Participants exchange ideas at the aircraft maintenance competition site ahead of the 48th WorldSkills Competition in Shanghai on Monday. YIN LIQIN/CHINA NEWS SERVICE
The 48th WorldSkills Competition will be held in Shanghai from Sept 22 to 27, with a record 1,385 young competitors from 68 countries and regions gathering for the biennial vocational skills competition.
The WorldSkills Shanghai 2026 competition will showcase how time-honored crafts are embracing modernization while cutting-edge technologies are setting the pace for the future, experts said during a media tour on Monday.
The Shanghai edition features 64 skill categories, marking the first time the roster has exceeded 60. Seven new categories will make their debut, including unmanned aerial systems and intelligent security technology.
In the bricklaying category, 23 contestants will compete and each contestant will have 22 hours to complete their work during the four-day competition. As part of the surprise task, drawings will be released half an hour before the competition to allow contestants to familiarize themselves with the assignment.
Competitors must follow the drawings and standards set by experts and plan how to cut yellow, red and black bricks according to the specified patterns. Precision, standardization and resource planning are the three core skills being tested, said Qian Feng, assistant workshop manager for bricklaying.
China first entered the bricklaying category at the 43rd WorldSkills Competition, where it won a merit award, before claiming the championship at four consecutive competitions from the 44th to the 47th. This demonstrates the country's strong technical foundation and craftsmanship spirit, Qian said.
In the painting and decorating category, competitors must remove a door from its structure, take it to a designated spray booth, mix colors according to competition requirements, spray-paint it and reinstall it, while ensuring consistent structural safety is maintained. Walls must also be painted according to a specified theme.
Competitors select materials from a material library according to the competition documents, said Ling Min, technical support manager for the category. The work begins with understanding client requirements and inspecting the site, followed by removing old coatings, sandblasting, repairing cracks and applying and smoothing coatings, Ling said.
Acknowledging that robots are increasingly being deployed for high-risk tasks such as spray painting, which involves harmful, irritating and toxic gases, Ling said home renovation remains an area where greater individualization is needed and is still being explored.
As urban renewal and home renovation are highly practical and widely practiced fields, establishing high standards through vocational competitions can help raise skill levels across the country, said Ling, who is also deputy head of Shanghai Construction Management Vocational College.
Ling said the college is providing technical support for four skill categories at WorldSkills Shanghai 2026, including landscape gardening. The landscape gardening category venue, covering 3,600 square meters, is the largest at the competition.
The category is highly comprehensive, requiring contestants to prepare soil and cultivation areas, lay lawns, plant trees and shrubs, work with hard materials such as stone, wood and processed building materials, coordinate material transport, design drip irrigation systems, water features and lighting, and finally clear away process waste, Ling said.
In the intelligent security technology category, contestants will begin by assessing site risks and client needs before planning a layered protection scheme integrating video surveillance, access control, alarm systems, intercoms and smart sensor networks.
Technicians must balance security with ease of operation and tailor each system to ensure the safety of people and assets without disrupting daily life, said Tan Yixian, a technical support professional for the category.
In the robot system integration category, competitors will connect a robot with end tools to peripheral equipment through power and pneumatic systems. They will then program and control the robot using computers and specialized devices, said Feng Mengqi, a technical support professional for the site.
Evaluation will cover trajectory, speed, acceleration and repeat positioning accuracy, as well as robot configuration, debugging, verification and maintenance. Twenty teams, each consisting of two contestants from the same country, will take part in the four-day competition, Feng said.
Yang Shujie, workshop manager for electronics, described the category as a "triathlon" of skills. Contestants from 19 countries and regions must first design circuits based on the competition brief and verify their functionality through simulation before manufacturing, installing, debugging and testing the circuit boards. Beyond hardware, contestants also need software programming skills, including embedded programming.
