By Safiyya Mohammed & Arfa Youssef
The 2026 FIRST Robotics Competition World Championship brought the best teams on the planet to the George R. Brown Convention Center in Houston, Texas, and ITKAN was among them. From April 29 to May 2, both ITKAN Robotics (Team 9128) and ITKAN Girls (Team 10340) took the field at one of the most prestigious competitions in the world.
At Worlds, teams are split across multiple divisions, each packed with elite competitors. Team 9128 competed in the Newton Division, presented by NASA, while Team 10340 competed in the Johnson Division, presented by the Gene Haas Foundation. Two divisions, one mission: show the world what ITKAN is made of.
Team 9128 is no stranger to making history, in 2023, their rookie year, they became the first all-Muslim FRC team in the United States to qualify for the World Championship. In 2026 they raised the bar. They finished Newton Division qualifications ranked 2nd of 75 teams with a dominant 9–1 record, earned the role of Alliance 2 Captain, and assembled a strong alliance with Team 973 (Greybots) and Team 2996 (Cougars Gone Wired). They fought their way to Round 4, the final four of the division, before being eliminated by the top alliance.
Then came the award that said it all: the Engineering Inspiration Award. Given to the team that best inspires others to embrace STEM and embodies the spirit of FIRST, it is one of the most meaningful honors in all of FRC. For a team built to open doors for Muslim youth, it fit perfectly.
ITKAN Girls (Team 10340) are only in their second year, and they already made it to the World Championship. In the Johnson Division they qualified 32nd of 75 with a 6–4 record, earned a playoff spot as a picked alliance member, and competed in the elimination rounds before exiting in Round 3. For a team that didn't exist two years ago, competing at Worlds against programs with decades of history is exactly the statement this team was built to make.
The scoreboard tells part of the story. The rest happened in the pits and the hallways between matches, students showing up fully as engineers, as competitors, and as Muslims, meeting people from dozens of countries and carrying their identity with pride on one of STEM's biggest stages. Team 9128 went from a rookie squad to Engineering Inspiration Award winners on the world stage; Team 10340 proved a second-year team can belong at the top. And the mission that brought both teams to Houston is far from finished.