What FPV drone racing is: pilots in goggles, models through gates.

The FAI's definition

The FAI (the world air sports federation) runs drone racing as an air sport through its Aeromodelling Commission, in a rule book called Volume F9 Drone Sports of its Sporting Code. The edition used on this site is the 2025 edition, effective 1 May 2025. A 2026 edition exists but could not be opened when this site's research was done, so any rule quoted here may have changed. Even its start date is unsettled: a search summary of its cover gives 1 January 2026, while a Prism News trade article, also seen only as a search summary, gives 1 June 2026.

The 2025 edition describes drone racing as several multirotor model aircraft flying together through a closed racing circuit (Section C introduction). A multirotor, in the FAI's wording, is a radio-controlled rotary-wing model with at least three powered propellers, and the rules call each aircraft a "model".

The pilot and the goggles

Each model is flown by an FPV pilot, who is the competitor. Under the F9 rules the pilot wears a headset goggle showing the live picture from the camera on board the model, and flies from that picture. That is what "first-person view" means: the pilot sees what the model sees, not the model itself.

The helper beside every pilot

The FAI requires exactly one helper per pilot, standing beside the pilot for the whole flight. The helper may be another competitor. The rule gives the helper's main task as keeping the model in visual line of sight and telling the pilot about anything that affects the flight, above all safety. If the helper asks the pilot to land or stop the motors, the pilot has to comply at once, and in an emergency the helper may switch the pilot's transmitter off to trigger the model's fail-safe (F9 2025, Section C introduction).

Aviation authorities have their own rules on watching a model flown by goggles, and those rules are law where they apply. They differ by country and are set out on flying with goggles and observers.

What the F9 volume covers

The 2025 volume has three parts:

• Chapter A: the rules for the FAI Drone Racing World Cup.
• Chapter B: F9A Drone Soccer, a provisional class with its own ball, caged playing field, goal rings, teams and penalties.
• Chapter C: F9U Drone Racing. The chapter heading calls F9U an official class, and the change log records its move up from provisional status. The same edition is not consistent, though: article A.1 still refers to "the FAI provisional class F9U" for the World Cup.

The FAI's older drone-racing page records that the class was first approved in 2016 under the name F3U, for electric multirotors with at least three propellers and a maximum flight weight of 1 kg. The history of the class is on the bodies.

Three kinds of rule, never the same thing

Anyone reading about drone racing meets three layers of rules. This site keeps them apart, because they come from different bodies and carry different weight.

The FAI says so itself. Condition 3 of the copyright page of the F9 volume states that each country's air law and air traffic rules must be observed and, where they apply, take precedence over the sport rules.

The racing classes that exist

The FAI's F9 volume has one racing class, F9U, defined by limits rather than by a size name. Under rule C.1 of the 2025 edition an F9U model weighs at most 1 kg with batteries, has all its motor axes inside a 330 mm circle, runs on electric motors with packs of up to six cells (6S), uses propellers of at most 6 inches, and sends its video on 5.8 GHz at no more than 25 mW. The full list is on the FAI F9U rules.

MultiGP, an organiser and league, publishes its own classes, from a ducted Whoop class with frames of at most 65 mm to a 7-inch Pro Spec class, plus a simulator class. Those apply to MultiGP races only; see MultiGP classes.

Words like "5-inch" and "Tiny Whoop" are common in the hobby, but this site's research found no body that defines a class by those names, apart from MultiGP's own Whoop and 5" Spec entries. Where this site uses a size word, it means what the named body's rule says and nothing more.

Who runs races

• The FAI runs the Drone Racing World Cup in two series, Challenger and Masters, as FAI Second Category events (F9 2025, A.2).
• MultiGP describes itself as a worldwide grassroots racing league, with local chapters and a Global Qualifier feeding an annual championship. That is the organiser's own description.
• The Drone Racing League (DRL) raced identical league-built drones, according to Wikipedia. Wikipedia, the only source found for its current status, says it is no longer active after a planned 2025 event was postponed indefinitely and that its assets were auctioned in 2026. That account is unconfirmed: no primary or press source for it was found. The last DRL event found announced in trade press was the 2025 DRL U.S. Air Force Miami Invitational, scheduled for 1 February 2025 (The Drone Girl, 22 October 2024).

Drone racing has also appeared at The World Games. The AMA reported on 20 February 2024 that it was held at The World Games 2022 in Birmingham and was scheduled for The World Games 2025 in Chengdu, China, from 7 to 17 August 2025. The FAI's World Games page records that it went ahead, with drone racing held from 13 to 16 August 2025; the results are on The World Games.

Racing in a simulator

Part of the sport now happens on screens. MultiGP's class list includes an E-Sport class raced in the Velocidrone simulator, which MultiGP names as its official simulator. Wikipedia records that the DRL ran its own simulator and used it for pilot tryouts.