FIRST was founded in 1989 by American inventor and entrepreneur Dean Kamen,[8] with inspiration and assistance from physicist and MIT professor emeritus Woodie Flowers.

[9]Kamen has stated that FIRST is the invention he feels most proud of and predicts that participants will be responsible for significant technological advances in years to come.

Robots relied on a wired connection to receive data from drivers; in the following year, it quickly transitioned to a wireless system.

[14] The countries represented are listed below: The FIRST Championship is the culmination of the FIRST Robotics Competition season, and occurs in late April each year.

[19] In 2008, FRC Team 1114, Simbotics, was featured in an ongoing storyline on the hit Canadian TV drama "Degrassi: Next Generation".

[22][23] A book called The New Cool was written by Neal Bascomb about the story of Team 1717 from Goleta, California as they competed in the 2009 game season.

[24] The CNN documentary "Don't Fail Me: Education in America", which aired on May 15, 2011, followed three FIRST Robotics Competition teams during the 2011 season.

[25] On August 14, 2011, ABC aired a special on FIRST called "i.am FIRST: Science is Rock and Roll"[26] that featured many famous musical artists such as The Black Eyed Peas and Willow Smith.

[31] In 2016, Christina Li, a member of Team 217, the ThunderChickens, was spotlighted on an episode of Nickelodeon's The Halo Effect entitled "Hello World".

A coding camp that Li organized for young girls was featured on the episode, and 217's robot from the 2015 season made an appearance.

[34][35] The February 25, 2020 episode of the ABC sitcom Black-ish features recurring character, Jack Johnson, joining a FIRST team—and a cameo by Dean Kamen.

[37] On March 18, 2022, Disney+ released a documentary directed by Gillian Jacobs titled "More than Robots", which follows four teams in the 2020 season, leading up to the COVID-19 pandemic.