The heart of VEX IQ is the teamwork match — and it's built differently from most competitions you've seen.
Two robots, one score
In a teamwork match, two teams' robots share the field as one alliance for 60 seconds, working together to score as many points as possible. There's no defense and no opponent on the field — the "opponent" is the scoreboard. Both teams earn the same shared score, so helping your partner is helping yourself.
That design is deliberate: elementary and middle-school students learn more from cooperation than collision, and every match starts a fresh mini-collaboration — teams meet their partner at the queue, make a 60-second plan, and go.
Through a tournament day
- Qualification matches pair each team with a different partner every match; your ranking builds from your scores across all of them.
- Finals — the top-ranked teams pair up and play for the championship.
- Alongside match play, the skills field runs all day — solo driver and autonomous-coding runs, no partner. See Skills challenges.
The game changes every year
The rules of scoring — what the objects are, where points come from — belong to each season's game, revealed fresh every year. This season's game, its field, and the official game manual live on VEX's current game page. What never changes is the shape: two robots, one minute, one shared score.
Want to see it live? Come to any local event — spectating is free, and any volunteer at the field will happily explain what's happening.