MultiGP history: from a 2015 start to an annual championship.

MultiGP sells race sanctioning and runs a league, so this site treats it as an organiser, and its rules and titles are its own, never the FAI's. This page is its history as MultiGP, the Academy of Model Aeronautics (AMA), the press and Wikipedia record it. How MultiGP works today is on the bodies and its classes on MultiGP classes.

Founding: one year, three wordings

• The founder's account (a claim): Chris Thomas writes, in an undated message on MultiGP's site that by its own wording dates from 2017, that he founded MultiGP in early 2015. He says the first aim was a safe way to run local races, and the next a racing series across America.
• Wikipedia (secondary): MultiGP was founded in February 2015 by Chris Thomas and is based in Palm Bay, Florida. A search summary of the same article adds that MultiGP first helped with a major event at Leesburg, Florida, in late March 2015; that detail is unconfirmed.
• Model Aviation (April 2017): MultiGP was formed in 2015, with Thomas as founder and president.

All three agree on 2015. Only Wikipedia gives a month, so February 2015 is unconfirmed.

An AMA Special Interest Group, 24 November 2015

An AMA press release of 24 November 2015, kept by the AMA History Project, says the AMA Executive Council welcomed MultiGP, "also known as Multirotor Grand Prix", as an official Special Interest Group (SIG) representing the FPV racing community. The release describes MultiGP as founded by Chris Thomas as a social platform for FPV racers to host competition tournaments, free-fly gatherings and events. As a SIG, MultiGP agreed to manage communications, development, competition and continued safety efforts for that community, and it joined 23 other AMA SIGs. MultiGP's own undated news page records the same agreement and quotes the AMA's then president, Bob Brown.

MultiGP was a partner of the 2016 US National Drone Racing Championships on Governors Island, which the AMA sanctioned (Model Aviation, December 2016); that event is on the first races.

The 2015 and 2016 championships

Model Aviation (April 2017) says MultiGP's 2015 national championship was held in December 2015 in Ocoee, Florida, and won by Shaun Taylor.

The 2016 championship is described differently by each source:

How big MultiGP said it was, by date

Every figure below is MultiGP's own claim, or Wikipedia's, on the date given. None is an independent count, and they do not all move in one direction.

The 2024 and 2026 figures disagree both ways: Wikipedia's give more members but fewer chapters than MultiGP's own page. Both are given; neither is preferred.

The Global Qualifier and the championships since

Wikipedia says that since 2018 a Global Qualifier open to any FPV pilot worldwide has fed the MultiGP Championship, with a leaderboard used to invite pilots. MultiGP's 2026 championship page describes the same system, with the 2026 Global Qualifier season running from 27 March to 24 August 2026. Champions of MultiGP's top class:

The championship was held at No Quarter Ranch, Citrus Springs, Florida, in 2022, 2023 and 2024; in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 2025, which MultiGP calls its first Tulsa and first indoor championship; and in Carrollton, Texas, on 15 to 17 October 2026.

MultiGP's "World Cup" and European Championship

MultiGP also runs an International Open at the AMA's headquarters in Muncie, whose main race it calls the World Cup (AMA blog, 1 June 2026), and, from 2025, a MultiGP European Championship held at Aichtal, Germany; the first edition was in 2025 and the second on 11 to 13 September 2026. Both are MultiGP's own events. They are not the FAI World Cup or an FAI continental championship, and their results are never merged with the FAI's. Recent results are on MultiGP championships, and the wider question of "world" titles is on the world championship claims.