Saudi Arabia has a new world champion in student engineering. LYNX Racing, a team from Dhahran, won the Aramco STEM Racing World Finals in Singapore. The team beat 90 rivals from 36 countries.
Why it matters: This is the Kingdom’s first world title since Saudi teams began competing. Moreover, it shows that Saudi investment in young talent now pays off globally.
Driving the news: The finals ran from 29 September to 7 October, 2026. Germany’s aiXplosion and Spectrum teams finished second and third, according to organizers. Furthermore, LYNX won the Best Team Identity award.
Saudi Teams Sweep Extra Honours in Singapore
In addition to the title, other Saudi teams won prizes. Baz, from Jeddah, took Best Project Management and the Knockout Round award. Altogether, Saudi teams collected three extra awards.
Saudi teams also earned nominations for more than 15 of the competition’s 22 awards. Similarly, they reached the top 10 in several categories. The contest tested students on three skills: designing Formula-style model cars, managing projects, and research and development.
Four teams represented the Kingdom: LYNX (Dhahran), Baz (Jeddah), Anq (Madinah) and Dareen (Al-Ahsa). First, they won their places at the national finals in June. There, 20 teams competed at the King Abdulaziz Center for World Culture (Ithra), and the top four advanced.
Zoom in: The students trained for more than eight months with 36 coaches. As a result, they built scientific, engineering and teamwork skills. They also learned to turn ideas into prototypes ready for testing.
Farah Abu Shaleeh, Ithra’s acting head of programs, said the win reflects the talent of young Saudis in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. She added that a Saudi team topping the world after five years of participation marks a milestone. Furthermore, she called the result an inspiration for future innovators and engineers.
Progress has come fast. Last year, Saudi teams won two awards at the 2025 finals. This year, they won the whole competition.
By the numbers:
- 1: Saudi Arabia’s first STEM Racing world title.
- 91: teams in the World Finals, from 36 countries.
- 4: Saudi finalists, from 20 teams at the June national finals.
- 15+: award nominations for Saudi teams, out of 22 awards.
- 3: extra awards for Saudi teams, besides the world title.
- 8+ months: training period, with 36 coaches.
- 31,000+: students in Mawhiba programs in 2025.
- 129: international awards Saudi students won in 2025.
- 24: awards at ISEF 2026, including 12 major and 12 special prizes.
- 34,000+: projects in Ibdaa 2026, from 357,000 students.
- SAR 202 billion ($53.9 billion): 2026 education budget, up 1.5%.SAR 109.7 billion ($29.3 billion): education spending in H1 2026, up 5%.
Saudi Arabia’s Talent Push Pays off Worldwide
The big picture: LYNX’s win extends a run of Saudi successes. Mawhiba, the King Abdulaziz and His Companions Foundation for Talent and Creativity, works with the Ministry of Education. Together, they find, train and support gifted students.
Mawhiba reports that its programs reached more than 31,000 students in 2025. Additionally, Saudi students won 129 international awards across 26 Olympiads and the International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF) that year.
The 2026 results continue the trend. The national Ibdaa 2026 competition feeds the ISEF team. It drew 357,000 students and more than 34,000 projects, which set a Guinness World Record. Then, at ISEF in Phoenix in May, the Saudi team won 24 awards, including a global first place in computational biology and informatics. Similarly, Saudi Arabia ranked first at the International Nuclear Science Olympiad, with two golds, one silver and one bronze.
Saudi students kept winning over the summer. For example, the physics team brought home five awards in July, against 381 rivals from 87 countries. Meanwhile, the biology team claimed four. In addition, all six members of the informatics team won medals in their first Junior Balkan Olympiad.
Government spending backs this momentum. The 2026 budget allocates SAR 202 billion ($53.9 billion) to education, up 1.5%. Moreover, first-half education spending rose 5% to SAR 109.7 billion ($29.3 billion). Mawhiba says its programs support Vision 2030 goals.
What’s next: Ithra now prepares the sixth edition of STEM Racing KSA. Registration opened in August. Training starts in early December 2026. The program, which launched in 2022, targets school students across the Kingdom. Consequently, the next cohort has a clear goal: beat the world champions.
