FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC), formerly known as FIRST Vex Challenge, is a robotics competition for students in grades 7–12 to compete head to head, by designing, building, and programming a robot to compete in an alliance format against other teams.

Teams, with the guidance of coaches, mentors and volunteers, are required to develop strategy and build robots based on innovative, sound engineering principles.

[1] The FIRST Tech Challenge grew out of the existing FIRST Robotics Competition and the IFI Robovation platform.

FIRST, RadioShack, and Innovation First collaborated to develop an improved version of the IFI Robovation kit.

[2] The pilot season brought together over 130 teams to compete in 6 regional tournaments[citation needed] in a 1/3 scale FIRST Frenzy: Raising the Bar.

For the 2008 season, Pitsco developed a platform that uses the NXT brick along with additional hardware and a new structural framework under the new name of TETRIX.

Besides matches, teams can advance through awards, which the judges give at the end of competition day.

[9][10] The core value that FIRST Tech Challenge promotes is embodied in the phrase "Gracious Professionalism."

Showing gracious professionalism can be done in many ways, from helping another team, to simply having fun at competitions.

Due to this, the number of FTC teams that attend each World Championship was increased from 128 to 160 starting in 2019.

[13] In addition to the Winning and Finalist Alliances receiving recognition for their field performance; the following list includes awards presented at official Championship and Qualifying Tournaments based on judging criterion including engineering notebook, team interview, observation, and/or field performance, etc:[9] Award winners and finalists, especially those of the Inspire Award, are given higher priority for advancement to the next level of competition.