ASPIRE’s Stephane Timpano On The A2RL Drone Championship’s Second Season (And What Comes Next)
“We do racing with autonomous cars and drones, but we’re developing technologies that will impact the mobility of tomorrow.”
Running from January 21-22, 2026, the second season of the Abu Dhabi Autonomous League (A2RL) Drone Championship culminated with a final that underscored how far artificial intelligence (AI)-driven autonomous flight has come, while also revealing just how thin the line remains between human reflexes and machine decision-making at high speed.
Organized by ASPIRE, the innovation acceleration arm of the Advanced Technology Research Council (ATRC), the 2026 installment of the A2RL Drone Championship saw leading AI research teams from around the globe as well as world-class first-person view (FPV) pilots compete across multiple race formats for a total prize pool of US$600,000.
The event, which took place at this year’s edition of UMEX, the world's largest event for unmanned and autonomous systems that takes place annually in Abu Dhabi, saw the team from the UAE’s Technology Innovation Institute (TII)—TII Racing—win the AI Speed Challenge, while World FPV Champion Minchan Kim narrowly claimed victory in the Human vs. AI finale. Meanwhile, the Netherlands’ MAVLAB claimed victory in the Multi-Drone Gold Race, and Austria’s FLYBY secured first place in the Multi-Drone Silver Race.
But the A2RL Drone Championship is about far more than lap times and trophies for the CEO of ASPIRE, Stephane Timpano. Speaking to Inc. Arabia at the event, Timpano framed the competition as a platform for long-term technological progress. “This is what the A2RL is all about,” he said. “We do racing with autonomous cars and drones, but we’re developing technologies that will impact the mobility of tomorrow.”
As for what lies ahead for the A2RL itself, Timpano said that it is looking set to enter a new phase of expansion. “A2RL is now a two-year competition,” he pointed out. “We are going to keep growing, not only in the UAE, but globally. There is a lot of demand to bring this format around the world—people are getting curious about how autonomy at speed can perform!”
Check out the video for more of what Timpano had to say.
