The FAI Drone Racing World Cup: a season-long ranking of individual pilots.

How the World Cup works

The rules below are from the FAI's F9 rule book, 2025 edition, effective 1 May 2025, and the FAI's World Cup pages. A 2026 edition of the rule book exists but could not be read for this site, and its effective date is itself disputed: a search summary of its cover gives 1 January 2026, while a trade article gives 1 June 2026. Any rule here may have changed for 2026.

• World Cup events are FAI Second Category events on the FAI calendar, open to individuals only, with no national teams. Anyone with a valid FAI Sporting Licence or FAI Drone Permission can be ranked.
• The rule book sets two series, Challenger and Masters (A.2). The FAI introduced Masters in 2019; no Masters event was counted in 2024.
• Each country may host up to two World Cup events a year; a country spanning more than three time zones may host one per time zone, up to four.
• Points need competitors from at least two countries (A.4).
• A pilot's World Cup score is the sum of their best three event results, counting only the better result where a pilot scores twice in the same organising country (A.5).

The FAI counts 2024 as the seventh edition: the World Cup began in 2016 and none was held in 2020 or 2021. In 2020 the CIAM Bureau suspended events on 16 March because of COVID-19; Race of Drones Oulu in Finland, on 13 March 2020, was the only F9U World Cup event held before the suspension, and no 2020 ranking was counted.

Champions by year

In the first season, 2016, the class was called F3U. The FAI's report counts ten competitions in eight countries and 229 placed pilots from 17 countries, with Benoit Couturier (France) second and Maxime Bastin (Belgium) third.

The 2024 season

Fourteen events from 13 countries were registered. Two were postponed (Chongqing in China, and Riyadh in Saudi Arabia, which moved to 23 to 25 January 2025), so 12 events in 11 countries counted, among them New Clark City in the Philippines in February and the Namwon World Drone Racing Masters in Korea (4 to 6 October).

The FAI's report gives 305 placed competitors, more than in 2023 but well below the numbers before COVID, including 118 juniors from 22 countries (39 percent) and 20 women from 11 countries (7 percent). The final podium was Minjae Kim (Korea, junior), Killian Rousseau (France) and WonKyun Choi (Korea, junior). Six juniors finished in the top 10, and the best-placed woman was Luisa Rizzo of Italy, 19th.

The 2025 season

The FAI's 2025 World Cup page lists 12 events: Riyadh (23 to 25 January, indoor), Tenerife (26 and 27 April), Aichtal (31 May and 1 June), Seoul (14 and 15 June), the Hungaroring (20 to 22 June), Sodertalje in Sweden (28 and 29 June), Varese (12 and 13 July), Varna (18 to 20 July), Bela Crkva (26 and 27 July), Yedikule Castle in Istanbul (6 and 7 September), Jiangwan Stadium in Shanghai (24 to 27 September) and Seoul (30 September to 2 October). Search summaries of FAI pages give the count two ways, 12 events from 11 countries and 13 from 12.

The FAI removed a Lithuanian event because it planned Tiny Whoop models that do not meet F9U rules, and a Paris event lost its venue; Sichuan and Prilep were cancelled.

For the second Seoul round, a Korean press report on the Seoul International Drone Racing World Cup of 1 and 2 October 2025 gives the order as Kim Min-jae, Kim Min-chan, Choi Won-gyun and Lee Min-seo, all of South Korea. The article does not mention the FAI, so matching it to the FAI round rests on its name, venue and dates; it is a single source. It gives the field as 67 pilots in its subtitle and about 60 in its text.

The 2025 overall champion was not found.

The 2026 season, in progress

A Chinese report gives the 2026 series as 14 events in 12 countries and regions; a search summary of an FAI page gives 15 in 13 countries. No overall winner is named while the season runs.

• Ningbo Yinzhou, 28 to 31 May: certified by the FAI, according to Chinese press (Xinhua and Tide News). Tide News reports Open: Yuki Hashimoto (Japan), Wang Miao (China), Minjae Kim (Korea); youth: Wang Miao (China), Minjae Kim (Korea), Kim TaeYang (Korea); women: Wu Qiuyan, Li Tianxing and Wei Yanran (all China). Chinese press gives 115 pilots; a trade-press search summary gives 130.
• Italy, 11 and 12 July: Varese per an FAI listing summary, Sassuolo per a trade-press summary. That trade summary gives Minjae Kim the win ahead of Killian Rousseau, Yuki Hashimoto and Jonny Exner; unconfirmed.
• Other listed rounds: Paris (La Queue en Brie), Seoul in June, Florennes, Sofia, Incheon, Istanbul and Saint-Georges in Canada appear in search summaries of FAI listings; no results were found.
• Seoul, 23 and 24 October: scheduled for those dates, so finished by date, organised by the Seoul Metropolitan Government; the report read does not name the FAI, so its World Cup status is unconfirmed, and no result was found.
• Macao, 14 to 18 December: upcoming, listed by the FAI as a CAT.2 event.

The e-Drone Racing World Cup: a separate simulator series

The FAI also runs an e-Drone Racing World Cup on a simulator, with its own ranking that is never merged with the outdoor F9U World Cup. Its forerunner, the 2023 FAI e-Drone Racing Cup, was won by Swan Versmissen, according to the FAI.

The first World Cup season, 2024, had five events and 140 pilots from 40 countries, all flying the same drone model. The FAI's report of 10 December 2024 gives the final ranking as Swan Versmissen (France, 18), Kirill Loban (Serbia, 15) and Krutharth Mohan Chickmagalur (India, 21). Event 4 ran alongside the World Championship in Hangzhou and was won by Versmissen; event 5 in Riyadh was won by Yiran Sheng of China, whom the FAI calls the first female pilot to win an event in the series.

In 2025 the series had seven events, opening on 16 August on a copy of the 2018 Shenzhen championship track; the FAI says pilots raced from home with a game controller on a Windows computer, all on one standard drone model. The 2025 champion was not found.

For 2026, FAI pages are known only from search summaries: seven events, a final score from each pilot's best three placings, and events including a Mirror Cup (23 May), a Ningbo Cup on a virtual copy of the Xiaoliu track (21 June), a Belgium Cup on a virtual copy of the Florennes track (12 July) and a CROSS Cup (30 August). A calendar summary says the ranking is not final until after an event on 11 October 2026. A trade-press summary says Miron Cheremnykh won the 15-pilot Mirror Cup. No 2026 final ranking was found, so no 2026 e-Drone champion is named.