The FTC 2025-26 game is called DECODE™ presented by RTX, and it challenges student teams to "investigate the power of the world's artifacts and unlock mysteries."

This game pits alliances of two teams each against each other, where an alliance's robot needs to be autonomous for the first 30 seconds, decoding a randomly assigned "motif" from an obelisk to determine which pattern of score and field strategy to pursue.

Following autonomous play, drivers take over for about two minutes of tele-operated competition, attempting to collect and deposit artifacts (colored game pieces), build a pattern according to the motif, and race back to base for end-game points.

Some key changes for this season include a new and revised points-based advancement system, in which success will be measured not only by match wins, but by qualification rank, alliance selection number, playoff performance, and judged awards—rewarding teams for being well-rounded, not just scoreboard-focused.

Overall, DECODE incorporates each of the key factors: autonomous sensing, including vision and AprilTags, sensors, driver-controlled strategy, team collaboration, and outreach, which makes it a rich platform for STEM learning, teamwork, and creative engineering.