and Sascha Schrempp, Ph.D. candidate Hannes Braun, and staff member Simon Rösch arrived safely yesterday, Tuesday, in Incheon, South Korea’s third-largest city. In addition to setting up and conducting initial tests, they even had time for a side trip to the capital, Seoul. Today, Wednesday, the first test matches and friendly games were on the schedule. Late in the afternoon local time, the groups for the seeding round—which will take place tomorrow, Thursday—were drawn.

Team Magma will face off against Nexus and Dionysus (both from China) as well as ITAndroids and Bahia RT (both from Brazil) in Group A. In Group B, the reigning world champion FC Portugal will face Apollo3D and SolidWorkers (both from China) as well as Pequi Mecanico (Brazil). Then things will get serious, as the new Mujoco simulator will be used at RoboCup for the first time: It is significantly more physically realistic and now features Booster’s humanoid T1 robots instead of Nao robots. “That’s why we had to relearn everything: walking, kicking, standing up,” emphasizes Klaus Dorer. However, the Mujoco simulator was developed by Stefan Glaser, an employee at Hochschule Offenburg and a member of Magma. “So when we ran into problems during training, we could quickly check in with him. In addition, Team Sweaty has been using real T1 robots for some time now, and we were able to directly adopt their walking capabilities,” the team leader continues. Both approaches have already paid off in the preparatory tournaments: In the fall of 2025, Team Magma won a demo tournament at the Brazil Open. And at Robotica 2026 in Barcelos, Portugal, they ended up with a total of eleven wins and a 40–0 goal differential. In the final, Magma’s simulated soccer robots even won decisively, 4–0, against the reigning world champion, FC Portugal. “The Chinese teams weren’t there yet, though,” says Klaus Dorer, trying to temper expectations somewhat. Since many of them could also draw on experience with humanoid robots, it remains to be seen how they’ll perform in the new simulation. “But we haven’t shown everything we’ve got at Robotica yet,” the team leader says optimistically.

So let’s keep our fingers crossed that Team Magma will finally take home the trophy this time, after eight consecutive runner-up finishes. The matches are played in real time—though currently still seven-on-seven on the corresponding FIFA field, rather than eleven-on-eleven as before. Multiple robots can now come into contact without any of them being sent off. And the goalkeeper currently cannot catch the ball, but can only kick it away like a field player.

Anyone interested can follow the progress of this year’s RoboCup—just like team members Simon Palewicz and Adrian Schade, who are cheering from Offenburg—through the daily updates on Team Magma’s website and via the links to the live broadcast posted there.