FIRST LEGO League Explore introduces younger students to STEM concepts through guided LEGO-based model building. Instead of competitive matches, teams create interactive, motorized models tied to the season’s theme and produce a poster explaining their ideas and teamwork. The emphasis is on curiosity, communication, and early engineering reasoning.

FIRST LEGO League Challenge is the competition-centered division for upper-elementary and middle-school participants. Teams build and program an autonomous LEGO robot to complete scoring missions on an intricate challenge field. Alongside robot development, teams research a real-world issue related to the yearly theme and present their Innovation Project to judges. Events evaluate robot performance, engineering process, teamwork, and presentation skills, offering a rigorous but approachable introduction to engineering disciplines.