Tampere team reaches FIRST Championship finals

A team from Tampere just wrapped up one of the best seasons in Finnish FLL history. Bots United, a nine-member FIRST® LEGO® League Challenge team, advanced all the way from their regional qualifier to the finals round at the FIRST® Championship — becoming one of the furthest-progressing Finnish teams we've had the pleasure of following.

The team's run this season was defined less by any single perfect match and more by consistency: strong robot performance across every round, a well-rehearsed core values presentation, and an innovation project judges repeatedly called "genuinely thoughtful."

How it started

Bots United formed at the very start of the season out of an after-school robotics club — most of the team had never touched a LEGO® Education robotics set before their first practice. Their coach, a Tampere secondary school teacher, described the early weeks as "a lot of very slow, very careful trial and error."

What changed things, according to the team, was treating the robot game and the innovation project as equally important from day one — rather than leaving the project until the last few weeks, as many first-time teams do.

What's next

With the season now behind them, several members of Bots United plan to stay on and mentor next year's incoming team members — a pattern we're always glad to see, since experienced teammates are often the single biggest advantage a new team can have.

We'll be sharing more team stories like this one throughout the year. If your team has a season update worth telling, reach out — we'd love to feature it.