SHANGHAI, Sept. 30, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- A report from SMG.

The 48th WorldSkills Competition opened in Shanghai on September 22nd, bringing together young skilled professionals from around the world to compete across dozens of trades and professions. Among the events making their debut this year is Unmanned Aerial Systems, reflecting the rapid growth of the drone industry and rising demand for workers with multidisciplinary technical skills.

In the new event, competitors are required to assemble a drone from more than 200 parts, program its flight-control system and make it fly autonomously — all within 18 hours. The tasks combine mechanical assembly, electronics, computer programming and artificial intelligence.

The addition of the event comes as China's drone industry continues to expand. In 2025, the output value of China's civilian drone industry reached 176.1 billion yuan, up around 20 percent year on year, with industrial drones accounting for more than 70 percent of the total.

In Shanghai, drones are being used to inspect power transmission lines, replacing some tasks that once required workers to climb towers. He Bing, a specialist engineer with State Grid Shanghai Municipal Electric Power Company, said around 100 drones are deployed for inspections across the city every day.

"Before, a person had to climb the tower. Maybe one hour. Now, in 10 minutes, we can use the drone to inspect the tower," He said.

The technology is also moving into entertainment, engineering and overseas markets. Shanghai-based Aoying Tech has operated drone light shows involving more than 14,000 aircraft, while Vertaxi has deployed industrial drones for applications including oil-pipeline inspections overseas.

The growth of the industry is also creating demand for a new type of skilled worker.

Yue Tingting, vice president of Vertaxi, estimates that China's drone industry faces a talent shortage of more than one million people, including hardware engineers, R&D engineers, drone operators and test engineers.

Vocational schools are responding to that demand. Shanghai Business and Information College plans to introduce a new program in drone assembly, tuning and maintenance, with the potential to train around 100 students.

For students such as Chen Yixuan, drone training already goes far beyond learning how to fly an aircraft. It involves assembly, soldering, programming, flight control and autonomous-flight algorithms.

"The first module is assembly. The second is test flight. The third is coding — making it fly on its own," Chen said. "Autonomous flight is one of the biggest challenges."

The debut of Unmanned Aerial Systems at WorldSkills Shanghai therefore reflects a broader shift taking place beyond the competition arena.

As drones move from consumer products into power-grid inspections, engineering, agriculture, emergency response and passenger transportation, companies increasingly need workers who understand not just how to operate an aircraft, but how to build, program, test and maintain an entire unmanned system.

For WorldSkills, that changing industry has created a new competition event. For China's rapidly expanding drone sector, it has created a new question: who will have the skills needed to build and operate the next generation of unmanned aircraft?