National Havoc Robot League

National Havoc Robot League The National Havoc Robot League (NHRL), formerly known as the Norwalk Havoc Robot League, is a robot combat organization headquartered in Norwalk, Connecticut. Founded in 2018 by entrepreneur Austin McChord, NHRL hosts a series of open-registration tournaments each year in which hobbyist and professional builders compete in one-on-one cage matches across three weight classes. The organization is a subsidiary of Havoc Robotics Inc., and Kelly Biderman has served as its chief executive officer since 2021.^[1]

Since its founding, NHRL has grown from a regional competition to what it describes as the world's largest robot fighting tournament, drawing thousands of competitors from nearly every continent and accumulating a reported billion organic social media views annually as of 2025.^[2] In 2026, the organization launched the NHRL Pro Tour, billed as the world's first professional robot fighting league.^[3]

NHRL hosts multiple tournaments each year which are open to all competitors.^[4] Robots are separated into weight classes of 3, 12, and 30 pounds - the traditional Beetleweight, Hobbyweight, and Featherweight robot combat divisions. They compete in 1 versus 1 matches in enclosed arenas with double-layered polycarbonate walls and a negative pressure fire suppression system.^[5] Common weapons used by the competing robots include spinning blades, flipping devices, butane flamethrowers, and hammers.^[6] More unorthodox weaponry includes liquid nitrogen, airbags, and jet engines. Winners at each tournament receive cash prizes^[7] and are invited to a championship event held at the end of each year.^[4]

NHRL maintains an "active weapon" rule, meaning that robots need some kind of an active mechanism in addition to the robot's drive systems. This has led in the past to miniature 3D printed "steel" chairs or sand shovels used as active weapons on robots designed to control their opponents, rather than deal damage.

NHRL also features unique rules relevant to their "House Bots", designed to get combatants out of situations where they are stuck. If, during the match, a robot is able to turn off the house bot's power switch, located on the rear of the robot, that driver wins $1000 on the spot. Initially, it also automatically won the fight for that driver, too, but that subsection was removed following a controversy in 2021.

As of 2025, this schedule has shifted to 7 qualifying events a year and the December World Championships.^[4]

All champion data gathered from NHRL's official statistics.^[4]

Austin McChord founded NHRL shortly after leaving Datto in 2018.^[8] 18 competitors participated in the first event later that year. In 2021, McChord moved the organization to its current headquarters in South Norwalk, along Water St. The facility also hosts a museum collection of past combat robots from multiple weight classes.^[5]

Many brackets from this time are either no longer available or not public, due to the informal nature of many of the earlier events. Many of these early events did not have official long-form broadcast livestreams, however the fight records are still available via NRHL's YouTube.^[9]

2018/19 12-lb Sportsman Competitions

The sportsman events were much smaller, more controlled events, that were largely exhibition matches, rather than anything competitive. As such, data for many sportsman events appears in very few official records.

For the first time, NHRL declares an end-of-year championship, usually held in December each year moving forward (with one exception). This causes the competitions earlier in the year to become qualifying events for that end-of-year championship. As with everything else in the year 2020, the season suffered mightily from the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, forcing the cancellation or rescheduling of multiple events.

NHRL also hosts its (as of the 2025 season) only back-to-back competition days (a full-weekend competition would occur in future seasons, but never two different competitions on two consecutive days) as a result of the pandemic, and Shreddit Bro dominates, winning both competitions.

Droopy becomes the first World Champion, beating out 18 other robots to take home the initial title, in its first ever event win at NHRL.

2020 12-lb Sportsman Event

There was only one event with recorded Sportsman activity in 2020, the July 18, 2020 event. However, due to there being only 3 competitors, no bracket was made nor champion crowned.

NHRL moves into the new, larger Water St. facility, and upgrades their facilities from 1 box, designed for 3-lb and 12-lb Sportsman fights up to 3 boxes - one new larger box for Full-Combat 12- and 30-lb robot fights, and 2 for 3-lb and 12-lb Sportsman fights.

Lynx became the first 3-lb robot to have multiple event championships and a World title, winning two events to finish the year. Project LiftOff also becomes the first Melty-Brain, named due to the complex electronics and sensors, to win an NHRL event.

Tuskin' Raider caps the Sportsman calendar by becoming the first, and only, robot to win multiple official Sportsman brackets.

Hot Leaf Juice (later stylized as HotLeafJuice) dominates the back half of the 2021 12-lb schedule, winning three of the final four events, including the World Championship. Caulk also makes history as the first multi-bot to win an NHRL event as a collection of 3-lb robots punching above their weight class in the 12-lb division.

MegatRON wins the first and last competitions of the year, both at debut of the 30-lb competition in February and at the debut of the professional broadcasts with the World Championships. The 30-lb division established itself as a division with heavy parity between the robots, without a clear top-ranked robot at NHRL during the 2021 season.

2022 saw facility expansions across the board, ranging from pit expansions to extra boxes to accommodate even more robots, as the competition exploded in popularity this year, especially in the 3-lb division. 2022 also sees the opening of the bot museum, a collection of heavyweight robots primarily from builders operating at NHRL and competing at the larger BattleBots competition.

This also marks the last year with any kind of substantial Sportsman combat, as many competitors moved towards the more heavy-hitting Full Combat division instead. The facility also rapidly grows in size, from 3 boxes to a total of 6 for the November event.

November 12, 2022, marks what is at the time the largest event ever held at NHRL, with a then-record 134 robots competing over the course of the day.

In November 2022, McChord announced that he would donate $1 million to STEM charities chosen by that year's finalists in the championship tournament.^[5][10] Keeping with that tradition, an additional $1 million of grants were made to collegiate robotics teams in 2023.^[10][11]

In the 3-lb division, Lynx takes two more titles, including a defense of their World Championship title. Crashfest becomes the first robot to win an NHRL event without a traditional weapon, instead using a plastic shovel as a "thwacker" [sic], technically allowed as an active weapon under NHRL rules, while operating in practice as a control bot.^[12] It becomes the very first non-spinner robot to win an event, capturing the inaugural New Bots event title and quickly becoming a fan favorite.

The 12-lb division sees the rise of bot constructor and driver Jamison Go in NHRL, the architect of Pramheda. Go is also known for his robots like the 250-lb super heavyweight Sawblaze on BattleBots.^[13] Touro Jr. becomes the first non-American bot to win a title in July, with its team hailing from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Team riobotz is also known for their 250lb offering of Minotaur.^[14] Ugee won its first title at the end of the year to be crowned the NHRL World Champion in the 12-lb division.

The 30-lb division remained extremely competitive through the 2022 season. During the now-traditional New Bots event, taking place in May 2022, NHRL's tallest robot debuts; named Huge, it goes on to win the bracket at that event. Like Jamison Go, Huge is better known for its 250-lb version competing on Battlebots, where it's been a competitor since 2018.^[15] Emulsifier wins both of the last two events of the year to be crowned the second 30-lb NHRL World Champion. 

2023 saw at the start of a new tournament format designed to speed up tournaments while allowing fields to remain, for the time being, uncapped. This season saw far more robots across the board, with well over 100 in every non-championship event. Additionally, this also saw the New Bots event move to its now-traditional January event date. Finally, the 2023 season closed not with the World Championships, moved to November this season, but instead with the one-off, three-day Havoc All-Stars Event, bringing community members and technology YouTubers together for the final event of the year.

The "May the Bots Be With You" event saw the robot Droopy win its first NHRL competition since the 2020 World Championships, emerging victorious from a record total of 155 registrants in the 3-lb division. Silent Spring remained a threat throughout the season, winning its league-leading seventh title during the June event. Supreme Ruler (stylized as Supreme 📏) becomes the first lifter bot to win an NHRL title in August. Booty Brigade takes home the 2023 Championship, a combined effort from Calvin Iba, a Northrop Grumman engineer who worked on the James Webb Space Telescope and the Battlebot MadCatter, and Tommy Wong, one of the engineers from past champions Droopy and Caulk, complete with both robots of the duo sporting butts. During the All-Stars event in December, Dutch Oven becomes the first flamethrower robot to win an NHRL event.

In the June event, Superscope has one of the most unusual bracket runs of any robot - of its seven NHRL wins, six come in this single event as it storms past all competition to win the event. Maximizer is the only robot to win multiple 12-lb competitions this NHRL season, taking home the title both in May and August. Full Court, an unusually long lifter-style robot, wins the 2023 12-lb NHRL World Champion title in a judge's decision over Saiko! in the November finals, building on the momentum built by Supreme 📏 in August.

During May and June, Kablooey Tango becomes the first 30-lb robot to win consecutive regular-season competitions. Emulsifier becomes the first NHRL 30-lb robot to win multiple World Championships, taking its second consecutive World Champion title in its only event win of the season.

The 2024 season saw the introduction of the bot cap, limiting field sizes for the regular-season events for the first time in NHRL history. The limits set at the beginning of the 2024 season were 96 robots in the 3lb division, and 40 combined slots for 12lb and 30lb bots, with one weight class capped at 24 and the other at 16, with the higher number going to whichever division has more interest. Additionally, the qualification round process, introduced in the 2023 season, was drastically simplified: now a three-round process, each robot needed to win twice (2-0 or 2-1) to qualify for the main bracket. This was the last year of the New Bots event, as it would be returned to a standard Open competition in 2025. 2024 also saw the first NHRL event to take place outside of Norwalk, Connecticut, with a 3-lb event held in Rochester, New York, at RIT in late March.

2024 also saw a team-based event put on in collaboration with ESPN, broadcasted on August 1 as a part of ESPN2's The Ocho broadcast.^[16] The overall team champion of the event was the Dream Team, consisting of 3-lb Lynx, 12-lb Saiko!, and 30-lb Emulsifier (stylized as Mulsie for this event) after having won two of the three brackets outright.

SLAM PLAN came into its own at the end of the season, winning both the October qualifier and December World Championships, becoming builder Brendan Steele's first World Champion.

MegatRON took home their second World Championship in December. As is tradition in the 30-lb division, no single robot won multiple open competitions in the season, with Emulsifier's second win coming as a part of the closed Teams event in June.

Silent Spring wins its record eighth title in February, which as of March 2026 is a mark that still stands as the most events won by a single robot. Pinevictus becomes the first

Maximizer takes home its first event win since winning two in the 2023 season during the October open qualifier. Pramheda bookends the season with wins,

ARES wins another October event, marking the second year in a row the robot wins in that month's qualifier. KaZaA Lite wins two events this year, both the March open qualifier and the December World Championship. KaZaA Lite is now just the third robot to win multiple 30-lb competitions at NHRL within the same season, following Emulsifier and Kablooey Tango

This is the ongoing NHRL season. This season marks a change in the qualification process for the World Championship at the end of the season. In addition to the now eight open qualifiers, there is an intermediate step: three competitions known as the NHRL Pro Tour, which are exclusive to competitors who reach the quarterfinal stage of any of the preceding Open Qualifier rounds. While still necessary to reach the top 4 non-qualified robots in any Open Qualifier to reach the World Championship, the placement of a robot at the Pro Tour event(s) they attend will affect their seeding at the season-ending championship.

• NHRL website
• NHRL YouTube Channel
• NHRL wiki