Organizations from China, Japan, Singapore and Korea are considered the founding countries.

In 2004, teams from China, Chinese Taipei, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Philippines, Russia, Singapore and Thailand took part in the first international final, held in Singapore.

In 2003, the four founding countries established the international WRO Committee (now known as the WRO Advisory Council), which decided to establish a new and permanent robotics organisation, based on the idea that students from all over the world should have the opportunity to meet with other students to fulfil the new mission statement: "To bring together young people all over the world to develop their creativity, design & problem solving skills through challenging & educational robot competitions and activities" The WRO Committee decided on the new name World Robot Olympiad, and new WRO logos were developed.

The RoboSports rules and the Future Engineers Challenge game are designed together with experts in the robotic sciences community.

Before the competition begins, the robot must be fully dismantled: for example, the batteries must be taken out of the brick or the tyres must be taken out from the wheels.

Each robot is restricted to be 25 × 25 × 25 cm (9.8 × 9.8 × 9.8 in) before the round begins, and may consist of only LEGO certified parts, with specified motors and sensors depending on each competition.

Students create their own intelligent robotics solution relating to the current theme of the season.

Teams will present their project and their robot model to a group of judges on the competition day.

The games are designed to test older and more experienced student's engineering and programming skills to the limit.

As the missions of the RoboMission and RoboSports get tougher and more teams in the Future Innovators are willing to present more creative-looking robots, organisers have to make changes to the list of eligible sensors, motors and bricks to be used in the competition.

The earlier versions of this competition, before 2006, consists of only Regular and Open and that further sub-divides to only two age groups, Primary and High School.

For participation in the international WRO final it is strictly enforced that students cannot, at any time in the year of the competition, be older than specified in the age group definitions.

Only teams that participated in a national competition in the ward one of our member countries can qualify for the international final.