The FAI and drone racing: a working group in 2014, an official class in 2024.

The FAI runs drone racing through its Aeromodelling Commission, known as CIAM. The FAI's own pages describe a step-by-step adoption, and its World Cup reports give the early results. Where the FAI's main site could not be opened, this page relies on the FAI's older site and on the 2025 mirror of fai.org, and says so. How the FAI's rules work today is on the FAI F9U rules.

Adoption, 2014 to 2017

The FAI's older drone-racing page records the sequence:

• 2014: the CIAM Plenary set up a UAV Working Group to assess how drone technology would affect CIAM's activities, above all its sporting events.
• 2015: the Plenary created an Organising Committee for International Events for Drones, which proposed rules for a new provisional class, "Radio Control Multi-rotor FPV Racing", called F3U, and a World Cup from 2016. The class covered electric multirotors with at least three propellers and a maximum flight weight of 1 kg.
• 2016: the Plenary approved the class and the World Cup and created an FPV Racing and Similar Activities Subcommittee. The FAI's 2016 World Cup report dates that Plenary decision to April 2016, effective for the 2016 season.
• The FAI Executive Board approved a Common FAI Strategy for Drones on 12 June in Heraklion; the page does not give the year.
• An FAI meeting of drone event organisers was held in Lausanne on 29 and 30 April 2017.

The first World Cup, 2016

The FAI's 2016 report (24 November 2016) says ten competitions in eight countries were considered, and 229 participants (211 seniors and 18 juniors) from 17 countries were placed. The season opened with an event at Le Plan, Pourrieres, France, on 13 to 15 May 2016 and closed with one at Osan, South Korea, on 11 and 12 November 2016. A Belgian event was cancelled for low entries, a Nantes event was excluded because every participant was French (World Cup points then needed flyers from at least three countries), and a Bulgarian event was excluded because only one participant held an FAI licence.

Vincent Delcommene of Belgium won the first FAI drone racing World Cup, ahead of Benoit Couturier of France and Maxime Bastin of Belgium. The report notes that many pilots that year had no FAI sporting licence and were removed from the placings, which it accepted for a first edition because most FPV pilots did not know the FAI. Under the F3U rules of the time, each pilot in a race had to be accompanied by a judge standing beside or behind them.

From F3U to F9 Drone Sport, 2018 and 2019

The FAI's CIAM page, read on the 2025 mirror of fai.org, says the 2018 Plenary decided to create a category dedicated to drones, so that from 1 January 2019 all drone matters fall under "F9 Drone Sport". The page uses both F3U and F9U for the racing class without explaining the change of name. The first F9 rule volume read for this site is the 2019 edition, effective 1 May 2019, in which F9U was still a provisional class. The FAI's 2024 World Cup report says a Masters series was introduced in 2019.

World Cup champions as found

The 2026 season was still running on 30 October 2026, so it has no champion; see the FAI World Cup.

Championships, and the 2020 stop

The FAI's 1st World Drone Racing Championship was held in Shenzhen, China, in November 2018 and won by Rudi Browning of Australia; the competing claims to a "first" world title are on the world championship claims. The 2019 championship Grand Final followed on 11 to 14 December 2019 at a dedicated track in Xiangshan, Ningbo, China, with 112 pilots from 31 national teams. Changhyeon Kang of Korea, aged 16, won overall and the junior title, ahead of Thomas Bitmatta of Australia and Killian Rousseau of France, and Korea won the team title (FAI, 14 December 2019).

On 16 March 2020 the CIAM Bureau suspended every aeromodelling event on the FAI calendar until 31 May 2020 because of COVID-19. Race of Drones Oulu in Finland, on 13 March 2020, was the only F9U World Cup event held before the suspension. From April 2020 no World Cup ranking was counted for 2020, most of the 19 planned events were cancelled or moved to 2021, and no championship Grand Final was held at the end of 2020. The FAI's 2024 report counts 2024 as the seventh World Cup because none was held in 2020 or 2021.

Wikipedia says the World Cup was "revived" in 2022 with a 14-year-old Korean winner. The FAI's 2024 report names the 2022 winner as Minjae Kim of Korea. Either way, 2022 was a World Cup year, not a championship year: the FAI's list of championship editions has none between 2019 and 2023.

An official class, 2023 to 2026

The 3rd championship was held in Namwon, Korea, ending on 9 October 2023, with 115 pilots from 28 nations, and was won by MinChan Kim of Korea (FAI, 10 October 2023). At its Plenary in Lausanne on 12 and 13 April 2024, CIAM made F9U an official class, with World Championships in even years (FAI, 16 April 2024). The 4th championship followed in Hangzhou, China, on 31 October to 3 November 2024, won by Yuki Hashimoto of Japan.

The 2025 F9 volume, effective 1 May 2025, heads its racing chapter "F9U (Official class)" and records the change in its change log, while its article A.1 still calls F9U provisional, so the volume does not agree with itself. Its change log also records that the 2019 edition's ban on propeller protection devices was removed, in the changes effective 1 January 2020. A 2026 edition exists but could not be read; its effective date is given as 1 January 2026 by a search summary of its cover and as 1 June 2026 by a trade article. No 2026 FAI World Drone Racing Championship was found, though the FAI's full 2026 calendar could not be read.

The World Games and the e-Drone series

Drone racing first appeared at The World Games in 2022, at Protective Stadium in Birmingham, Alabama, as a contest with men and women racing together. Killian Rousseau of France, aged 17, won ahead of Pawel Laszczak of Poland and Alejandro Zamora of Spain (FAI, 11 July 2022). It returned at The World Games 2025 in Chengdu, China, where the drone racing ran on 13 to 16 August 2025 and Yuki Hashimoto of Japan won gold, Chun Yan Kwan of Hong Kong, China, silver and MinJae Kim of Korea bronze (the FAI's World Games page, read on the 2025 mirror of fai.org). Drone racing is not on the programme the IWGA confirmed on 3 September 2026 for The World Games 2029 in Karlsruhe.

The FAI also runs a simulator series with its own separate ranking. It lists a 2023 e-Drone Racing Cup as the forerunner, and says the first e-Drone Racing World Cup season, in 2024, had five events and 140 pilots from 40 countries and was won by Swan Versmissen of France (FAI, 10 December 2024). Its results are never combined with the outdoor F9U World Cup. Pilot names that recur across these events are given as each result publishes them; no body read for this site confirms that matching names are the same person.