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They faced fierce competition between runners up Beihang University from China and Ireland’s University College Dublin.
Others award winners this year include University of Loughborough who won the Innovation award and University of Thessaly who scooped the Business Proposition award. Full scoring for all the individual event will be available shortly on the UAS Challenge website.
2026 marks the first year of a new mission brief, where teams must design their aircraft to transport and drop water on a marked area of land to simulate an agricultural crop sprayer, all while taking off, flying, navigating, and landing autonomously.
Students brought a great variety of aircraft designs this year, from conventional fixed wing aircraft and quadcopters to novel tilt-rotor hybrids and even a flying wing. With the increased number of teams together with their greater preparedness, the competition also achieved a record number of flights, up to twenty in a single day, giving more students the opportunity to see their hard work in action. To cope with the increased number of teams, the repair tent has grown in size to accommodate, with more than double the capacity of tools and apprentice engineers.
"It's amazing to see that the UAS Challenge is continuing to grow and welcome more teams from more countries every year,” said Paul Lloyd, UAS Chair. “Everyone has adapted to the new mission incredibly well, and it's always great to see students from different teams helping out to get aircraft airbourne. With the increased interest in these technologies from different industries, I'm delighted that we're preparing more students than ever with direct experience for the start of their careers."
“The UAS Challenge continues to be a valuable educational event that complements students' academic achievements with practical learning and opportunities to gain skills and experiences on their journey towards becoming graduate engineers,” said Joyce Achampong, Associate Director of Impact at the IMechE.
“ For those considering taking part, get involved; it's a fantastic opportunity to learn, develop, and network with the wider engineering community on a project that has growing significance in the modern world. Many thanks to the staff and volunteers for their time and professionalism and the BMFA Buckminster for hosting our competition.”
About the UAS Challenge
Now in its 12th year of competition, the UAS Challenge is an annual engineering design competition where undergraduate and postgraduate students at universities around the world must design, build and fly a completely autonomous Unmanned Aerial System with a maximum 10kg to undertake set flight missions.
Those who participate are able to apply their academic studies by working on an engineering project as close to the real world as possible, gaining hands-on experience of engineering design, project management and team work, enhancing their degree knowledge and making them more capable engineers when they reach industry.
The Institution of Mechanical Engineers is grateful for the continued support of partners Ansys, Leonardo, Callen-Lenz, BAE Systems, FalconWorks, Tekever, and Malloy Aeronautics, as well as the time and expertise of the small army of over eighty volunteers working to run the event.
The Institution of Mechanical Engineers would like to thank the British Model Flying Association Buckminster for once again hosting the fly off event, and to all the students for taking part and making this year the most successful to date.
Get involved
The UAS Challenge runs from September in line with a university’s academic year, with key milestones for report and documentation submissions ahead of the Fly-Off finals event in late June – early July of the following year.
Registration for the 2027 UAS Challenge will open in late September, for further details of the competition and how to get involved, please visit the UAS Challenge website or follow the Challenge’s social media channels.