The humanoid 100m record fell again, to 8.64 seconds

TianGong Ultra won the large-robot 100 metres in 8.64 seconds on 26 August 2026, in the final event of the second World Humanoid Robot Games in Beijing. The robot is built by the Beijing Humanoid Robot Innovation Center, which trades as X-Humanoid.

The number to compare it against is not Usain Bolt’s 9.58 seconds, which fell during the same games four days earlier. It is the machine’s own time. By CGTN’s account TianGong Ultra ran 9.39 seconds earlier in the competition and 8.86 in the repechage before the 8.64 in the final, and Global Times reports the same 8.86 intermediate. The record moved roughly three quarters of a second inside five days, on one robot, at one meeting.

The games ran 2,056 robots from 666 teams across 51 events and 1,301 contests over five days. AGIBOT topped the medal table. At the first edition in 2025 the winning 100 metres took over 12 seconds.

A sprint on a prepared indoor surface with no opponent to react to measures control, not athleticism. What it does show is the rate: the same task, the same distance, solved progressively faster within a single week of competition.