Recursion plays an essential role in competitive programming by providing a way to solve complex problems through repeated calls to simpler instances of the same problem. It is particularly useful for problems involving divide-and-conquer or scenarios with inherent repetitive structures, such as tree traversal, searching, and dynamic programming. Recursion allows programmers to write elegant and concise solutions, especially for problems where iterative solutions would be cumbersome. However, it’s crucial to manage base cases and avoid excessive memory usage to prevent stack overflow errors. By mastering recursion, competitive programmers gain the ability to solve a wide array of problems efficiently and with minimal code, making it an indispensable technique.