6th Mitsubishi Electric Cup India: Where Future Engineers Meet Real-World Automation

Introduction

A report on the 6th Mitsubishi Electric Cup India 2026 student competition held at MIT-WPU in Pune, India

The bright February morning at Dr. Vishwanath Karad MIT World Peace University (MIT-WPU) marked a significant milestone for Mitsubishi Electric India Pvt. Ltd., as it hosted the grand finale of the 6th Mitsubishi Electric Cup India (ME Cup India). The campus in Pune welcomed some of the country’s most promising student engineers, who gathered to showcase their automation projects. Inside the pavilion, teams worked to fine-tune their systems, debug control logic, and validate real-world industrial applications. Although the competition took place on February 20-21, 2026, participants began preparing a day earlier to assemble, calibrate, and rigorously test their projects ahead of the evaluation.

Mitsubishi Electric India launched the ME Cup India in 2016, inviting teams from engineering colleges and technical institutions across the country to participate. The teams were invited to demonstrate their design and engineering capabilities by developing project models using Mitsubishi Electric factory automation technologies. After four successful events, the 5th edition was held in 2020, but the competition was disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic, and preparations for the 6th edition resumed in 2025.

Each edition of the ME Cup India is organized in collaboration with a leading academic partner, and for the 2026 competition, Mitsubishi Electric India partnered with MIT-WPU. As the host institution, the university provided the venue along with mentoring and hands-on technical guidance to participating teams throughout the project.

Since the competition launched in India, Mitsubishi Electric India has equipped every participating team with Factory Automation products, including PLCs, HMIs, servo motors, VFDs, and CNC systems, giving them the tools to build solutions suitable for industry settings. Alongside the support of the partner university, Mitsubishi Electric India’s technical experts mentor students during project execution to keep their work grounded in real-world practices.

The Mitsubishi Electric Cup traces its origins to 2006 in China, where it was first launched by Mitsubishi Electric Automation (China) Ltd., in association with the Chinese Society of Automation and co-sponsored by leading universities. This model later evolved into a national-level student competition across multiple countries, including Vietnam, Korea, and India. The core idea has remained the same: to foster industrial innovation, strengthen industry-academia collaboration, and encourage entrepreneurial thinking by providing a structured platform for student creativity. Building on this foundation, Mitsubishi Electric will host the first Global MECA competition in Japan in September 2026, bringing together winning teams from national competitions worldwide.