Dear Humanoid League Teams,

In this November Newsletter, I will cover news around the RoboCup world championship in Thailand in 2022, the Humanoid League - Virtual Season development and the ongoing preparations for it.

RoboCup World Championship 2022 -------------------------------

The Trustees have recently announced that next year's RoboCup competition is planned as an in-person event in *Bangkok, Thailand, from July 11th to 17th*. We know that we are still in uncertain times when it comes to Covid and that many of you may be worried about travel restrictions and quarantine rules still in place next summer and while we are prepared to switch to a hybrid or online event if necessary, at the moment, the Federation is determined to organize an in-person event if at all possible.

We are currently finalizing the Call for Participation, which will be sent out within the next few days. The preliminary *application deadline is December 12th, 2021*, with a peer-review period for teams following shortly after. So please plan accordingly to make sure you can submit your own application material and your peer review in time. More information will follow as soon as possible.

If your team or your company has a special hardware offer for teams participating in the RoboCup Humanoid League, you can send your proposal for a special offer to the Technical Committee until the end of November. You can find further instructions on what to include in the Call for Special Offers that was sent out today.

Humanoid League - Virtual Season ---------------------------------

As you can see, the virtual tournament that we plan to start in December has a new name - thanks to everyone who participated in the Discord poll! Our proposal is currently under review by the Trustees, and we are hoping to get their final approval within the next days. As soon as we have their endorsement, we will send out a Call for Participation. According to the current time plan, we have the first games scheduled for the last weekend before the Christmas break (December 17th / 18th) and the deadline for teams to register at the end of November. Note that there will not be a formal qualification process, and all interested teams will be able to participate.

We still need your help! -------------------------

We are very grateful that so many of you showed up in the meetings to help us with organizing the Humanoid League - Virtual Season, improve the AutoReferee and the simulated environment, as well as the competition infrastructure. However, there is still a lot to do, so if you or anyone in your team has a bit of time, we are still looking for people to contribute, especially in improving the software stack. If you are interested in joining, just send me an e-mail or message me on Discord.

Cheers, Maike (for the Humanoid League Technical Committee)